Are You a Pseudo-Dieter?

After years of jumping from one diet to the next and being a slave to the scale, Val hit rock-bottom.

Fed up with the weight-loss roller coaster and obsessing over every morsel she ate, she swore off dieting.

Yet, months after joining the anti-diet movement, she still shuns carbs, avoids snacking and seconds, never eats after 6:30 p.m., and runs an extra mile whenever she has dessert.

Val is a pseudo-dieter.

She genuinely believes she’s given up dieting, yet she continues to engage in dieting behaviors.

As a result, she still experiences many of the side effects of dieting, including thinking about food all the time, struggling with intense food cravings, feeling out of control with her “trigger foods” (ice cream and chips), and feeling guilt, shame and anger when she thinks she’s eaten badly.

Deeply Ingrained
As with Val, the diet mentality can be so deeply ingrained—or hidden under the guise of “health," "wellness” or "lifestyle change"—that you may not realize you're actually pseudo-dieting and that your restrictive eating behaviors are making you vulnerable to the physical and psychological damage dieting causes.

Falling into the pseudo-dieting trap is completely understandable given how ubiquitous and seductive our diet and wellness cultures are.

Here are some more examples of pseudo-dieting:

• Eating only “clean” or “whole” foods.

• Limiting carb or fat grams regardless of what you want or what your body needs.

• Determining what you deserve to eat based on what you ate earlier in the day or if you exercised, rather than your hunger level.

• Compensating for eating “bad” foods by doing extra exercise, skipping your next meal, eating less tomorrow, or going on a cleanse.

• Allowing yourself to only eat at certain times of the day despite your hunger level.

• Becoming vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, etc. for the sole purpose of losing weight.

Releasing the Diet Mentality
Just like an official diet program, pseudo-dieting disconnects you from your body inhibiting your ability to hear and honor the messages it’s sending you.

And, as I mentioned earlier, all restrictive eating, no matter how it’s labeled, leaves you vulnerable to the pitfalls of dieting, from binge eating and weight cycling to food preoccupation and social withdrawal.

Escaping the dieting roller coaster and experiencing true food freedom requires fully letting go of your diet mentality and relearning how to nourish your body based on its internal cues versus external rules—that is, eat intuitively.

As pseudo-dieting behaviors can be quite subtle and disentangling from our pervasive diet culture can be very difficult (but not impossible!), it can be helpful to receive support and guidance. I’m here for you if you need me.

Curiosity Killed the Craving (and the Bingeing)

I used to binge on cookies.

Giant peanut-butter chocolate-chunk cookies. 

Each binge was followed by relentless self-attack and self-loathing...feelings of guilt, shame and weakness....and, of course, promises to never ever do it again.

Yet, somehow, despite my best intentions, I’d find myself right back in the same place days later. Standing in my kitchen in the dark shoving cookies in my mouth. Crumbs scattered on my shirt. Chocolate smeared across my face. Belly beyond stuffed.

I haven’t binged like that in years. 

I no longer experience such intense cravings.

It’s not because I have tremendous willpower.

It’s because instead of beating myself up, I became curious.

Instead of shouting at myself, “You have no self-control, you suck!,” I started gently asking myself, “Hey, what’s this all about? What’s going on here?”

By pausing and becoming compassionately curious, I was able to cultivate greater awareness for why I was doing what I was doing. 

Stillness coupled with expanded awareness is far more powerful than willpower. 

Often, before we can say "no," we have to understand why we say "yes." Every action has a positive intention and every action is to fulfill a need. 

When I finally understood what was driving my compulsion—a rigid diet, false persona, pleasure deficiency—and the deeper needs I was trying to meet, my binge eating ended. 

I stopped focusing on keeping sweets out of reach and started focusing on fulfilling my unmet needs and desires. When I quit depriving myself of food and the life I longed for, I no longer relied on cookies to give me something they were never meant to.

How can you bring more compassionate curiosity to your relationship with food?

Why I Couldn't Stop Eating Conversation Hearts

Valentine's Day reminds me of a time in my life when I couldn’t be left alone with a bag of conversation hearts without eating every single one of those pastel sugar bombs. And, thanks to handfuls of those cutely packaged Valentine’s Day mini candy bars, February afternoons at my corporate gig became much more bearable.
 
Of course, my sweet tooth didn’t rear its demanding, insatiable head just in February. Bingeing on sugary treats was a year-round occurrence back then. Eating them made me feel alive when I felt dead inside from doing unfulfilling, uninspiring work.
 
The less alive I felt, the stronger my desire was for quick hits of intense food. When I flatlined, sugar was my lifeline.
 
A Symbolic Substitute
For many of us, sugar is a symbolic substitute for fulfillment and freedom. For others, it’s salty snacks, fatty foods, booze or pot. These things take us to a place where we can forget--albeit temporary--about the dissatisfaction and discomfort in our lives. We use them to leave ourselves when life gets hard.
 
It’s not that these things are necessarily bad, or that we’re bad people for consuming them, or that they shouldn’t be a source of pleasure. Challenges arise when we rely on them to fulfill a need they were never ever meant to fill.
 
If this sounds all too familiar, what steps--big and small--can you take to feel more alive in your day-to-day existence?
 
How can you infuse more vitality into the realms of your life that feel lackluster and lifeless, whether it’s work, relationships, intimacy, physical movement, spirituality, personal growth, creativity, etc.?
 
Take a minute to write down all the things that make you feel more alive. Don’t hold back. 
 
A few items on my list include: aligning my passions and values with my career, running at sunrise, re-centering at yoga, challenging my body with a new workout, walking with a friend, reading a captivating book, learning new ideas, hiking along the coast, planning trips, exploring foreign lands, losing myself in a creative project, helping others, and connecting with my coaching clients.
 
What makes you come alive?
 
Remember, food can fill you up, but it can’t fulfill you.