The F*ck It Diet: Eating Should Be Easy

by Caroline Dooner

been so frustrated with your hungry humanity that you are willing to do anything to be less of a burden to society with the space you take up.

So for the next ten years I was either “on a diet”—obsessed with following the rules perfectly—or “off a diet,” because I was bingeing and feeling out of control and horrible about myself.

I’d spent the past ten years truly hating my body, constantly disgusted with myself, and wanting to be skinny more than anything else.

I was petrified of carbs and sugar, and being full, and absolutely everything I did was for the purpose of trying to weigh less. Every day was good or bad based on the number on my scale and what I had eaten.

But even the times when dieting “worked” and I was actually skinny, it was never, ever enough. I didn’t feel skinny, or worthy, or confident. And the moments that I did feel skinny?

The irony is that restriction and dieting cause a very real food addiction that cannot be cured with more dieting and more restriction. We are physiologically and psychologically wired to be food addicts when our bodies sense there isn’t ample food. It’s chemical and hormonal and completely inescapable.

No matter what you weigh, dieting is ruining your metabolism and your ability to listen to your body.

Do me a favor and imagine that you are in a real-life famine and you have access to very little food. Just imagine what would happen. Immediately, everything in your life would become about food. Everything in your body would be telling you both to ration what you have and to eat a lot the first chance you find enough food.

FATE #1: THE FAMINE NEVER ENDS. As you use up all your food stores, you stop being hungry at all, because your body believes there really is no food, so it is not going to keep using precious energy to send hunger signals.

Once your body is fed for a long time, and not worried about any more famine, you will slowly come back to normal. Food won’t be as stressful. You will slowly trust that there is enough food again, and your body’s metabolism will eventually normalize.

If you are yo-yoing between dieting and bingeing, you are putting your body through a constant crisis.

Eating less than you are hungry for triggers your body’s survival mode, changing your hormones and brain chemistry, which then lowers your metabolism and makes you biologically obsessed with food. The mental fixation is actually caused by the physical restriction.

If you are obsessed with food, you have triggered a famine state. If you are bingeing, you are in a famine state. This is true no matter how much you weigh, or how much you are sure you are already overeating.

The yo-yo gets worse, our metabolism stays suppressed, our brains fixate on food—and our body puts on weight at any chance it gets.

1,600 is too low for anyone. In fact, even the new 2,000-calorie recommended daily intake “is only enough to sustain children,”2 according to Marion Nestle,

So on only 1,600 calories, the participants’ strength and energy immediately began to decline, and they said they were constantly tired. Then apathy set in.

but now they didn’t really care about any of the things they used to care about. Next, sex and romance lost its appeal.

All their thoughts became about food. They became completely fixated on thinking, talking, and reading about food. (Sound familiar?) Some began to read and stare at cookbooks for hours, mealtimes became their favorite part ...

Their heart rates slowed way down, and the men were cold all the time—both symptoms of low metabolism and the body trying to conserve energy.

These men were also profoundly psychologically changed by their restrictive diets. A few weeks into the experiment, one man started having disturbing dreams of cannibalism.

All this man needed to regain his sanity was more food.

the weirdest part of all: even though these men had become extremely emaciated, they did not perceive themselves as being excessively skinny. Instead, they thought other people were too fat. They were experiencing body dysmorphia, which is a phenomenon experienced by people with eating disorders where people see their bodies as a different size or shape than they actually are.

hormonally and chemically—it can be a very bumpy road while you re-feed yourself after famine and dieting. Only

They often talked about a hunger sensation they couldn’t satisfy, no matter how much they ate or even how full they were.

Sometimes they would even gain weight when they were still religiously keeping up the diet and exercise regimen that helped them lose weight in the first place.

One of the biggest indicators of weight is genetics.6 We all have “set points,” weight ranges that the body will try to maintain. No matter how you are eating or moving, there is a weight range your body wants to be in—some people’s are higher, and some are lower. Your body will adjust your metabolism in order to keep you in your set point range.

with lots of willpower, you can obtain a perfect body, and when you do you can finally be proud. If you follow someone else’s rules, everything will finally become perfect and easy. And if you let yourself slip and gain weight, you should be ashamed.

That diet path was a path of listening to what other people expected and wanted of you, and the never-ending saga of trying desperately to get approval from anyone and everyone but yourself.

Whether we know it or not, we have absorbed so many rules about eating, food, and weight that don’t serve us.

This is a foundational concept in psychology called Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Food and rest are two of humanity’s most basic needs, and if those basic survival needs are not being met, it is almost impossible for us to truly move on to any other area of our life.26 You

Bingeing is a natural reaction to that famine response.

We need to let go of the fear of what “gaining weight” means. We need to be willing to dress ourselves at a higher weight. We need to learn to value ourselves at any weight. It is essential.

your metabolism has evolved to slow down when you are not consuming enough. That means that calorie calculations are rendered totally moot and pointless when you understand that your metabolism is adjusting itself to purposely keep on weight when it senses restriction.

be hungrier, more tired, and put on weight quicker—all to save your life. Those symptoms are often signs of a slow metabolism.

Chronic exhaustion is something many dieters experience, having no idea that it’s from their attempts at healthy eating.

I’d been to several specialists over the years in an effort to find out why I was always so tired and so low energy. Nobody knew. Turns out, I just needed to eat—a lot!”

I was never officially diagnosed with any eating disorder. I was never thin enough to concern people, and I was able to hide it from myself under the guise of just being a “health nut.” This does not mean my eating wasn’t disordered.

But this is what the brain does under real (or perceived) restriction. The hunger hormone rises, and the brain fixates and obsesses on food.

And even during those times I thought I was “following my body” and eating intuitively, I was still monitoring carbs and sugar. Always, always, always. I never, ever, made myself grains or potatoes. I would try to make everything vegetables and meat. And I would order the least carby meal on the menu if I ate out. I was a master at that.

And guess what? I was always hungry. I was so concerned with trying to eat the smallest amount possible, especially the smallest amount possible of carbs, that I got hungry almost as soon as I had decided I should be finished.

Whenever our output exceeds our input—meaning you aren’t eating enough, resting enough, or eating enough carbs—the body releases adrenaline and cortisol, which are two major stress hormones that help the body create fast fuel for your cells. Without this fuel, we die.

The less you eat carbs, or try to replace carbs with zero-calorie fake-sugar products, the more likely you will become chronically hypoglycemic. Your body perceives low blood sugar as a stressor, which kicks adrenals into overdrive and pumps out stress hormones.

Meaning, the less you eat carbs, the slower your body will burn fuel and the slower your metabolism becomes.

But for people who identify as bingers, this is the whole problem: bingers think that the cure for bingeing is more control, without understanding how restriction is affecting them.

If you find yourself stuck with a doctor who is too focused on weight, it can be helpful to ask how they would treat a thinner person with the same health issue, and insist on being treated that way. Or find another doctor.

This is good news, because rest is awesome. But it is also terrifying to so many of us who subconsciously only feel worthy when we are constantly working or being productive. Rest is the cure for the workaholic.

Exercise is really good for you if you are fed and rested. Exercise strengthens you, circulates your blood and oxygen and lymph system, and is incredibly life-affirming. But exercise is not healthy when you are in a famine state, or when you are depleted or exhausted.

This is the beginning of a lifelong relationship with exercise that enhances your life instead of punishing you or keeping you running away from your exhaustion or your feelings.