The F*ck It Diet: Eating Should Be Easy

by Caroline Dooner

The good news is, the calmer and more fed your body is, the better it will work, and the healthier and more stable your weight and appetite will be. Bodies end up right where they belong when you stop trying to control weight. The only thing we can control is how we treat ourselves, and learning to feed ourselves normally. And the sooner you can accept that your body will handle this whole weight thing for you, the sooner your health and life will improve.

Your best self is probably the one who trusts yourself the most, is able to relax and be social when you feel like it, and is able to seek quiet time when you need it. Someone who is able to be spontaneous when it suits you, and willing to take up space, speak up, take risks, use your creativity, is willing for things to be messy and imperfect—and is an all-around happier human.

You need to eat, multiple times a day, every day, for the rest of your life. If you’re hungry, it means you need to eat. You’re hungry but you just had a snack? Great! That means you need another one. If you are hungry, eat. No matter how much you’ve already eaten. That’s what hunger is for. That’s how it goes to be alive and human.

We need to learn to value ourselves at any weight. It is essential.

You are not going to eat the whole world. You are not going to eat until you explode. You are not a bottomless pit. And you are also not the one person this won’t work for. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been a food addict your entire life—the reason you are is because of restriction. And the cure is the complete removal of restriction.

Forcing yourself to “just eat balanced” or “just eat everything in moderation” is NOT balance after you’ve been dieting for years, so just put that out of your mind, and trust your body. Your body is seeking balance even if eating a whole box of cereal in one day isn’t how you imagined balance to look.

When food is neutral, it has no morality, no judgment, fear, or guilt attached. It is just food. When food is neutral and free of judgment, it becomes so much easier to listen to your cravings and begin to eat intuitively.

Slowly but surely, the more I would eat a certain food, the less I would crave it and care about it. The more I ate it, the less I would go nuts over it. Eating it freely literally lessened the power, and I started easily stopping when I wasn’t that hungry anymore.

Feeding cravings allows the craving to pass. Your body and mind crave things that are forbidden or restricted, as well as things they need, so once they’re not forbidden, cravings become more and more in tune with what the body really needs.