Giving Up Dieting Gave Me My Life Back

For over two decades of my life, I spent countless hours and too much energy focused on losing weight. My first diet was at eight or nine years old and my last one was at 29. I tried everything from the Cabbage Soup Diet to weight loss tea to Atkins, Keto, Whole30...And they all worked for a bit until they didn't.

Exactly a year ago, I was in the throes of my last diet, five days away from completing the Whole30 for a second time. I had been trying unsuccessfully to get back to my pre-pregnancy weight for about six months and nothing was working. My body was holding onto the weight like my life and the life of my baby depended on it. After a month of torturing myself and feeling obsessed with food and "clean" eating, I stepped on the scale and had lost a measly 5 pounds. I was devastated.

Frustrated with my so-called failure, I began looking for yet another diet, this time in podcast form, when I came across Food Psych. This was the start of my journey to Intuitive Eating, learning about Health at Every Size and healing my relationship with food and my body.

I learned that diets and yo-yoing in weight is more harmful to one's health than staying at a larger weight consistently over a lifetime. I learned about the "obesity paradox." I learned to free myself from diet culture and weight stigma. I learned to enjoy eating again, not only to sustain my body, but also for the pure pleasure of it, because food is not only delicious but it brings us closer to the people we love. I learned to embrace and celebrate my body for the amazing things it's able to do.

A year after giving birth, I got pregnant again. My starting weight with my second pregnancy was the weight I was the morning I went into labor in my first pregnancy. This was the ultimate lesson in accepting that bodies are meant to change and diets are designed not to work. 

Instead of obsessing over food and weight loss this past year, this is what I've been able to do:

1. Spend more time with and give more attention to my family
2. Take on projects outside of my day job
3. Find my love of baking again, complete with regular all-purpose flour and real sugar
4. Plan and take a bucket list trip
5. Thoroughly enjoy all the carbs in Europe without any guilt
6. Join a networking group for young professional and go to events
7. Restart this blog
8. Read more books that have nothing to do with food
9. Turn second-hand shopping into more of a hobby to have clothes that fit my changing body and build up my slow fashion wardrobe
10. Practice more self-care, such as going to the chiropractor and joyful movement

What are some things you enjoy doing more than dieting?