Not the easiest diet to follow... This kinda follows on from my previous post. Lately, some people have been asking me what I eat, and it takes a while to explain the process. I’ve been trying to get in touch with what nourishes me, without preconception. Actually that didn’t take long at all, but if you want the detailed version, read on... Worrying about what’s healthy, what’s unhealthy, what’s okay and what’s forbidden, what’s a treat, what has to be rationed, what can be eaten freely – all this gets in the way of identifying what you need. Preconceptions make us sick, as much as they make us healthy. So why bother with them at all? What you need should never be rationed. And we all need food. I don’t care whether it’s for emotional reasons, for the pure nutritional makeup, or for any other reason you like. Systems of rationing make cravings worse and often make for complications later on. Do you think you can ‘give up sugar’ without increasing your fat intake? What would actually happen if you did that? Would it make you as thin as you want, or would it just make you sick and miserable? What would happen if you gave up coffee without trying to correct your sleeping patterns? Pretty soon you’d start on the coffee again, that’s what. It requires investigation if you actually want to make changes. You can’t just cut shit out and expect it to all fall neatly into place. There is actually a reason that you eat what you do, the way you do. You can’t start exercising and expect it not to make you hungrier. You can’t increase your activity and simply eat less without making problems for yourself later on. Cravings are your body’s way of saying something’s wrong – if you keep living like this we’re going to run into trouble. You can’t burn 100 calories on the treadmill and think that equals 100 calories of food, because it doesn’t. Exercise changes you on a systemic level. It changes the way things work in your body. That shit needs to be nourished, and eating ‘the same’ numbers as what you burn isn’t going to work for your long term development. Our ideas of what we should be eating, and our feelings for what would actually satisfy us, are usually different. At the start of the year – for whatever reason – I decided the following: I had had enough with my frequent resolution to ‘eat well this year’. I wanted to be able to freely eat whatever I like. I wanted ‘what I like’ to also be what’s good for me. As a diabetic vegetarian, when I realised the only foods I did not have some sort of guilt-complex relating to were vegetables and nuts, I realised my problem was not with food – it was with guilt. Somehow I realised the way to make it through was to start by breaking every rule I knew. I still find both blogs and real articles on line all the time that break down my preconceptions. It turns out you can absorb more than 30 grams of protein at once. It turns out you can lose weight while eating carbs at night. It turns out you can eat large meals less frequently without destroying your metabolism. It turns out you do not have to eat breakfast if you don’t want to. I’ve known for a long time that fat is essential, even though everyone is scared of it. Low-fat milk spikes your insulin, so full-fat milk is less likely to give you diabetes. Fancy that. You should see the reaction you get when you tell people you eat cream in unrestricted amounts! The small, frequent meal approach seems to go hand-in-hand with low-fat. I discovered that increasing my intake of fat naturally reduced my hunger, so I stopped eating as frequently. The point is, of course – we don’t know what we think we know. Through adherence to rules and regulations, we lose sight of what we truly need pretty damn quickly. Of course, I started out eating pretty randomly, without structure, and experimenting with what made me feel good. Sure enough, there were lots of ‘forbidden foods’ I was eating. But I wasn’t out of control, I wasn’t gorging myself 24/7 (which is the fear that’s drummed into us), because I kept thinking about what I actually wanted. I was aware that I was going through a process and things were probably going to get ‘worse’ before they got ‘better’. I knew it was necessary because I was sick of thinking only about short term thinness-seeking results. What I most certainly was not indulging in was the blind knee-jerk disobedient reaction to oppression – eating whatever the heck I could cram in my face with no regard for anything. I was focusing on what made me feel good. Being disobedient is hard work. This meant the inclusion of meats in my diet, that I had not really consumed for twelve years. It meant cream, butter and cheese. Whole glasses of milk, just to see what it was like. Interestingly, I don’t crave sweet drinks – I never really have – but there was more chocolate, biscuits, and cups of coffee. I enjoy my coffee black and sugarless, and it always amazes me how the same thing – coffee – can be for some people a strong, bitter and complex experience (black, no sugar) and for others, it can be a dessert (sweet and milky, with chocolate powder on top). I know more than a few people who, once they open a packet of [insert forbidden food here] can’t stop until it’s all gone. That’s not a problem with the food itself, or compulsive eating, it’s really a problem with restriction. I am certainly not the first person to have gone through the process where removing restrictions resulted in me not compulsively eating the whole pack. When you firmly know, with absolute confidence, that food is not in short supply, you stop eating compulsively. I stopped that kind of obsessive face-cramming (still working on not being ashamed of it), because I naturally discovered that the point where I didn’t want any more was real. It did exist, and my own desire could be trusted. After eating enough, my desire to eat more went away. People often freak out, saying things like “if I remove all restrictions I’ll eat everything in sight!” No, you won’t. Maybe you will at first, but if you’re aware that you’re going through a process, if you’re aware that this food isn’t actually in short supply, if you truly know that you aren’t going to starve if you don’t eat everything in sight right now, then you’re actually going to be okay. You aren’t ‘out of control’, you’re working on developing yourself. Cows. Just because. It’s not unrestricted eating that makes you fat, it’s chronic dieting that makes you fat. People like to say things like “back in the blah-blah day, nobody was fat”, but you know what? Back in the blah-blah day, people didn’t place so many restrictions on what they can and can’t eat, either. And sure, there was less sugar around, and less processed food, but we can play this “people used to [insert thingy here] game” forever. It’s not helpful. And there’s no way of knowing who’s right anyway. Maybe it comes down to whether you’re an optimist or a pessimist. Do you believe – if we remove all the shoulds – you’ll naturally gravitate towards what is good for you or do you believe we will always seek out what harms us? If you naturally gravitate towards that which is nourishing – what does it matter if every now and then you eat something that isn’t good for you – without judgement? Without preconception? What is really going to happen? There is no such thing as ‘should’. All you need is a little awareness. Save your guilt and regret for something that matters. I regret excessive adherence to dietary propaganda, and not investing in my own awareness and self-discovery sooner. But I’m not hard on myself about it, I’m just working on it now. Even at the start of this process, I found I’d be craving the ‘good’ food along with the ‘bad’. I was wanting to eat green leafy vegetables at some point during most days. Also I was aware from previous experiments that adding or removing chocolate from my diet for a period of time actually had zero noticeable impact on my ‘weight’. I think I exhibited signs of disordered eating. It’s very common. I don’t think I had an Eating Disorder in Capital Letters, but recognising something was awry in my relationship with food was very important. I tried to remove my preconceptions, and I was able to embark on this process because I always believed that – deep down – our bodies want what’s good for them. If there’s anything we’re wired for, it’s our own survival. Why do you crave sweet, fatty food when you’re dieting? Because your body needs energy. It’s the job of your cravings to keep you from starving. That’s what they do. There’s a reason for them, and it’s a good reason, not a bad one. You’ve got ‘self-destructive’ tendencies? The feeling that you want things to be better for yourself is proof that like me, you want what’s good for you. Failure to adhere to a diet is not self-destructive - it’s the exact opposite. You eat to prevent starvation. We are told lies as if they are true, but it’s the opposite that’s true. Cravings ensure that you continue to eat, despite how much you are told you should be eating less. What would happen if – in a society obsessed with thinness – we didn’t have cravings? We would all make ourselves very fucking sick. It’s not the diet that’s good for you. It’s not placing preconceived restrictions on what you can eat that’s good for you. The ‘diet’ is what does you harm. Eating what makes you feel good, and not eating what makes you feel bad is not a diet. It’s responding naturally and truly to your body’s needs, with awareness, not prejudice. This is what’s good for us, and it’s entirely different to conforming to someone else’s agenda. What’s good for you is seeking inside, and discovering what you truly need, free from preconceptions. This is a hard path, developing your awareness. The easy path is to do what you’re told, ‘suck it up’ and be tough, all while chanting the calories-in-calories-out mantra, and remaining ignorant. Keeping grounded in what’s actually good for you requires vigilance, it requires you to think for yourself, it requires you to actually think about what you want, not what you’re told you should have. It requires you to pay attention to how you feel on deeper levels than you are used to. And it means when someone accuses you of being lazy and undisciplined, you secretly know the truth that you did not sacrifice your own good judgement for the sake of popularity. Eating whatever you want is anything but taking the easy way out. Again, we are told that lies are true, and the truth is lies. Eating what you want isn’t easy. There are no rules you can follow, there is no path mapped out – you have to find the way for yourself. This is what I mean when I say we need to focus on what nourishes us instead of what depletes us. If we focus on what supports our development, rather than what interferes with it, what you’re putting in rather than what you’re taking out – maybe we’re still pandering to some sort of propaganda, but at least we’re moving away from the diet mentality. Working out what is good for you is really hard, when we’re being told – all the damn time – that we don’t know what’s good for us, we can’t be trusted, and if given half a chance we’ll all eat our way to an early grave. Where did the low-fat craze of the 80s get us? What has that resulted in? Shouldn’t we all be thinner now, because we ate the low fat ice-cream instead of the double cream? And what about carbs? Do you really think they’re evil? And why the hell do so many people say ‘carbs’ when they actually mean ‘grains’ or ‘sugar’? Very few people actually mean carbs when they say carbs. Of course, when I explain this process to people, they often say something like “yes... so you eat green leafy vegetables, then? That’s healthy. And chocolate too?” So either I have to explain it all again, or I give up. What’s with the judgement? That a food is irrevocably good or bad? Is sugar always bad? Really? You can’t think of any situations where it might be important? Are green leaves always a good food choice? And the key to health is supposed to be what specific foods I eat? What you eat is your business, and what’s right for you is damn well going to be different to what’s right for me. What rules are you following that really don’t apply?
19 Comments
Aiyesha
9/26/2011 07:16:30 pm
Oh my god where to begin! I heard (well, read) a funny thing once, describing how humans (among many, many other kinds of animals) engage in "non-nutritive behaviours" - this being, eating things like herbs or clay, substances that have medicinal or therapeutic qualities but which don't provide immediate energy or nourishment, and I thought, well, pretty much most lettuces, herbs, sprouts, leaves, flowers and so forth are "non-nutritive" by that definition. It marked a shift in how I thought about food - I mean, it was staring me in the face all the time, but most of the stuff I mentioned above has virtually no calories and minimal amounts of soluble macronutrients (though plenty of micronutrients, which is why we eat them). They're "good" for you, but they aren't FOOD. It's kinda like they're extra-curricular food. Edible, and necessary for optimal health...but it's as though we're taught that this stuff is meant to make us feel full and nourished, and then we feel like failures when it doesn't. When we can't live on salad and veggies alone.
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Chris Serong
9/26/2011 08:34:26 pm
Yes! I did steal that from you: the thought that we would all die if we didn't eat... Obvious as it may be....
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Aiyesha
9/26/2011 09:36:23 pm
Ooooh, the gap between how food makes us feel, physically and mentally...I think you need a heck of a lot of experimenting and awareness and investigation and all that stuff you talk about on this blog to even come close to closing or bridging that gap, or even understanding it. And sometimes, that gap just doesn't exist.
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Chris Serong
9/27/2011 11:46:10 am
I saw the end of a Simpsons episode last night, and Lisa apparently had body-image issues and disordered eating and things, and so she took a cake out of the fridge. She said something along the lines of "right. If you can just taste one little bit of the frosting, and stop there, it means you've conquered food!" Of course, half a minute later she was swimming in cake.
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Aiyesha
9/27/2011 12:23:34 pm
Oh man. Conquering food is a good one. I like to think I've conquered food every time I eat it til it's all gone! Better for my self esteem that way.
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Chris Serong
9/27/2011 01:04:45 pm
Yeah! I totally dominated that cheesecake!
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Michellers
10/4/2011 09:31:40 am
Thank you so much for this!
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Chris Serong
10/4/2011 01:15:27 pm
I fully realised that point about regretting buying into the diet-dogma because a friend of mine pointed out that when you start being kind to yourself, you are confronted with the "man, you should have been kind to yourself sooner" regret. Which is only a reminder to be kinder now, which is kinda cool, really.
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karelys
7/24/2012 07:33:43 am
I found your blog because "The Fat Nutritionist" posted a link on facebook. Since then I've been reading avidly. I remember coming across a similar philosophy in her blog and it was like drinking from a fire hose.
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Chris Serong
7/24/2012 12:29:23 pm
I remember finding her blog too! Everything I read was so helpful, and true. Thank you for your kind words.
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Chris Serong
10/23/2012 07:30:36 pm
Thanks Jackson.
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Saroosh Wattoo
10/15/2013 08:52:16 am
I'd just like to tell you that this website is amazing and you are amazing. You, along with a couple of other bloggers, have really eloquently described what it means to have a good relationship with your body and have introduced me to size acceptance. For that, I am eternally grateful.
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Chris
10/15/2013 10:35:04 am
Thank you!
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Chris
10/15/2013 10:37:09 am
...Continued........ The truth is, some thin people eat heaps of food and don’t gain weight, and many fat people eat hardly anything and cannot lose it. There is no system of rationalisation I’ve ever come across that can explain why that’s so. Your best bet, in my opinion, is to eat freely, to find ways to move that are satisfying, and to do what you can to take care of yourself now, rather than to live in fear that you might one day be sick. Because that fear is what they exploit. That fear might always exist, in one way or another – the fear of the unknown, the fear and secret knowledge that the world is chaotic and impossible to control – but you can stop them exploiting it.
Chris
10/15/2013 10:46:39 am
But that's the really challenging thing with acceptance - if I accept this, then what about that? What about being sick, bedridden and immobile? Will I have to accept that? What if I can't? What should I accept? What should I settle for? What if everything actually is okay, what if it is the way it's meant to be? That's a terrifying thought.
Saroosh Wattoo
10/16/2013 12:08:57 pm
I really love this response. It captures what I think I've probably realized for a long time but haven't accepted. For so long I thought I could reason with myself, I could convince myself to believe in size acceptance by forcing myself to believe in the "logic" of the argument. I admired others who had managed to find peace, and it made me feel worse about myself (like I was doing something wrong). In reality, size acceptance is about learning to be at peace with oneself, understanding that there is no "solution" or "explanation" because our bodies are incredibly complicated and cannot be reduced to a series of equations. Science does not fully understand the concept of weight and fat. Now that I think about it, even if science did understand these concepts, it still wouldn't matter.
Chris
10/17/2013 08:02:01 am
Wow. Yes. Peace. Thank you.
Saroosh Wattoo
10/18/2013 02:33:20 am
A new blog post about this topic sounds like a good idea to me. Frankly, I read any and all new updates, so...
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