Color Me Fit: weight loss, fitness, exercise

Actually, I’m writing this post with a mind somewhat more at east than it has been in the past few weeks, so things aren’t that bad. But I still wanted to reflect about this particular point, because even though I don’t post very often on this blog due to my time constraints, you readers know, from my recent entries, that the struggle I have been facing is one that was completely new for me.

I had already mentioned that, in spite of being overweight, I had never been a binge eater, nor a closet eater. I used to eat too much, and too much of the wrong things, but all in all, my relationship with food had already been a ‘clean’ one, in that I didn’t verge on guilt, shame, secretly overeating, that kind of things. Well, now I am seriously wondering–and all the more after reading Victorian Moran’s Fit From Within: does dieting really have the power to turn an otherwise semi-normal relationship with food to something completely abnormal? Once again, it’s probably a matter of personality, like in many other aspects of the weight loss journey, but…

I’ve never been a dieter. I’ve never followed fad diets (I was presented with the (in)famous ‘Mayo Diet’ at the age of 14, but thanks goodness I didn’t give in to that craze). I know from experience that I am able to lose weight, or at least some, just from sensible eating (my ‘freshman 15′ were actually a loss, not a gain. And the only diet you can say I’ve gone through, back in 2005, was the Montignac one, which is more about glycemic index than anything else (and even then, I never followed it to the letter, I admit).

Earlier this year, when I noticed that piling on pounds was unfortunately so easy to accomplish, I decided that I would just pay attention to “eating normally”–i.e., more fruits/veggies/lean meats + added exercise, but no particular restrictions: if I wanted pizza, it had to be a 200g one and not a 800g one, and not four times a week. That was all. It worked well. Quite well. I lost the weight I had regained plus some. I even reached my lowest weight ever. This didn’t send me into a spiral of “eat everything in sight because it was allowed”, much the contrary.

And then, somehow, I got into my mind that I should count calories, and gradually I started obsessing as soon as I was over 1200/day, over every kind of little thing, about every extra slice of apple I would eat, and so on. Autumn and classes came, and all of a sudden, I realized it was the fourth of fifth time I was going into something very, very close to a full-blown binge during the week-ends. A completely unproductive pattern, as well as a self-destructive one. If I could end up bingeing once every week or two weeks, what did guarantee that I wouldn’t do that every two or three days? Anyway, what was the use of restricting for two weeks to lose a pound and then gaining it back in two days?

I didn’t want such a pattern to become regular. I am a person with a tendency to addiction, after all, it just never had been about food. I had to break the vicious circle that was taking shape. The only factor that seemed logical to me in the end was this counting and obsessing (because before that, I never had such a problem): this tendency I was developing to consider foods in terms of “I shouldn’t eat that” or “if I eat that, it will ruin my perfect day”. Yeah, right. As if I didn’t already know that this mindset was one to avoid absolutely. What was to follow next? Feelings of guilt? Psh.

Therefore, I’ve decided to stop counting calories for a time; I’m still logging my food in a notebook, including those licks, tastes and bites we usually never notice, I’m just not counting every half-calorie in everything. I already know what I need to choose in terms of sensible eating. I’ve gotten way better at eyeballing my portions and instinctively measuring quantities, too, even if it’s not perfect. I’m still aware that McDonald’s food everyday is NOT okay. Can’t I DO something with those ‘tools’ I have in hand already? I don’t simply want to lose some more weight; I also want to be able to call myself a normal eater, if there’s anything like this, and no wallow in thoughts of food and counting all the time. Developing a binge disorder certainly is not on my to-do list, and will never be.

Mind you, I’m not completely sure that the path I’m following right now is an appropriate one. Maybe I’m completely mistaken. Maybe it wasn’t the true reason behind my binges. Maybe I’ll have to do some more psychological work on myself later on. But maybe also it was the reason. Maybe diets (in the modern sense of the words, with their all-or-nothing, guilt-trips thinking) really would destroy me, rather than help me.

If there is need later on, if I feel that I’m ready to tackle on this issue, if I really can’t shed more pounds the way things are, I will reconsider–very, very carefully–and start paying closer attention to calories again. However, for the time being, I am not taking risks.

I just want to be normal when I’m around food. I don’t think this is like shooting for the moon, right?