Latest / Unlearning Beautiful / Ep. 26 Why Letting Go of Dieting Feels Worse Before It Gets Better
Transcript
- Kristina Bruce: One of the most confusing things that can happen when you stop dieting or controlling your weight is that you feel worse. You might think, I thought this food and body freedom thing was supposed to feel good. And yet you might find yourself feeling out of control with food, or you stop exercising, or you feel anxious or insecure or kind of lost. And the mind immediately says, see, this is exactly why we needed to control. But what if that chaos isn't proof that there's something wrong, but rather that something deeper is trying to heal? In this episode, I'm unpacking why the urge to binge, restrict, weigh yourself, or regain that control of your body gets stronger when you first start letting go. And why what feels like your life is falling apart is actually the beginning of a new way of being coming together. Because the goal isn't to become better at controlling yourself. The goal is to uncover the part of you that never needed controlling in the first place. All right, let's get into the episode. Welcome to Unlearning Beautiful, a podcast for women tired of trying to look good enough and ready to feel good from within. I'm your host, Christina Bruce, here to help you let go of the pressure to look right or do it all right, and reconnect with your inner guidance, your natural work, and what truly makes you feel fulfilled. Because the freedom you're craving was never in how you look. Why do we start dieting or controlling our weight and body in the first place? I think there's three main reasons. The first one is that we are doing it to feel more worthy. We have learned through our culture that a smaller body is better. We're told it's more attractive. And we get this idea that if I'm smaller, if I look more beautiful, then I'm going to be more accepted, more loved, and more valuable. And so controlling your body and your weight is one of the ways that we do it in a culture that values thitness. If you had parents who were dieting and you just learned this is the way you eat and this is what you were focused on. Perhaps you might remember accompanying your mother to a Weight Watchers meeting like I had done when I was a young teenager. It was just the thing that you did. Another reason is to feel healthier. Perhaps a doctor recommended that you needed to watch your weight or lose weight. You had a health scare, or you were just kind of feeling disconnected from your own sense of well-being and you had this desire to get back on track. And diets and exercise programs, that is what is on offer in our culture. And this third one, which I don't think is very conscious, this is often more subconscious. It was a way to control their life. A way to feel in control. So in some other areas of life, it felt chaotic. There was things they couldn't control, disruption maybe in the home, emotional disruption. And dieting and controlling your body was a way to have some semblance of control in your life. Dieting ends up becoming this feeling of safety and emotional regulation. The sense of safety with dieting is the allure of it for a lot of us. It gives you a nice plan. It says just follow the rules, just go step by step. And for our survival mind, it wants to know. It does not like being in uncertainty. So if you say, hey, just follow steps A, B, and C, and you're going to get thinner and then you're going to feel better and that's going to feel safe, you're like, sign me up, of course. It gives you guardrails. If you have otherwise felt very out of control and kind of chaotic around food, following a plan and a diet feels safe. That especially feels comforting when you don't trust yourself around food, or your experience was. When I wasn't following this diet or plan, I was feeling worse. I wasn't engaging in good health behaviors. I didn't know how to take care of myself. It also could be that we come from an environment where maybe our parents or those around us weren't taking care of themselves. So we picked up those habits and ways of eating and behaviors and just thought this is how we're supposed to live, but then you end up not feeling good in your body. In comes the diet that's going to focus on Better nutrition and exercise, and it does feel good. It's like, this is the plan, this is what I need to follow in order to get everything managed and control, and I can feel better. We trust the plan, it feels comforting. For anyone who's been on a diet, you know it's really hard to follow it for very long. There's going to be a point where you quote unquote fall off the way again, or you were bad that day, and now you have to be good again. For most of us, when we're using it. As a tool to cope, to feel safe, to feel in control. If that breaks in some way or life happens where we can't follow it, we're left without any way to deal. Firstly, falling off of it could just be a result of the severe restrictions. Most of us don't do well when we have no flexibility, when we're in a strong rigidity, especially if we're blaming ourselves or putting ourselves down or feeling like a failure when we go off of it. It actually ends up making it worse and fueling the very things under the surface that caused the need for the d the diet in the first place. And then we feel like, okay, I need to go back on the diet again because we've been bidging or we're overeating and we feel panicked and the emotions come up. And then in comes the diet again. Whew, it feels safe. We know what to do. We feel in control. But what is usually happening when we quote unquote fall off a diet and all that uncertainty and chaos and binging and out of control is coming up is that it's actually just bringing up to the surface what is already within us. So it's what the diet is trying to suppress, to avoid, to distract from, because we haven't really known how to deal with it, how to heal it, how to navigate it. That's why it's not really easy for a lot of people to let go if they don't have some other support in place. If there is a lot of intense emotion, memory, trauma coming back up, that's the time to seek that support. And if we're not going to do that, then we're going to feel like we need the diet to continue because we don't know how else to handle everything else that's coming up and how off balance we feel in our life. And when all you've known is dieting, so if you have been dieting since you were young, then you don't really know what it's like to actually be in a balanced and healthy, trusting place with food and exercise in your life because all you've known is a diet. And when you're coming from a place where when you weren't dieting, it felt out of control and you were unhealthy, then your mind says, well, that's what you're going to return back to. There's no other alternative. So it keeps reaching for the diet again, for the safety, for the control in order to feel okay. When I started tiptoeing my way into contemplating not dieting, a friend of mine had said, why don't you just toss out your scale? Because I don't think she ever really weighed herself or it just wasn't a big deal for her. My first thought was, no, I can't do that. It took a good year for me even being open to the concept of. intuitive eating and health at every size. I started listening to a lot of podcasts in the same vein to realize that it was possible to be able to live a healthy, happy life, not dieting. When I was dieting, it really did not seem like that was possible. And finally when I hit my breaking point, was about to start this super restrictive diet and realize I just can't live like this anymore. That's when I had the courage to say, okay, Now I really need to let go and the scale was gone. But even then, although the scale didn't come back, as I was starting to just let myself eat as I wanted to, let myself relax with exercise, I got scared and I started negotiating with myself and said, maybe if I'm just not as strict at this next time, I can find this quote unquote happy medium with my dieting. I used to be a calorie counter. So I said, well, what if I just increase the amount of calories that I eat, but then still kind of keep it under this particular number? And I did it for about four days before I had this visual of feeling like I was walking myself back in a cage and closing the door. Quick interruption. If you're listening to this podcast, there's a good chance you spent years feeling at war with your body. Maybe you criticize how you look in photos or you fear putting on a bathing suit. Or you find yourself stuck in your head thinking about how you look instead of being present with the people that you love. I know how exhausting that is because I lived it too. And if you've ever had the thought, I should be able to figure this out on my own, you're not alone in that either. Most of the women I work with felt that way for a long time before reaching out. Body peace coaching helps you shift out of this pattern at the root so you can actually feel at ease in your body again, not just on a good day. But more consistently. This is one-to-one or small group coaching. So you're not trying to do this alone in a world that's still telling you to shrink. And if part of you feels like I'll never be able to feel okay in my body, I used to believe that too. And now I can say that's not true. So if you're ready to stop thinking about your body all day and feel more at ease in your own mind and skin, you can learn more about Body Peace Coaching in the description below and book a free Body Peace consultation to see if it's a right fit for you. All right, back to the episode. Thankfully, at that time, I had already been a good 10 plus years into my deep personal development, healing, spiritual journey. That I had started to acquire some tools, that I was going through a life coach training program. I was able to start to deal with some of the emotions that were coming up. And obviously I sought support for it as well. Because when we let go of that control, everything that we've been trying to control, really the root cause of why we started dieting in the first place, comes up. And for me, that was I'm not enough. Because I felt like I needed to be thin in order to be good enough, in order to receive the external approval and validation and appreciation. And so that came to the surface. I needed to be able to have the tools and the support and the practice and guidance to work through what was coming up for me there. Because really, when this comes up, the only way out is through. And most of us are too afraid to down that route. Root. I remember having another visual when stopping dieting, what was coming up was like a dark tunnel. And on the one side of the tunnel, it was bright. I knew it. It was familiar territory. That was the dieting, but it was also uncomfortable in a way too. I was restricted. I was trapped and I craved freedom. So I would start walking into the tunnel and looking back. Well, maybe I can go back to dieting and I would contemplate it. Okay, I'm still not too far gone. I can run back if I need to. And that's the journey. Eventually, when you start to get into the middle of it, that dieting world is so now far behind you. Going back feels like it's just as far away as well. As you keep going forward, a little pinprick of light shows up and it gets brighter and brighter as you keep moving forward until you're finally onto the other side. But we need to be able to see and work through what is it that was underneath my desire to die in the first place. The dieting never actually gave me the worth. This idea, I'm not worthy, I'm not good enough, is what took me away from feeling worthy in the first place. And that's what happens. We get an idea, we get a belief that says, you're not good enough how you are. And prior to that, you felt good enough. When we're little children, as I always say, look to two and three year olds. They're in the most purest form of themselves. They feel worthy. They feel good enough as their baseline. But then, and it can happen really young and early, they learn something that says how you're being and how you are is not okay. It's not enough. And then it takes them away from the sense of worthiness. Then they go on this journey. Well, how can I be good enough now? Dieting comes in and says, Well, if you were just thinner, then you could be good enough. And so you say, yeah, great, because I want to feel good enough again. And that's what keeps us stuck in the loop. Something else that can come up in this process is I can't trust myself. And this can come up if we were in that environment where we grew up and we didn't have a good baseline of how to eat and take care of ourselves in a way that felt good. We didn't have role models of people who trusted themselves with food and exercise. So if you're Caregivers were dieting, they were modeling like, I can't trust myself with food. I have to follow this plan. So we end up losing this sense of trust in ourselves. We fear food. We fear our appetite. We fear weight gain. And ironically, we fear freedom because freedom feels out of control and our mind associates it with a negative. But it it's not that you can't trust yourself. It's that somewhere along the way, There was a lost connection with your innate guidance system. There were these beliefs that took you away from listening within and instead went to listening to the voice of other people, of authorities, or to the survival mind, the fearful and panicked mind. When we can start to heal those trust wounds with ourselves and reconnect back within our innate wisdom, it won't be so scary letting go anymore because we found a solid place to land on. We feel more grounded within ourselves. And our inner wisdom and guidance always is there for our benefit. It's not going to lead us astray. When we're astray, it's because we're listening to misunderstandings and beliefs and fearful thoughts of the mind. The inner wisdom within us leads us in a direction that supports us. When we let go of dieting, it's the work of reorienting ourselves back to trusting ourselves again and getting a feel for. What even is that? How does that feel now? Because it can feel so foreign and uncomfortable and scary. But it's not actually scary when we develop that relationship with it again. And lastly, the other thing that comes up when we let go is the idea that I need control in order to feel safe. That is another misunderstanding, but it can also be a wound from childhood, again, where things felt really chaotic. And as a child, You didn't have much agency or control. So you did what you needed to do in order to feel safe. While we still use that as a coping mechanism as adult, we have to be able to find that inner stability within, even when there is chaos going on without. And of course, there are things that we can do. I've always liked what Eckert Tole says about your outer world and circumstances, which is there's three things that you can do. If something's happening in your life or your world, you can either change it, you can leave it, or you can accept it. And so we want to be able to do what we can, change a situation if you can, leave it or accept it, because otherwise you're resisting it and fighting it and creating all of this chaos within yourself. When you come to the place where maybe it is acceptance or you're leaving it and that brings up emotion again, we have to find A sense of stability and groundedness within ourselves. And it's there. It really, truly is there. But when the fearful mind is feeling like I need the world around me to be the way that I want it to be or I need it to be in order to feel safe, then we're not going to find it within because we're looking outside. So it's a call inward. It's a call to go within and find that safe safety within. Because we really don't need To be in control of everything around us in order to feel safe. We can feel like we're in control, but it really is an illusion because anything can change at any time. We don't want to keep reaching for something outside of us to feel safe because it's temporary, it's fragile, it can change. We have to turn inward. And unless we decide that I'm going to start to deal with what's coming up for me emotionally and in my life when I let go, we will just continue to be in the cycle of dieting and restriction and reaching for control and then letting go because we're either not going to be able to keep it, life is going to get in the way, or the restriction is going to feel too tight. And in our very natural response for freedom, we're going to let go and be out of control again. It keeps the whole pendulum swinging. It keeps it wild instead of falling into an ease and balance. When we work with what's coming up, that's where we get that balance again. And it takes us out of that wild swing. Our mind will tell us that if we just had more willpower, if we just had more control, if we just had the next diet or the solution, that's gonna be the thing that feels better. But It will never bring true balance because it's not something that we're always going to be able to maintain. The true goal is healing whatever created the urge to control in the first place. When we work on what's coming up from underneath, trust starts to return. The food noise in the mind starts to settle and a balance naturally emerges. But it doesn't happen like the flip of a switch, although I know. We all really want that. We want it to just be over. But it's often a process that unfolds over time. It can take months, it can take several years to really get to a place where you feel stable in it. But this is a fundamental shift in the way of your being. We can't rush it. We need to have some patience with it. That's actually where we're going to find the trust and the freedom and the healing, is when we can see that. I am okay in this moment, even though I might be feeling discomfort, even though things around me might be a bit chaotic. And that's the beauty of it. It ends up leading you towards a path of unshakable safety and trust within yourself. The body peace path is so much more than just ending the constant mental noise about food and fear in your body. It's really a portal into safety, freedom, trust. Ease and authenticity within yourself. So if you've been listening this far, I can tell that there's something within you that has either woken up or is waking up to this, that your soul is calling you to free yourself from the trap of dieting. And I can tell you from literally walking through it, sometimes painstakingly, step by step, that I would do it all over again because it has grown me. And brought me into who I really am before all the beliefs that I had taken on that had said, I'm not enough. I can't trust myself, I'm not safe, because I know now the place to look and it's always within. I hope this episode supported you in seeing that just because it might be feeling bad when you stop dieting doesn't mean that you're wrong. It doesn't mean that things are getting worse. It actually means you're at the beginning of something new starting to happen. Look forward to seeing you in the next episode. Thanks for listening to Unlearning Beautiful. If this episode resonated with you, follow the show and share it with another woman who's ready to see beauty and herself in a new way. And if you feel moved, leave a rating and review. It will help this show reach more women who need to hear it. Remember, you're already everything you've been trying to become: enough, worthy, and free. I'm Christina Bruce. Until next time.