A Year Without Dieting

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My year without dieting is complete, and I find myself enlightened and pleased with the results. I began the quest not to diet in August of 2010, after gaining around 10 pounds on prednisone for an out-of-control poison ivy reaction. Prior to that, I had found my weight creeping up uncontrollably, and struggled to lose it, even when consuming quite low calories. Low carb was no solution. Exercise was no solution (my body clung to fat anyway). So found myself heavier than ever before, and realized something was really wrong with my metabolism and the way my body was handling fat.

I was influenced by author and endocrinologist Diane Schwarzbein. I didn’t end up following her diet, though, because it’s insanely restrictive. You have to count your carbs AND your protein. You have to avoid all refined flours and starches. You have to avoid “damaged fats” which makes it all but impossible to ever eat in a restaurant, etc., etc. Instead, I tried to follow a reasonably healthy diet according to the 1970′s “four food groups” principles I grew up with, as well as common sense.

The surprise to me was how difficult it would be to resist “going on a diet” for a whole year. My eyes were opened to all of the pressures society puts on you. There’s media pressure in the form of magazines, television, and newspapers, where “health” columns endlessly promote diets as the solution for just about any medical problem you could imagine. Women’s magazines feature diets in every issue. There are even “health” messages in your doctor’s office reinforcing the idea that you have to go on a diet. And when you get together with friends and family, you’ll almost always find out someone’s on a diet, and the conversation will center on that subject. I found that I had to wrestle with my resolution on a daily basis, in order to stay on track.

Like I said, I’m pleased with the results. I’ve achieved:

  • Improved body acceptance and a wardrobe of clothes that actually fit
  • Increased awareness of harmful messages in the media and the culture about body image
  • “Detox” from a constant sense of urgency over body image and weight loss
  • A concept of health that is orthogonal to the size of the waistline
  • More time to pursue hobbies and interests, since it is not spent obsessing on diet and/or exercising to excess
  • Experiencing a normalizing of appetite, outside of the rollercoaster of being “on the wagon” and “off the wagon”
  • More “other-centered” focus and less “self-centered.” (Dieting is an inherently self-absorbing activity, and when you’re chronically dieting for years or decades, it has an effect)
My experiment has also produced a couple of minor side effects.
  • Weight loss, starting at the one-year mark, naturally and effortlessly
  • Vastly improved energy. In my late thirties, I had begun to feel quite limited by feelings of fatigue. It wasn’t crushing, I just didn’t feel like I could do that much in a day. I now feel like I can do as much in a day as I want to, providing there are enough hours.
Both of those physical effects developed quite suddenly around the one-year mark. I couldn’t promise that it would work that way for everyone, but I am now a believer in “adrenal fatigue” (a non-mainstream medical concept). I am not necessarily a believer in the supplements sold to “cure” adrenal fatigue, but I do think a lot of people, especially women, tend to overstress themselves over a period of time, make it worse with chronic dieting, and then end up in poorer and poorer health.

 

Fundamentally, the idea of a “diet” to reduce body fat is not wrong. The math works, and the medical principle is valid. However, it is also well-known that a large proportion of people who go on diets experience a rebound effect and regain the weight they lost quite fast. A lot of people go through several diet cycles a year. You start in January, with a “New Year’s Resolution,” stick with it for a month or two, get busy or bored or frustrated and begin overeating, then repeat the cycle once or twice more until the New Year rolls around again. I believe the misuse and overuse of “dieting” has contributed significantly to our national obesity “epidemic,” and that more attention should be paid to overall health and healthy eating for maintenance rather than the constant drumbeat for weight loss–particularly unrealistic weight loss.

 

I’m not sure where I’ll be going from here. I’ve begun gently limiting my calories to encourage loss of the fat I packed on during my stress, overexercise, yo-yo dieting phase, but I don’t have a “goal weight,” per se. To be honest, my appetite is pretty in line with my “diet” calories at about 1600 a day, so I think my body and mind are finally on the same page. I’m enjoying yoga for its overall benefits, rather than worrying about how many calories it burns. And it’s nice to see my old familiar figure in the mirror, rather than the rather chubbier lady I’d been seeing in recent months. (I did put on some weight during the year of no dieting, before it began to come off again.)

7 thoughts on “A Year Without Dieting”

  1. This sounds eerily like my own realization (of a month ago) of this cycle of diet/binge/diet and the overwhelming sense of self-loathing about how “fat” I am, which made me eat emotionally.

    I weigh the most I ever had in my 38 years right now, but I’m attacking things in a different way. Less calorie counting (although I’m on a 3-month Weight Watchers online plan, more because they emphasize whole foods now and to help reset my brain to a normal level of eating without having to think to hard about it), staying active as the seasons change and eating more whole foods. I love being active, but for years I let that activity supplement a horrible diet of junk and processed foods. Now as I age, I see my slowing metabolism pack pounds on when I haven’t changed anything. So, something needed to change and I started my blog to chronicle my journey!

    Glad to hear it worked out for you…hope I can post a similar story a year from now! :)

  2. I love this post. It gave me pause to think about where I am on my own journey and how individualized and fragile that can be. In fact, I felt there was so much there to explore that I wrote about what you wrote, my own crazy stuff, and more on Yahoo! Shine, where I am the editor of parenting and healthy living. And tomorrow, it shall be highlighted in the top spot of our homepage. I hope I did your words justice. They are so good. I hope you will stop by and join the conversation there, too. All good wishes.

  4. Thanks, Jessica! I really liked your post over on Shine, as well. I, too, have experienced the kind of relationship to my scale that your describe.

  5. I enjoyed your comment about how difficult it was not to go on a diet. It’s an interesting wrinkle and something I hadn’t thought about. I wonder if there’s a non-random relationship between dieting and weight gain, and it dieting itself becomes a form of addiction similar to food or facebook.

  6. I really enjoyed this post and look forward to reading about your journey from the beginning (I stumbled onto this last post from the Shine article). 6 months after the birth of my son I still have 15lbs to lose before I’m back to my pre-pregnancy weight. I’ve tried food tracking, exercise, getting friends involved, etc but I hate feeling like I have to count EVERYTHING that I do all day long – especially when there’s a little man who needs more of my attention :) I’d really like to get to a point where I can have a piece of my favorite pizza without getting on the scale the next day or enjoy a walk simply because it’s a beautiful day outside. Can’t wait to read about the rest of your story!

  7. I realise you wrote this post a while ago, but how refreshing to find it! I’ve recently made the decision after two years of a net zero KG weight loss that I’m not longer going to live like this. In fact, it’s NOT living. I don’t need to be a particular number to be happy, to appreciate all my very healthy and fit body does for me, and so what if my BMI says that technically I’m overweight. The time to start living is now, without dieting. There’s no reason to not eat and behave in a way that reflects the respect I feel for myself ; so “not dieting” doesn’t equal “stuff face daily until bursting out of clothes – it just means I’m free to love and appreciate who I am RIGHT NOW.

    Thank you for this :)