Is it time to give up on your diet?

By summer of 2005 I had completed two years of college studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Like many of my fellow students I had gained the “freshman 15,” maybe more like the freshman 20. Looking back at photos of myself at this time, I can see some signs that my body was just a hair chubbier than it likes to be, but to be honest, looking at these photos now I have to think to myself “I looked totally fine! Why was I so dismayed by this weight gain?” Unfortunately the fact of the matter was that I was dismayed. I had always thought of myself as a “thin” person, and suddenly my body wasn’t fitting into my clothes like it used to. A particularly unhelpful boyfriend exacerbated my sense of urgency by frequently reminding me, “You would look great if you just lost a few pounds.” Thank goodness he is now long gone! But at the time his words carried a lot of…. well… weight!

My shame over the (slightly) changed appearance of my body was so intense that I became ready to try almost anything. I had never had to diet before, but I wrote in my journal - “all it’s going to take is just finding a reasonable plan that helps me eat less food.” Sound familiar?

Shortly thereafter I read in a women’s magazine that Carmen Electra maintained her stunning figure by eating only salads on weekdays and allowing junk food on the weekends. I thought the Carmen Electra plan seemed perfect! Eat healthy all week, allow some unhealthy stuff on the weekend. What could be easier? She was so gorgeous and healthy looking. Clearly it was working for her. I launched her plan counting on it to work easily.

It didn’t.

The trouble was my weeks were so draining for me that my body actually needed something more substantial than salad (and coffee) for fuel. Confronted with the starving sensation that weekdays gave me, I turned my weekends into anything-goes pig-out fests, which often spilled over into the next week because I had bought so much junk food for myself it felt like a shame to waste it. During my weeks, when I was trying so hard to “be good,” I felt deprived, fatigued, and grouchy. I was counting the hours until I could have pizza again. My thoughts about food and my body became only more obsessive and energy-draining as I beat myself up over my failure to succeed at what seemed so simple and possible when described by a gorgeous actress/model.

The stories of failed dietary experiments are everywhere. In fact, even the very statistics about diets state that most people on a weight-loss diet will regain the weight they lose and more within a year! It seems fairly clear at this point that when it comes to weight loss the strategy of “eat less, exercise more” is not working for most of us, and even strategies like “I’ll just try what she’s trying” have enormous potential for failure.

Just as I did when I found my body expanding in college, many of us have at one point or another decided to take matters into our own hands. We can easily find thousands of diets online, all with bright and shiny converts who claim that this diet fixed them and solved all their woes. Even more confusingly many of these diets have contradictory or even completely opposite views! Some claim you should remove all animal products from your life, others claim you should be eating more animal products. Some claim that fruit contains too much sugar, while others claim we should eat nothing but fruit. And all the people making these claims seem so committed to their experiment. Often they have science to back it up. Even more seductively, they frequently attribute their physical beauty to their diet. “They just seem so healthy and beautiful and happy following this experiment,” we think. “Surely there must be something to it.“ The dietary experiment then becomes “I’m gonna try what she’s trying!”

My decision to follow Carmen Electra’s diet advice was based solely on the fact that she looked really gorgeous and that in theory it sounded “reasonable.” The problem was that Carmen Electra and I had very different bodies and were living very different lives. She had a whole team of professionals helping her to look that gorgeous (likely including a personal trainer), whereas I had just myself. She had the healthy glow provided by proper lighting, the tanning salon, airbrushing, and photo shop, where I just had my own reflection in my not-photoshopped mirror. She likely had the means to hire a professional chef or some kind of pre-made meal plan that could be made to suit her needs and make sure she was getting enough nutrition during her only-salad days. I had only my ideas about what salad was supposed to be (some leaves and veggies with a low fat dressing, right?). She lived in sunny California, I lived in snow-covered Wisconsin. The list could go on and on.

Shocker, Carmen Electra and I were different people! Is it so surprising then that her diet plan didn’t work at all for me?

Of course there’s nothing wrong with experimenting with different diets. There is a time and place for experimentation, and many of the diets and food philosophies out there have value, scientific backing, and wisdom. Those who are enthusiastically preaching about a diet often have good reasons to do so. They are not lying about the health they’ve found through those diets (though it’s possible some are exaggerating their claims or presenting them misleadingly).

My Carmen Electra experiment would not be my last diet failure. There were more to come. There were also dietary experiments that led me to greater self-awareness of what was good for my body and what wasn’t. There were diets that helped provide healing. There were even diets that inspired me to learn new cooking methods and expand my palette. Eventually I did lose that freshman 15, but it took a long time and a lot of ups and downs. Ultimately what worked was approaching my diet from a place of love rather than shame over how my body appeared. Ironically, the less I beat myself up about my weight, the easier it became for me to eat healthfully and maintain a consistent weight at which my body felt happy. Who knows - one day I might find I have to shift and re-evaluate and experiment with something new, but for the time being I’ve found what works for me in the now. And thank goodness I’m no longer wasting my energy obsessing over a future imagined me who looks more like Carmen Electra!

The main lesson I’ve learned from my own dietary experiments is that diets can fail no matter how glamorous, reasonable, or scientific they look. When they do fail it is NOT a sign of deficiency in us. It’s a sign that the diet wasn’t right for us. Or perhaps it was right for us at one time, but as our lives changed we found we needed something else. The question is not so much about whether dieting is right but how to go about eating in a way that supports you, your goals, your life, and your values. That might mean acknowledging honestly when a diet has truly failed for you and recognizing that this is more likely a shortcoming of the diet than it is a shortcoming of you.

How do you know when your dietary experiment has failed?
Here are some signs to look for -

#1 You’re pursuing this diet out of shame or hatred of your body. You might feel you can only be happy once your body has changed its shape, and all your efforts are in pursuit of becoming different than you are now.

#2 You’re putting so much energy and effort into your dieting that it’s actually preventing you from doing the things you love, having a social life, and generally living a life in line with your values.

#3 You are experiencing prolonged unwanted symptoms, like persistent fatigue, mood swings, digestive issues, inability to recover from exercise, anxiety or depression, obsessive thoughts or behaviors about food and body, and nutrient deficiencies.

If you’ve identified any of these signs, what next?

First and foremost, I highly recommend seeking some kind of support. You do not have to figure it all out alone! In fact, if you’ve gone so far along in your diet that you’re experiencing negative health symptoms, then you absolutely shouldn’t go it alone. A practitioner such as a doctor, Functional or Integrative Medicine practitioner, Nutritionist, Acupuncturist, Psychologist, mental health professional, or Health Coach can all help support you in different ways as you sort through where to go next. If the symptoms you are experiencing are severe, then I highly recommend seeing a doctor because some medical testing could give you powerful, needed insight about what’s actually going on in your body and how to proceed. If you aren’t sure where to turn, a Health Coach can be a great support in learning your story, helping gently guide you to where you want to go, and recommending resources for further treatment as needed.

If this blog post resonates with you and you’re looking for more support, please email me:
lisa@lisabarksdale.com
An initial one-hour meeting with me is always free!

Above all, give yourself permission to try a new path, and recognize that your body is worthy of lots of good, tasty, healthy food, of movement that feels good, of energy to do the things that you want to do, of companionship from those you love, and of support from others!

Your worth as a human being is NOT in any way dependent upon your success or failure at a diet, and if your sense of self-worth is wrapped up in your diet, it’s definitely time to move on!

The Rhythm of Eating

When I was in college my eating followed a pattern that I imagine was shared by many fellow college students. My morning started with nothing but a sugary coffee drink from Starbucks. Lunch was more substantial - a sandwich or salad from the cafeteria or a nearby restaurant. By the end of the day I was ravenous. Some nights I would gorge with friends at the local Chipotle after orchestra rehearsal. Other nights I would try to “be good” by doing yoga and eating a salad. Inevitably, whether I was trying to “be good” or not, I’d always find myself feverishly snacking on anything available late into the night - cheesy pizza sticks from a local pizza place, cookies stashed away in my pantry, ice cream from the freezer. Not surprisingly I gained some weight on this diet. My skin also went crazy, as did my blood sugar, appetite, mood, and energy. Worst of all my sleep, which has always been a bit wonky, was the worst quality sleep of my life so far. Insomnia reigned nightly.

Looking back on my college eating habits I can of course spot a lot of foods in the rotation that I would not eat in such abundance now. There were plenty of problems with the “what” of my food choices, but believe it or not the “when” of my eating was equally problematic. In short, my eating habits were out of sync with my body’s natural rhythm and metabolism. Through the certification program at the Institute for the Psychology of Eating I learned about the concept of “eating rhythm.”

Eating Rhythm refers to the when of eating rather than the what.
When are we eating our food?
How much food is being eaten at what time of day?
Is our meal timing in alignment with our body’s natural rhythms?
And how consistent is that rhythm over the course of a week?

My college eating rhythm was similar to a rhythm that I’ve noticed many Americans have been trying to adhere to when it comes to food. It’s the rhythm of restricting nutrients throughout the day only to feel ravenous and needing to eat ALL the foods at night. If you’ve tried this particular eating rhythm I hope you’ve already discovered that it just does not work! And the answer to why it doesn’t work actually has as much to do with the when of eating as it does with the what.

There does seem to be a general understanding out there that nighttime eating can work counter to our health goals, and in broad terms that belief is true (with a caveat that for some of us eating at night is absolutely necessary and that is okay!). As the sun goes down our hormones shift towards preparing the body for sleep. As the skies darken, Melatonin rises. Growth hormone is released to help our bodies rest and repair overnight. Sleep also helps us balance the hormones that regulate our appetite. In fact, sleep deprivation is a sure bet to increase grehlin, our body’s hunger hormone, and decrease leptin, the satiety hormone, leaving us primed to feel, well, hungry!

In other words, when our bodies are living with the natural rhythm of our surroundings, they are not primed for digesting large amounts of food at night. Night is the time when we are most primed to sleep, rest, repair, and rebalance our bodies.

But you try getting a stressed out college student not to eat at night when they’ve worked hard and deprived themselves (or eaten only sugar, salad, and coffee) all day long! You don’t have to be a brilliant scientist to predict that in this situation trying not to eat at night would be a failing and maddening strategy.

It’s maddening because our bodies are wired to try not to starve to death. In the morning and as the sun rises in the sky throughout the day, we are metabolically wired to take in nourishment to fuel our activities. If we are restricting calories (or more importantly nutrients) throughout the day, then it’s predictable that our bodies will call out in desperation for food (ANY food!) at night. If you aren’t able to resist that call, it’s not a sign that you have some kind of willpower problem, it’s because your body is trying to prevent you from starving.

Looking back to my college habits, I can see that by locking myself into a pattern of restricting calories in the morning and afternoon (not to mention that start-of-the-day caffeine /sugar jolt to my body!), followed by the inevitable binge at night, followed by the inevitable night of poor sleep, I was setting my body in a self-perpetuating rhythm, with each step of the pattern reinforcing the next step. Sleep deprivation caused me to wake up tired, cranky, and seeking that immediate energy boost from coffee. Wanting to control my weight, I would try to “be good” throughout the day, but this being good was a misguided attempt to restrict calories instead of eating quality nutrients that my body desperately needed, and that left my body both underslept and underfed. My underslept and underfed state led to a predictable eating frenzy at night, fueled by a feeling of ravenous hunger, which caused me (among other things like stress, anxiety, college parties, TV-watching, and homework) to once again not sleep enough, leading to a restart of the whole pattern the next day.

Knowing what I know now about my body, it’s no surprise to me at all that with this eating rhythm I quickly moved up two pants sizes, more critically lost overall health, and began to struggle with some serious anxiety.

Bringing my body back to its naturally preferred weight and an improved state of health involved not just improving the quality of my diet. It meant adjusting the rhythm of my eating and living. It meant eating both breakfast and a filling lunch, which usually left me much less hungry in the evening time and much less prone to the bottomless container of cookies or ice cream pint. It meant learning to prioritize sleep, making room for winding down in the evening and preparing my body for rest and repair.

I still struggle with all of this. It’s not that I now eat and sleep in perfect rhythm. Far from it. Sometimes I get home late after a concert and need a snack. Or second dinner! Sometimes night arrives really early (like 4:00PM in the Rhode Island wintertime) and not eating after dark is just plain unreasonable. Sometimes my mind keeps me awake at night, and the next day I feel more hungry, cranky, and unstable than usual. What has changed for me is that I am now more aware of my eating and living rhythm. I know the patterns that tend to be most supportive of my health, weight maintenance, energy, and happiness. I can identify when things are off balance without dropping into harsh self-judgment, and I have strategies I can employ to help me move back towards balance.

If reading this made you want to examine or experiment with your own eating rhythm here are some steps to consider taking:

#1 Prioritize Sleep

I know this one’s tough, but good sleep can take us a long way. It’s a part of our natural rhythms that we simply cannot opt out of! If sleep is a struggle for you, try experimenting with your bedtime routine. Do you have a way of winding down in the evening? Try dimming the lights when you’re home in the evening and avoiding screen time (or if that’s not possible purchasing some blue-light-blocking glasses like these). If you can make your sleeping space (even if that’s just your bed) a calm and relaxing space absolutely do it! That might mean investing in a new mattress or some bedding that you love and helps you relax.

What helps you wind down at night? Feel free to share in the comments!

#2 Focus on eating fulfilling, well balanced, nourishing meals during the day.

This means probably eating some breakfast and lunch. Of course we all have different time and schedule constraints that might necessitate some experimentation. Whatever your meal timing, frequency, or daytime eating rhythm needs to be, remember that restricting nutrients during the day is a recipe for overeating at night. Making sure your meals have some quality protein, fat, and ideally lots of vegetables can help feed your body the necessary fuel it needs throughout the day which will leave it feeling more fulfilled at night.

#3 Tune into your hunger and satiety signals.

Hunger is not our enemy. It’s a sign that our bodies are hungry, and that’s a very normal thing for a creature that needs food to feel! When you feel that hungry feeling, get curious. Where do you feel it in your body? How often are you feeling it? When did you eat last? When did you have a glass of water? Is there a time of day when those hunger signals become really strong? Do you notice any connections between hunger and sleep or hunger and stress?

Our satiety too can be a powerful indicator of what helps us thrive. By satiety I mean that feeling of being pleasantly full, not overly stuffed. The feeling that leaves you calm and satisfied for awhile, not crashing and seeking another boost of sugar thirty minutes later. What foods tend to help you feel satisfied? What kinds of meals help you feel satiated for longer periods of time rather than coming back for more and more every few minutes?

All of these questions have value, especially when explored in a spirit of curiosity rather than self-judgment.

Let me know if you try experimenting with your eating rhythm and how it works for you!