You heard me… I broke up with dieting. for good. In a world full of fitness Instagram pages and diet culture in every corner of the internet, that may seem like a strange statement to read. It seems like every girlfriend you have, even the “thin” ones, are constantly talking negatively about themselves and how they need to go on a diet. So you must need to go on a diet too, right? Wrong. You are incredible just where you are in your life and you deserve to know that. Keep reading to find out why I quit dieting for good and you should too.

My dieting background.

I first became seriously interested in fitness when I was in high-school, age 16. I took a nutrition class, started running, drinking protein shakes, you know, all the stuff you do if you’re serious about getting in shape. At that point, all I knew to eat was tilapia, chicken breast, brown rice, broccoli, oats, egg whites, etc. So that’s what I did… and it didn’t work. Thus started the diet/binge cycle. I would diet for a month or two and then binge for the next three months til I felt fat and then start the cycle all over again.

At 17, I started working at a gym and became even more obsessed. I still continued the diet/binge cycle, but I was too self-conscious to go there and exercise outside of my work hours. In my mind, I just knew the trainers I looked up to would judge me because I wasn’t as fit or knowledgeable as they were.

Fast forward to 18. I had the incredible joy of marrying my best friend, but I also reached my heaviest weight due to binging for months. The next year, he got deployed, I dieted, and I lost some weight while he was gone. When he returned, the cycle started again and I ate all the tasty food with him, gaining the weight back. This wasn’t because of the specific food I was eating, but because I had no control, since I had kept myself from eating these (picture below) for so long.

The next year, he deployed again, but this time I got serious and lost 30 lbs through flexible dieting or “IIFYM”, reaching the lightest weight I had ever been. I fully believed tracking every single macro, even declining dinner invitations because it wouldn’t fit my macros. This was a factor that led to a lost friendship, and while I know there were other things that went into that, I take responsibility for my part in shutting people out because of dieting. What nobody knows is how much stress and anxiety went into dieting for me. I have an incredibly obsessive personality and always want what I’m doing to be perfect. Therefore, I was often cranky because I wouldn’t eat something unless I weighed it and made sure it “fit my macros” first.

Dieting is a thief of joy.

One memory that comes to mind every time I consider dieting again is my grandma, one of the sweetest souls that will ever come into my life. Towards the end of her life (I didn’t know it was the end at the time), I spent two to three days a week with her. I would help around the house and take her to doctors appointments, grocery shopping, the hair salon, anything my grandparents needed to do.

Almost every time, my grandma would want to go out to eat. Keep in mind that my grandparents couldn’t drive anymore, so eating out was a major treat. At first, I was fine with it, but when I got to the point where I was seriously trying to lose weight, I started feeling uncomfortable. I would respond with things like, “Well, we can go, but I’m not going to eat anything.”, which in turn would end in a disappointed, “It’s OK, just take me through a drive through…” Other conversations would start with her saying, “Well, I really want to go eat Mexican food, but can you even eat anything there?” Some days I would tell her I could because it was my “cheat” day. Other times I would tell her that I was really trying to lose weight I couldn’t be eating that kind of stuff.

Instead of having sweet memories of going to the dang Mexican restaurant with her and eating tacos, I have memories of sitting there, watching her eat and ask me if I would just have one chip and salsa. Don’t get me wrong, there were times I ate with her, but I have far too many of the memories where I was too scared to eat anything there because it “wasn’t clean.”

Dieting creates friction in relationships.

As I mentioned above, I lost a friendship last year. We had far more issues than me dieting, but this topic was what started the argument that ended our friendship. She was trying so hard to get through to me that I was losing too much weight too fast and that I was way too obsessive about food when I didn’t have to be. I can look back and find some truth in that now that I’ve come out on the other side.

I recall numerous times with when my husband would have to remind me to chill out because I got so bent out of shape over dieting. Also, I remember many times when I would be cranky with him for no reason and he wouldn’t understand why I was being so snippy. I would then have to think and try to understand why I was talking to him like that. Most of the time it was because I was stressed about what I was going to eat for my next meal.

Dieting kills creativity.

I didn’t realize how much I adored cooking  and creating food in the kitchen. Something about making a meal for people I love and then sitting down to eat it with them brings me so much joy. When I was dieting, I could never do this because it was so difficult to create a full dish and try to figure out the macros for it. Even if it was something I could figure out the macros for, I would wind up eating a cold meal because I spent so much time trying to log it in myfitnesspal. If I was still in the diet mentality, I would have never gotten to experience how much joy I get when I’m in the kitchen, baking or cooking, and listening to happy music. I have so much joy and am less stressed knowing that I can cook something delicious with my family, then sit down and eat it with them. Now, I just eat cold food because I’m trying to take a good picture for Instagram (Ha!).

You don’t have to diet.

Fast forward to 2017. I finally discovered intuitive eating and it changed my life. When I start to lose control over other factors in life, I still get the urge to diet. However, now I have the tools that help me realize it’s not about losing weight, it’s about having control over something. It took a lot of learning and growing. I listened to many podcasts on intuitive eating, unfollowed most fitness pages I followed on social media, and really had to start censoring the content I consumed on social channels.

I encourage you to get in tune with your body. Learn to listen to your hunger and fullness cues. Your body is so smart and will tell you what you want to eat and it will tell you to stop when you’re full, IF you really listen to it. You may gain weight from this approach and you may lose weight from this approach. If you are truly listening to what your body needs, it will find the weight it needs to be. The problem is that we are constantly putting our body under stress get down to a weight that it doesn’t want to be.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t eat sugar and fried foods all day. I value my health and nutrition greatly. Most of the food I eat is very nutritious because that is what I WANT to eat, but when I want pizza I have some dang pizza, without a drop of guilt, and without going overboard. I simply stop when I’m full and guess what? I don’t have food guilt anymore. I don’t wake up the next morning thinking I have to diet and exercise hard this week to make up for it.

This is what I want you to realize: You don’t have to lose weight. You don’t have to diet. You don’t have to treat your body like a machine, no matter how tired it is. All of this causes stress which is one of the number one factors that will actually keep you from losing weight! Society has put this pressure on us to think that if we aren’t working out or eating like the “dedicated” people we see on social media, we aren’t good enough. The food you consume does not make you a good person or a bad person. You are amazing because that is who you are. It has nothing to do with what you eat or how often you work out. Move your body in a way that brings you joy, eat foods that make you happy, and make memories with the beautiful people around you.

I hope you all can learn from my experiences and truly get to enjoy life to it’s fullest!

Xoxo, Jess