I can't do another diet

At last week's end, I began my first consultation with my nutritional therapist.  Though that was over four days ago, it has taken me this long to find something to say about it.

To begin, it's important to note that I had worked the night before so I was operating on the measly one hour nap I had when I got home, before I left for the appointment. So needless to say, I wasn't feeling so bright and shiny, and by the amount of rasp in my voice and the fact that yesterday's mascara was probably to my chin at that point, I'm sure the nutritionist could tell so too.

Despite my initial knee jerk reaction to run upon entering her office and seeing a scale and what I presumed was some sort of body fat calculator or metabolic rate calculator I went into the room and started the consultation. And then it was over.

The confusion I had wasn't about what took place--the normal series of questions about how I got to this place, what my daily intake looked like, etc.-- it was about was I told to do as I left, nothing. Now I had already fervently explained that I would refuse a meal plan because of the immediate anxieties simply following one would bring me, but I expected some sort of "plan" that at least bore a resemblance to the latter. Nope.

What has taken me half a week to realize is that my intangible assignment is to continue to lose faith in traditional approaches to nutrition and to continue building trust with my own body. She explained that the majority of conventional nutritionist's approaches center around educating the client. Things like reading food labels, learning the food groups, teaching what calories are. Well that approach is useless to me. Sometimes I feel like I could recite back, just from memory, an easy half dozen diet books I've read. Believe me when I say I know what "the rules" are. She continued to say that what we would instead be doing is continuing to work towards our ultimate goal of intuitive eating. A principle which deserves it's own post that I intend to address separately in the future.

It made perfect sense when she was explaining it to me, but like I said, still when I left without a piece of paper in my hand telling me exactly what to "do", I felt lost. And I feel confident in saying that any of my other fellow chronic dieters would feel the same way.

For some reason, as many times as I have put all my hopes into that approach of eat this, not that and have failed literally every single time I still expect for a method like that to be my solution.

Why?

Because it's easier to believe that I was the reason these things didn't work, than to say, "Maybe dieting doesn't work". How many hundreds of times have you yourself or someone you know failed at a diet and said, "It was me. I didn't stick to it. I don't have willpower. I'm the failure."just to pick up and start a new diet the following week. If you were trying to climb the sides of your house with just your hands and feet you pretty obviously couldn't do it. Yet you don't beat yourself up and say "I just don't have willpower. My hands just aren't made for this. It's just me. I failed.". Get a ladder and try again.

So in this story, I guess my therapy is my ladder, my new approach because honestly guys, I can't do another diet. I refuse to be made to feel like a failure even one more time and in case you've needed the permission from someone else so say it for you, you're not the failure because it hasn't worked for you either, the system is.

And so while I thought I left her office with nothing, aside from reasonably smaller pockets, I realize I did get something out it. Something I needed someone else to finally say for me too.