Here is a picture of my nephew Noah, when was younger, eating his dessert with a shovel.
Jump to Growing Up
I wholeheartedly agree with his logic!
This kind of disregard for what is “normal” or right when it comes to diet makes it less likely for children under 4 to be overweight.
Scientific studies show that when it comes to our diet and weight, going entirely to the beat of our own drum when it comes to food and eating protects us against weight problems.
When you start becoming aware, I mean really becoming aware, of your body’s signals you’ll be forced to admit that your body has no interest in being an unhealthy weight.
That sentence will set off alarm bells in your head if you are still in the victim stage of your weight problem, where you blame your body, your age, your PCOS, the course of steroids, your genetics, your metabolism etc.
But as long as we blame things, we refuse to remember the real reason we have a weight problem: the times WE KNEW we were full; WE KNEW the food wasn’t that nice, WE KNEW this would make us feel gross after, but we ate it anyway 😒
Our negative thoughts, our mindset, our erratic relationship with food, our lack of self-love ARE what causes a weight problem. They are things that require time, support and a huge overhaul. Once they are in place (not saying that part is always easy), keeping a healthy weight is straightforward.
When you feel cold, you put on a jumper, your bladder signals when you go to the loo and when your stomach feels hungry it means it needs food.
If you’re hot, you don’t need to put on a jumper
If your stomach is neither full nor hungry, just grand, the food you put into it is in most cases surplus to what your body naturally wants.
Growing Up
But if we grew up during a time where there wasn’t plenty of food, treats were rare, and it didn’t matter whether you liked it or not, it didn’t matter if you were hungry or not, you had to eat what you were given and finish your plate, then we learned that our feelings don’t matter.
We learned that our taste buds and our stomach feelings were random, redundant signals in the body that didn’t need to be listened to.
We learned to trust what other people told us to eat and when to eat. We learned to set standards for how much is “right” to eat and wrong.
Can you imagine if we did that with any other body function?
Can you imagine people feeling guilty for needing two jumpers instead of 1 to feel warm?
Well, that’s just as mad as feeling guilty if you need to eat two chicken kievs instead of 1 to feel full.
Another risk factor is, or was diet culture.
If you grew up with a dieting mom who had all her issues, then hunger, fullness, taste were disregarded in favour of what was said in the slimming club.
For many people, it’s a double whammy, growing up finishing your plate plus thrusting yourself into diet culture.
When you think about it, it is sick that you were taught that your opinion, instincts, and feelings are wrong and therefore should be controlled and suppressed.
I could get into a whole female empowerment speel but I won’t 😀
I get emails every day from people saying they are completely lost as to what to eat, that all the diets say different things.
Then look at Noah in the photo. At that age, if 100 people were in the room and not eating as much as him or not using a shovel, he wouldn’t care!
Or think of babies- you can’t force-feed a breastfed baby when their belly says stop. It means stop.
So if you want to change your weight, you need to be willing to be WEIRD.
You need to be willing to do whatever the h*ll your body wants to feel well.
It doesn’t matter if that’s ice cream for breakfast, having no lunch, having two dinners, having takeaways at the most random times, and salads when everyone else is having takeaways.
The mission needs to be that you are willing to eat any food, in any amount ONCE it is on YOUR body’s terms. I.e. your stomach has actually asked for food (it is hungry), and what you are eating tastes sooooo good and going to make you feel lovely afterwards.
If that sounds too good to be true, I would like to remind you of how you gained excess weight. There is nothing comfortable about gaining excess weight, and you rarely feel brilliant. It usually means eating lots of stuff that you only half like, going to bed full, waking up full, an absence of hunger quite often, food losing its taste and not enjoying food as much. I could go on, but you get the point. Weight gain is eating in a way that makes you or keeps you feeling terrible😒🥴🤢🥵Not brilliant 🥰👸🏽🤩💪🏼
So I hope this article is your sign to be weird today! Start being curious about what your stomach and taste buds are trying to tell you about different foods.
x
