Everyday Systems

I'm not sure if someone has posted a link to this at some point in the board's history (it's an older blog post from 2007 and I couldn't find any reference to it using the search features), but I came across it recently and it absolutely smacked me in the face with truth:

http://kateharding.net/2007/11/27/the-f ... eing-thin/
(*** WARNING - the author uses some colorful language, so if you are easily offended, beware... though I feel it may be worth your time to push through and read it to extract the salient points)

I thought of the above as I was looking at some recent posts on the board (specifically, of the "tried other diets, fell off the wagon, now returning to No S" nature) and I started thinking about why many of us (me included) deviate from something we KNOW is sane and effective (No S) to seek the allure of other diets.

Whatever you think about Kate Harding's 'Fat Activist' politics (it's unlikely that she would advocate any diet - even one as sane as No S - outside of Intuitive Eating), this article sums up, I think, the reasons so many of us stray from No S to try other diets (not ALL of us, mind you, but many). We start No S with good intentions, settle into the rhythm, and even get a bit of 'high' (especially if coming off other more restrictive diets), only to see the 'high' fade as we realize that No S is just a sane template for how to eat. It's not particularly 'exciting' with promises of thinness/awesomeness relative to other plans - it does not promise extreme leanness, 6 packs of abs, perfect thighs, or 'Transformation in 12 weeks'. Initially, the lack of promises may even appeal to many of us (again, especially the reformed hardcore dieters). But, eventually, it's easy to quit No S if weight loss is all that matters to us - because No S is really about the reality of habits, sanity, & achieving a reasonable weight over 'body illusions'... and, since lots of us still hold on to the "fantasy of being thin," as Harding puts it, we jump ship to something that promises "more & faster"

No S is simply an eating plan. It isn't a replacement for whatever voids we have in our lives. It doesn't make our choices for us. It will not create interests, hobbies, or personality for us (though it may free up mental space/time to pursue those things, relative to other diets). It will not make us into who we think the 'thin' us would be. It puts the focus back on LIFE... and, for many of us, that is not an enticing proposition sometimes (which is why many of us eat mindlessly/emotionally, in the first place). Reinhard, ever the pragmatist (thankfully!), warns us about this in the book - build the habits, he says, work on it for 6 months and ignore the scale. We comply for a while... but, then, we start peeking. After all, even if we are following No S and achieving some success, our problems aren't necessarily disappearing. We're not different people. Why is that? Ah ha! We've only lost XX weight (forget the other benefits we have gained)... or we've gained a bit (forget that we may be rebounding from extended periods of unsustainable dieting and might, eventually level off), so THAT must be why our lives are not radically different!! Off to a diet that will get us to 'thinness' faster/better/in more a glamorous fashion!!!

Atkins, WW, etc offer a diet 'high' initially because, I believe, many of us are deceived by the fantasy/promise of thinness & 'care-freeness' - how we will be completely different people when we adopt their strategies, won't be tempted by sweets once we become 'ketone burners', can eat anything we want everyday and lose weight (as long as we count every calorie/point and stay at 1200 calories or below), and gain surefire sexy-fied shape-change. But when they fail, or even if they deliver, there is no panacea at the end of the process. Food is still just food, and how much you weigh is still just how much you weigh. Believe it or not, there are bigger issues/problems/concerns in our lives than what we weigh, and maybe that's exactly what we don't want to face sometimes... so we start eating again to deal with the disappointment. Or we keep the unsustainable plan up, searching for more thinness, or using radical diet plan compliance as a substitute for other interests/hobbies/life, in general

I'm writing this to myself, and all of us who are prone to getting caught up in the delusion: Let it go.

Let us take No S (and food, in general) for what it is. If we let it, long-term No S compliance can reduce or remove the unnatural/harmful focus on food as tonic/distraction/coping mechanism, without removing the inherent utility and pleasure of eating. It does not provide the distraction of food obsession that other diets do, so our emotional issues may surface. Let us deal with them. Let us not retreat to 'thin fantasy' world. Let us work to improve habits/compliance/choices, but be grateful for what we already have (health & body-wise), and what we achieve each day. Let us press on through inevitable failures.

Our lives are happening as we speak... No S can offer us a reasonable plan to help us deal with/remove food as an obstacle to happiness and sanity in those lives - but, for many of us, that can only happen when we let No S be what it really is and acknowledge/surrender the fantasy of why we are tempted by other radical diet plans in the first place.

Good luck to all of us!

Awesome post! Thanks.

Jordan

Thank you, it's a good reminder.

Exactly what I needed to hear!! This post is so me..... You gave me a lot to think about!

Terrific article, and great post.
Thanks for sharing.

Good article; good post.

The reason I have stuck with No S for 2.5 years is well said in your post:
"...long-term No S compliance can reduce or remove the unnatural/harmful focus on food as tonic/distraction/coping mechanism, without removing the inherent utility and pleasure of eating..."

I am still overweight and still have room to improve on my habits, but I am so much more content than I have ever been with my weight and eating habits and exercise habits.

I loved this post, what a lot of insightful points both in the article and in your comment. Food for thought!

Minkymoo wrote:I loved this post, what a lot of insightful points both in the article and in your comment. Food for thought!

Agreed.

wosnes wrote:

Minkymoo wrote:I loved this post, what a lot of insightful points both in the article and in your comment. Food for thought!

Agreed.

I also agree. Thank you, simmstone
_____________
H

The paradox of self-improvement actually being self-acceptance.

Thank you for posting that. It was excellent.

Delurking to say Bravo! A wonderful post. I'm maintaining a 68lb loss doing a combination of intermittent fasting and NoS and finally I'm getting to a point where food is not always on my mind, is not used as a tonic to make myself feel better but when I reach a mealtime it becomes both fuel and pleasure.

Bssh, glad you've delurked! Any chance you'd be willing to post a bit of your experience on the testimonial thread?

If you do manage to lose weight- you'll still be you, only thinner. Any problems you had that weren't due to your weight, you'll still have. Being overweight is probably not the cause of all of your problems- other things do cause problems, too.

This is the most astoundingly accurate description of what I've been doing/feeling for the last 16 years... thank-you, thank-you, thank-you for writing this. I will re-read this every time I am tempted to fall back in to my old patterns.

Interestingly, I've never been at all overweight... but you don't have to be overweight to be incredibly obsessed with dieting. I was always trying to achieve this arbitrary "perfect" weight (which when I started No-S I realized was insane - I had set my goal weight at an underweight BMI for all these "when I'm thinner", life avoidance reasons pointed out in your excellent description).

I've been on another site for years and had seen so many times younger women who were in the mid BMI range who were in solid restrict/binge cycles for years because they thought they should be at the low range instead. Ah, me. I tried a few times to offer my point of view from decades later, but it's a lesson that apparently must be learned from experience.

Yeah, this article was so true! I noticed that all the infomercials on tv are always saying how great you're going to feel when you're slim and how healthy you'll be and everyone will like you. I'm ashamed to say that I've been taken in so many times by them too.

There's even one called Brazilian butt lift that claims that all our problems in life are due to us having an ugly, flat booty. A woman on the infomercial practically claims that her whole life got better because her butt got a little bit firmer.
Every time summer is just around the corner, yahoo news puts out articles about getting bikini ready. Society, it seems, really is obsessed with being slim.
I guess everything in life would be better if only everyone could be a size 4 lol

Zaza, thanks a lot for bumping up this fabulous thread! Fantastic.

oolala - I'm glad you're passing on the good word, both here and elsewhere.

I was so broken before No-S, and I fear if I hadn't read your post when I did that I may have strayed off of No-S in search of the "perfect thin" that would never come...that imagined diet that would make me 100% healthy, and fix everything in my life, and make me into a person I am not, just by virtue of being a certain number on the scale. (BTW - that number for me was 95 pounds. At 5'4. Very underweight. What was I thinking???).

I'm 5'4 and 115 pounds. That's healthy, I realize now. But I had been through so many years of profoundly disordered eating I didn't recognize healthy anymore. My "normal" was a cycle of binge then diet, and a feeling that it was never enough, I was never good enough, or thin enough...

I started out dieting at 14 years old when I read one of those teen magazine and wanted to look like the models in it. I got my parents to buy me a case of diet coke and started drinking that instead of every meal except dinner. I did years of starvation until I cracked. Then I started binging and purging, and did that for about a year. I quit the purging, but the binging remained.

So I'd alternate between binging and starving myself. I was always, always, always searching for the perfect diet. And in the meantime, I was putting off facing the fact that it was my mentality that was broken. I justified to myself that starvation dieting was good for me because "it's like intermittent fasting, and that's good for you right?" Never mind the fact that I spent hours obsessing about everything I ate (or didn't eat).

I know how crazy I was, because now that I am on No-S I feel like I have 80% more emotional and mental capacity than before. I really feel like I went from insane to sane, all in the space of a day, just by embracing the logic behind those 14 words.

I plan to continue No-Sing for life. I am a sane person again. I can enjoy food again, something I haven't done in a long, long time. And oolala, since reading your post, I have finally accepted that there is no perfect me waiting at the end of the insane-diet rainbow. I have to make who I am right now who I want to be, if that makes sense.

And the rules of No-S... to me they don't represent restrictions but rather they are freedom. Freedom from starvation, and freedom from binging. Freedom from crazy, and freedom from chasing a perfection that never would have come.

(Also Reinhard if you read this THANK-YOU THANK-YOU THANK-YOU. You have saved me from a lifetime of disordered eating.)

Holy moly! It almost makes my blood boil to think that you were so influenced by the media that you might have thought for a second that you might have to weigh less than you do now. Your BMI is almost as low as it can be and be considered normal. I'm so glad I played any part in having you come to peace with your body and eating.

It isn't as if heavier people can't get there. It's that the effort to do it, in my opinion, is misguided because the odds are so against it, while the odds for being able to learn to eat moderately with pleasure are much higher. Otherwise, how could so many people in Europe do it? I know some of those on another site who have gotten to low levels, and they are actually rather happy to have done it and feel it is worth the effort. it is their freedom, but I feel it is also reinforces a sad trend, one that actually undermines the goal that is much more within many people's reach. Then again, I may just be dreaming since cultural pressure is so hard to thwart, and you have to be nearly an outlier just to be moderate in the U.S.- and many other countries, to be fair, never mind what it would take for most people to be really slim. If the average BMI for women in France is in the mid-range of the BMI, can we actually think that the average women in the U.S should be aiming for model/actress- what Naomi Watts calls "professional beauties"- thinness? Yet most women will not listen to someone who doesn't represent that kind of thinness. Oh, well. We aren't the first culture to be misdirected in its aspirations, and thinness is only one of them.