Intuitive eating has made a normal relationship with food nearly impossible for me, and it took finding this sub to realize it

I acknowledge that IE does work well for some people. I am not one of them.

I discovered intuitive eating ten years ago, when I was 17 and pretty sick of dieting throughout my teens. Since then, I have been stuck in a cycle of restricting/bingeing/intense stress about food, alternating with periods of letting myself eat everything in sight and feeling pretty happy... That is, until I realize that I have gained >20% of my bodyweight in a matter of months, I freak out, and the cycle begins again.

IE and the anti-diet movement convinced me that there is no middle ground between these states of mind. That every attempt at controlling my food intake - even in the name of health - was actually my inner "food police," a manifestation of toxic diet culture and mutually exclusive from a healthy relationship with food and my body.

I was convinced that I was incapable of regulating my diet without inevitably failing, and that IE was the only way I could truly be happy.. until my weight started making me even more miserable than I was before, and restricting started to look pretty good again.

Maybe it is my fault for not being able to accept being at a higher weight for months or years, since IE advocates swear that your weight will "eventually" stabilize and maybe even start to go down again. I never lasted more than a year on IE, so it's possible that I was just not patient or confident enough to put up with the extra weight long enough to find out.

It took reading this sub to figure out that there is, in fact, a middle ground. That I can have discipline without hating myself or losing my ability to enjoy food and exercise.

That substituting a side salad for fries is not "restriction" unless I think of it as such.

That chocolate and cakes will never have "the same emotional connotation as a peach," but that doesn't mean I'm not capable of choosing to eat sweets once a week instead of multiple times a day.

That exercising for 30 minutes every day is not self-abuse, even when I do it when I don't particularly feel like it.

That consuming unlimited quantities of highly palatable junk will probably never heal my relationship with food or my body - if only!

That I can care about how my body looks and feels, choose to reach and maintain a weight that I prefer, and still fully love myself at every step of the process.

The last year of IE left me bigger than I've ever been, with agonizing chronic sciatica, insomnia, and depression. Something clicked after the sciatica diagnosis, and I realized that I had to find a sustainable way to live a healthier life - and that IE was never the answer.

So here I am, after just a couple weeks of sweating daily, cutting out alcohol, more veggies, and smaller portions, and I feel SO much better already. All I want this time is to manage my chronic pain and for my favorite clothes to fit me again, and it's honestly okay if it takes me longer to get there by doing this in a healthy way. It's worth it.

I know it's still early, but I do hope this is the turning point for me. Thank you all for helping me realize that we are all capable of achieving the discipline needed to build good habits long-term.

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I would love to hear if anyone else has had a similar experience!

submitted by /u/meghnards
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/gv62dp/intuitive_eating_has_made_a_normal_relationship/