We’re kicking off the Telesummit tonight with a big fat talk on fat activism!  We’ll be chatting with Marilyn Wann (author of Fat!So?), Amanda Levitt (Founder of Love Your Body Detroit) and Peggy Howell (PR Director for NAAFA).

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be talking health with Dr. Linda Bacon and Ragen Chastain, fatshion with Marie Denee, Rachel Kacenjar, and Yuliya Raquel, sex with Hanne Blank and Virgie Tovar, social media with Marianne Kirby, Margitte Leah Kristjannson and Brian Stuart, fitness with Jeanette DePatie and Anna Guest-Jelley, fat/queer intersections with Bevin Branlandingham, Charlotte Cooper, & Jessica Luxery, and politics with Paul Campos and Amy Erdman Farrell. You can see the full schedule here.

When you register, you’ll get free live access to all of the interviews, and you’ll have the opportunity to get yourquestions answered by our panel.

Click here to learn more and register!

I can’t wait to see you there!

Body Love Revolutionaries Telesummit Starts Tonight! originally appeared on Body Love Wellness on January 31, 2012.

by Golda Poretsky, H.H.C.
www.bodylovewellness.com

Listen to the podcast of this post here:

It feels inevitable. December is all about holidays and parties and joy and togetherness. There are bright lights and gifts and delicious food and hundreds of tubas playing carols. At least, that’s the hope. It’s a time of year when we try, as best we can, to connect with our abundance and our joy.

Cupid Is Taking Back January From Father Time (it's one interpretation) (image courtesy of graphicsfairy)

Then, suddenly, January 2nd rolls around, and we’re asked to drop all of that merriment and get real. We’re supposed to take note of our flaws and resolve to be better — to eat better, to exercise more, to party less, to stop having such a darn good time and get down to work, usually on ourselves.

I just hate it. I hate this pattern that we’re told to recreate every year. I hate this pattern of flagellating ourselves for our fun, or joy, our willingness to let go of some rules and just have fun. I’m tired of the pendulum swing, the “or” and not the “and.”

So here’s what I propose. Let’s (quite literally) have our cake and eat it too. Let’s savor the cake and the kale. Let’s get more exercise by dancing more with friends. Let’s love our bodies because they’re ours, because they’re a gift, and not have our self approval depend on how well they meet some totally arbitrary societal standard.

I’m dead serious about this. So if you’re ready to join me in taking back January, check out my 2011-2012 Transition & Manifestation Book (today’s the last day that you can download it for free) and join me for the 2nd Annual Body Love Revolutionaries Telesummit, where I’ll be interviewing 20 outrageously fabulous people at the forefront of Health At Every Size® and body acceptance. Together, we can make this January way more fun and fulfilling.

Golda is a certified holistic health counselor and founder of Body Love Wellness, a program designed for plus-sized women who are fed up with dieting and want support to stop obsessing about food and weight. Go to http://www.bodylovewellness.com/free to get your free download — Golda’s Top Ten Tips For Divine Dining!

My New Year’s Resolution — Take Back January! originally appeared on Body Love Wellness on January 2, 2012.

by Golda Poretsky, H.H.C.
www.bodylovewellness.com

Listen to the podcast of this post here:

Do not adjust your monitors. The image below is not some work of photoshop magic. It is merely a scan of photos that are now irreparably stuck together because they were left on a radiator.

Totally ruined vacation pics

Why would anyone leave perfectly good pictures of a vacation to a tropical paradise atop a hot radiator? That is an excellent question. Well, that picture at the top of the stack was the only picture of myself in the whole stack, and, at the time, I hated it. I couldn’t stand how I looked. Back in 2005, before I had heard of fat acceptance, this picture confirmed for me how fat I was (and yes, I’m definitely fatter now). To my mind at the time, fat equaled bad. Consequently, I never put the photos into an album, and “unintentionally” left them on a radiator, where they melded together. I had taken them with a disposable camera (my digital camera died in the middle of my trip), have no idea where the negatives are, and consequently lost all photographic evidence of this trip, save for this melted pile.

As a result of this picture and pressure from people in my life who were doing Weight Watchers, I embarked on my last diet.  To make a long story short, I lost a bunch of weight, started gaining it back (like everyone else), found HAES(R) and fat acceptance and eventually gained it all back, plus more.

For the first time since that trip, I’m going on vacation to a tropical local (with my fabulous friend Anne).  In the past, I would have avoided any pictures of myself.  The fact that I only had one picture of myself from a 5-day trip speaks volumes about my nearly lifelong avoidance of pictures.  I never felt good looking at pictures — they weren’t reminders of lovely trips and time with friends, they were reminders that I never looked as good or “acceptable” as I thought I did.  They just made me depressed.

Even as I got deeper into body acceptance, pictures were still hard for me.  I could wrap my head around the idea that fat didn’t equal bad, but I always seemed to have more fat than I thought.  I always had a bigger double chin, a bigger belly, etc. than I thought.

In the last few years, I’ve done some great experimenting with photography.  I think it all started when I took Lesleigh J. Owen‘s class at the NAAFA Convention, where she encouraged us to take “bad” pictures of ourselves.  Being encouraged to do that was really liberating.  I also started to seek out more images of fat people in general, whether they were artfully done like Adipositivity or just regular pictures of regular folks.  I realized that I needed to change my perception of what was “normal” or “good” when it came to pictures.  I didn’t want looking skinnier than usual to be my only criterion for a good picture.

So, I’m hoping to do this vacation a little differently, and end up with some beautiful pictures, including ones of me.

Do any of you have this picture phobia?  I hope you’ll share in the comments below.

Golda is a certified holistic health counselor and founder of Body Love Wellness, a program designed for plus-sized women who are fed up with dieting and want support to stop obsessing about food and weight. Go to http://www.bodylovewellness.com/free to get your free download — Golda’s Top Ten Tips For Divine Dining!

The Dreaded Curse Of “Bad” Photos originally appeared on Body Love Wellness on December 12, 2011.

by Golda Poretsky, H.H.C.
www.bodylovewellness.com

Listen to the podcast here:

(Note from Golda: This post first appeared on the lovely blog, Roots of She. I realize it’s a little different than what I write for this blog, but I hope you dig it!)

"Abundantia," by Peter Paul Rubens (courtesy of wikipedia)

Nearly every woman I know has a screwed up relationship with food.  I think the way to heal this is not more of the same, it’s eating like a goddess.

Right now, we’re living in a cultural moment that tells us that the masculine paradigm is better than the feminine.*  This paradigm honors logic over intuition, outer rules over internal guidance, avoidance of pain rather than attraction to pleasure, and fear of scarcity over acknowledgement of abundance.  And this lack of balance between the masculine and feminine shows up again and again in the way we eat.

But our goddess selves know that none of that feels right.  Your goddess self doesn’t believe in diets, or rules, or calories or Weight Watchers’ points.  Your goddess self knows that food is a blessing, that slowing down a bit feels good, that your body knows what food you need and what you don’t.  Your goddess self knows that your body is beautiful, and doesn’t understand why you would control your food as a way to control the size and shape of your body.

In order to heal the way that we relate to food, we have to return to our wilder selves.  We have to let go of the rules, and delve into our true desires.

For many of you, this concept may be just at the edge of your comfort zone.  You’ve been taught to create meal plans, follow rigid rules, count calories, count fat, weigh and measure your food, etc. etc., so when I say to you that all of that should be tossed out the window, it may feel really scary.  Perhaps you even tried to throw it all out the window and things got kind of weird.  Perhaps you found yourself bingeing, and it freaked you out so much that after a while, you looked for your next diet.  You saw that out of control behavior as proof that you need rules and strictures and meal plans and counting.

But you had it all wrong.  Because you were eating at that time as a reaction to diets, and not as acknowledgement of your goddess self.  And the way to do that is to connect with your true abundance.

You see, you’ve got to get past the reaction of “I can eat whatever I want!  Screw you Jenny Craig!  I’m going to eat everything in sight!”  Because when you eat from that place, you’re not eating from a place of abundance, you’re just reacting to the rules and strictures of the masculine paradigm.  And while it may feel good to do that for a while, it can start feeling bad pretty quickly.  It can start feeling really out of control and just as unaligned with your true desires as a diet plan.  So the next move is to truly connect with your abundance, intuition and pleasure.

So here are 3 powerful tips for healing your relationship with food by eating like a goddess:

1) Connect With Your Abundance — Imagine for a moment that you can eat whatever you want whenever you’re hungry.  Imagine that you have a fridge and a pantry full of food that you really love, and that when your body says it’s hungry, you have your pick of really delectable offerings.  And here’s the key, it’s all going to be there tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day.  Whenever you’re hungry, you may eat.  You don’t have to worry about getting enough, because there is always enough.  Diets and restrictions don’t exist in your world.  You can trust that your bodily hunger will always be respected. You don’t have to worry about over-eating either, because there’s no reason to overeat.  Why have more cake tonight, and stuff yourself, when there will be plenty of cake tomorrow?

2) Connect With Your Intuition — Your intuition is a powerful tool that connects you to your body, your wisdom, and a greater knowing.  If you want to start eating more intuitively, then you need to build your intuitive skills.  The way to start building your intuition is by trusting it, even if you think it might be wrong.  You start by paying attention.  If your inner wisdom tells you to take a different route to work, you listen to it, even if it doesn’t make logical sense.  If your inner wisdom says, “I’m hungry, let’s have seconds!” you have seconds, even if you don’t have any weight watchers points left for that day.  If your inner wisdom tells you to say yes to going out for drinks even when you feel like going home and watching TV, go with your inner wisdom.  It’s important to rebuild this trust in your intuition in order to heal your relationship with food.

3) Connect With Your Desire — People often conflate hunger for things other than food with our hunger for food.  Hunger could be for anything from a new job to a new lover to better boundaries with a friend.  But if you don’t take the time to identify your desires, you’re more likely to turn to food to try to satisfy them.  So I’m going to ask you to start listing your desires, and keep adding to that list.  No desire is too big or too small.  Whether you desire a free iced coffee or to own a villa on the Italian coast, add it to your list.  Be specific.  Be bold.  There is no desire too big for a goddess.  Challenge yourself to think bigger than you ever had in your life.  And if you notice a few days from now that a desire has come true, check it off and write “Thank you, goddess!” next to it.  Just remember that these are not goals, they’re desires.  They’re meant to be enjoyed.

*I realize that the terms “masculine” and “feminine” may be problematic.  I’m using these terms to describe a duality of guiding principles for how people look at the world.  In no way do I mean that all men are one way and all women another, or that they should be one way or another.  It has nothing to do with anyone’s gender or identity.  It’s more to do with how an overabundance of one paradigm and a negating of the other is damaging to all of us.

Golda is a certified holistic health counselor and founder of Body Love Wellness, a program designed for plus-sized women who are fed up with dieting and want support to stop obsessing about food and weight. Go to http://www.bodylovewellness.com/free to get your free download — Golda’s Top Ten Tips For Divine Dining!

Eating Like A Goddess originally appeared on Body Love Wellness on November 21, 2011.

by Golda Poretsky, H.H.C.
www.bodylovewellness.com

Listen to the podcast here:

In November of 1998, during my senior year in college, I embarked on a new diet.  I called it “low carb with fruit.”  I cut out a lot of foods, and like most diets, it started working in the beginning.  Because I was losing weight, I stuck with the diet very carefully.

In early January 1999, I went on a trip to Prague with my scholarship group from school.  It was extremely cold in Prague, and I didn’t have much money.  There was hardly any fruit or vegetables to be had anywhere, so for about a week I subsisted on about 2 sausages that you buy on the street per day, carefully throwing out the hearty roll it was wrapped in.  I was also walking for miles each day, exploring the city.

I'm bummed that I can't find my pictures from that trip. But here's Prague Castle (image courtesy of wikipedia).

As you might imagine, I was hungry for most of the day, and I ignored that hunger for both convenience sake and because I wanted to stick to this diet. Only someone on a diet (or with a severe wheat allergy would have thrown those rolls away).  And maybe there were some other foods I could have found on the cheap, but I was so single-minded about sticking to my diet that I probably didn’t consider them.

When I got back to New York, I had lost more weight, and received a lot of praise for that.  My hair was also thinner, and I’m not sure it ever really recovered.

I remember, at the time, feeling happy to have lost more weight, but sad that no one seemed to mind that I did it in a really unhealthy way.  I thought, if I had gone to Prague a size 2 and come back a size 0, they might have considered getting me some help for an eating disorder, but leaving a size 14/16 and coming back a 12/14 was considered a great accomplishment.

A lot of my clients come to me with self-diagnosed restrictive eating disorders.  And they come to me that way because when you’re fat or plus-sized or even toward the larger end of the “normal size” scale, weight loss is considered a healthy, important goal, and almost any way that you arrive at or strive for that goal is approved of.  Many of the symptoms of dieting (obsession with weight, obsession with food, body dysmorphia) are akin to eating disorder symptoms, but they’re overlooked if you’re engaging in them while existing in a fatter body.  They still have deleterious mental, emotional, and physical effects, whether you’re fat, thin, or in between.  I think it’s time that the health and wellness community and the world at large recognized this reality.

This lack of recognition for eating disorders in fatter people is something I think about quite a lot, but it was brought to the fore by the fact that the National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA) has decided to partner with Strategies To Overcome and Prevent (STOP) Obesity Alliance, a group who’s funded by pharmaceutical companies that produce dangerous and questionable things like diet pills and lap bands.  (To read more about it, read Ragen Chastain’s excellent open letter to NEDA and sign the petition to stop this alliance.)

Is engaging in restricting and obsessive behaviors perfectly great if you’re fatter and yet something worthy of treatment when you’re thinner?  Or are our societal norms and unfounded beliefs about health and beauty clouding the fact that it’s pretty much the same thing?  Let me know what you think in the comments below.

Golda is a certified holistic health counselor and founder of Body Love Wellness, a program designed for plus-sized women who are fed up with dieting and want support to stop obsessing about food and weight. Join her for her upcoming FREE teleclass, HAES For The Holidays: How To Navigate Food, Family & Fatness Better This Holiday Season, by clicking here.

Are Dieting Behaviors And Disordered Eating Behaviors Really So Different? originally appeared on Body Love Wellness on November 7, 2011.

by Golda Poretsky, H.H.C.
www.bodylovewellness.com

Listen to the podcast for this post here:

Last week, during her Body Love Breakthrough Session*,  my new client shared the pain she’d experienced by spending her life going on and off diets. She told me, “I feel like I’ve been in diet school my whole life.  When do I get to graduate?”

When she said that, it really blew my mind.  How many years had I and nearly all of my clients and blog readers spent in “diet school?”  I know that I’ve personally taken Restricting Calories 101, Advanced Techniques In Freaking Out About .4 Pounds, Workshops On Why It’s My Fault and Not The Diet’s, and so on.  I’ve studied every diet plan in depth, from Weight Watchers To Atkins To Chew A Lot Of Gum And Ignore Your Hunger.  If there were such a thing as diet school, I should have multiple PhD’s by now.

My Final Diet School Report Card (Image by Golda Poretsky)

But that’s the thing about Diet School.  You can never graduate.

Diet school doesn’t actually lead thinness for the vast majority of its students.  All you really learn is to hate your body and completely destroy any semblance of a normal relationship with food. Nearly everyone fails Diet School.  The statistics are grim — somewhere between 85-95% of dieters gain back all the weight they lose, and add on more, within 2-5 years of losing the weight.

And Diet School is so good at convincing you that your failure is your fault and not theirs that they convince you to re-enroll, for a fee, yet again. Here’s a statistic that you definitely won’t learn in Diet School.  In 2010, Americans spent $60.9 billion on diets and diet products.  That same year, as Marilyn Wann has noted in her blog, Americans spent $50 billion on 2 and 4 year colleges.  In other words, we collectively pay more to learn dieting than to get bachelor’s and associate’s degrees.

So here’s what I propose.  Let’s stop paying for Diet School and let’s do the only responsible thing: DROPOUT.  Let’s stop the vicious cycle of going on a diet, losing some weight, gaining it back, starting again.  Let’s stop the cycle of paying our Diet School tuition again and again only to be told that our failure is our fault.  Let’s thumb our noses at an establishment that is doing us harm, allegedly, “for our own good.”  Let’s embrace our bodies, embrace Health At Every Size (R) and never go back to Diet School again!

Are you a Diet School Dropout?  Thinking of joining our ragtag group?  Let me know all about it  in the comments section below or on my facebook page.

*A Body Love Breakthrough Session is a free session with me where we explore any issues you’re having with food and body image.  If you’ve never had one,  click here to get yours.  I’ve opened up 5 spots just for blog readers!

Golda is a certified holistic health counselor and founder of Body Love Wellness, a program designed for plus-sized women who are fed up with dieting and want support to stop obsessing about food and weight. Go to http://www.bodylovewellness.com/free to get your free download — Golda’s Top Ten Tips For Divine Dining!

Diet School Dropout originally appeared on Body Love Wellness on October 3, 2011.

Cover Art For The Gossip's Single "Standing In The Way Of Control" (courtesy of wikipedia)

by Golda Poretsky, H.H.C.
www.bodylovewellness.com

Listen to the podcast of this post here:

How often do you hear or say phrases like this?

“My eating is so out of control.”

“If I could just get my weight under control . . .”

“I’m really bad at portion control.”

“I just have no self control.”

Often in my first session with a client, they describe a lack of control as being one of their biggest problems.  We all learn to talk in terms of control.  We all learn that our bodies are out of control, our eating is out of control, our self control is out of control. And so we think that what we need is more control.

What if I were to say that control is not the answer at all?  What if the reason that all of these things felt out of control was a result of trying to control things?

What if relinquishing control were actually the answer?

The concept of control is aligned with the masculine paradigm.* In this paradigm, we use things like control to try to guarantee a certain outcome.  For example, dieting is a very masculine paradigm way of thinking.  When we diet, we try to control our eating and exercising in order to control the desired outcome of losing weight.  This may actually result in the desired outcome for a while, but over time it doesn’t work, because control doesn’t work.  We can never control for everything.  As much as we like to think that we can, we can’t actually control our metabolism.  The old “calories in/calories out” is an utter fallacy when it comes to the complex mechanism of our body.

Also, where there is control, there will eventually be rebellion.  Where there is a diet there will eventually be a binge or “slip ups.”  And in the masculine paradigm, the answer to rebellion, or binges, or messing up a diet will always be more control.  More control leads to a bigger rebellion, and the cycle continues.

But what if we stopped trying to control?  Sounds scary, right? That’s because we live in a society that glorifies the masculine paradigm, and we’ve all learned that without the stern master of control, everything will fall apart.  There is some part of us that believes that if we stop trying to control our bodies, our food choices, our choices in general, that we will be shunned by society.  There’s a part of us that believes that if we let go of control, we’ll gain a thousand pounds, wear a bikini to the office, and lose our friends and family.  We’ve been told that control is good for us.

More control is not the answer.  More control keeps you stuck.

You may be wondering, if control is part of the masculine paradigm, what might the feminine paradigm offer in its stead?

It offers trust.  Self-trust and intuition.

Image courtesy of inspirationalboost.blogspot.com

From the feminine paradigm perspective, control is not needed, because you have your own internal guidance system.  You have a system within you, a collaboration of body, mind and spirit, which guides you on everything from what to eat and how much, to how to approach a situation at work, to which person is best for you to date. You could call it intuition, or you could just call it you.  It’s that part of you that knows what to do, even when the outside world tells you that you don’t.  The more you trust this inner voice, this inner knowing, the more loud and clear it becomes.  The more you act upon it, the less out of control you feel, because it was never about control in the first place.

So this week, in honor of Independence Day, ask yourself if there are any parts of your life that you want to try to control less.  See how it affects your well-being, and tell me about it in the comments section below.

And by the way, if you’re ready to stop trying to control emotional or compulsive eating patterns and really allow yourself to start healing, check out my How To Heal From Emotional Eating Home Study Program.  It’s only $97 through Sunday, July 10th at midnight Eastern.  Click this link to get the special rate: http://www.healfromemotionaleating.com/independence.

*I realize that the terms “masculine paradigm” and “feminine paradigm” may be problematic.  I’m using these terms to describe a duality of guiding principles for how people look at the world.  In no way do I mean that all men are one way and all women another, or any of that.  It has nothing to do with anyone’s gender or identity.  It’s more to do with how an overabundance of one paradigm and a negating of the other is damaging to all of us.

Golda Poretsky, H.H.C. is a certified holistic health counselor who specializes in transforming your relationship with food and your body. Go to http://www.bodylovewellness.com/stay-in-touch/ to sign up for her newsletter and get your free download — Golda’s Top Ten Tips For Divine Dining!

You Don’t Need More Self Control (Independence Day Edition!) originally appeared on Body Love Wellness on July 5, 2011.

by Golda Poretsky, H.H.C.
www.bodylovewellness.com

Listen to the podcast of this post here:

Earlier this week, I had a really infuriating call with a member of my family.

She told me that despite all this “body acceptance stuff,” I had to start taking care of myself.  When I asked her what she meant by that, she said, “making healthier food choices.”

These ladies don't look lazy in this painting by Peter Paul Rubens. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

This is a woman I see about once every other month at family gatherings.  So the only way that she could have decided that I was making “bad food choices” was that I was fat.  Fat like nearly everyone else in my family, of course, but fatter than her.  So I asked her if she meant a diet.  “No, not a diet.  Just better choices,” she said.  “Come on, you know how to eat right.  And you’re obviously not doing that.”

Obviously.  And yes, I “know how to eat.”  But obviously, she didn’t mean the ole fork to mouth.  She meant what I had been taught to do since age 4 — follow a plan, restrict, obsess, repeat.

What she was insinuating was that “this body acceptance stuff” was just a mask, a cover for my desire to eat more than I should, make bad choices, and be lazy. This is a person who’s known me my entire life, who must assume that I eat normally in front of her and then binge as soon as I get home.  (If I did do that, it still wouldn’t be her business, but I don’t.)

But I don’t think body acceptance is lazy in the least.  Telling people that you don’t and will never diet again, setting boundaries with people around you who are obsessed with fat and weight, sharing your views everywhere you go and facing ridicule and hatred, and making a choice (despite 99% of the world telling you that you’re crazy) that this is your life and you’re not going to live it encased in self hatred — none of that is lazy. Whether we’re dieting, or getting horrific weight loss surgeries or decided to accept and love our bodies, I think fat people are constantly working at something having to do with their bodies. On top of that, fat people have the regular stuff to do that thin people do, like working, taking care of their families, and taking care of all the other stuff of normal life.  Plus, because we face discrimination in education, the workplace, and the medical field, we have added stress and pressure and have to work extra hard as a result.

In fact, I have yet to meet the stereotypical, almost mythical fat person that everyone thinks is the usual fat person.  This is a fat person who doesn’t care about being fat, eats all junk food, never exercises, and doesn’t do anything other than laying on the couch eating and drinking soda.  The only people I’ve ever encountered who fit the mythical fat person description are people who are pretty severely depressed, and they’re not doing this with a blithe abandon that fat people supposedly exhibit (and are often not fat). These stereotypes get perpetuated by shows like The Biggest Loser, which shows its contestants as people who are out of control with no lives, even if they have families and businesses that they run and rather full lives in reality.

I think there’s a myth that body acceptance means not doing anything to take care of your body, and that’s totally not true.  As I’ve seen for myself and for my clients, when exercise is not tied to weight loss, we can do it in a way that is aligned with our bodies and with what we find actually fun.  When we listen to our bodies and trust them and their messages, we can make appropriate food choices.  We can enjoy sex in a different way when we connect to our pleasure rather than worrying over our fat.

So body acceptance, no matter what your size, is the only choice if you want to embrace a happiness that is not centered on a goal weight or a particular size or fitting into a particular pair of jeans.  That being said, it’s not always an easy choice to make, but it’s certainly not a lazy one.

Feel free to let me know what you think in the comments section below!

Golda Poretsky, H.H.C. is a certified holistic health counselor who specializes in transforming your relationship with food and your body. Go to http://www.bodylovewellness.com/stay-in-touch/ to sign up for her newsletter and get your free download — Golda’s Top Ten Tips For Divine Dining!

Body Acceptance Is Not A Lazy Choice originally appeared on Body Love Wellness on June 20, 2011.

by Golda Poretsky, H.H.C.
www.bodylovewellness.com

Listen to the podcast of this post here:

(I’m bringing back an oldie but goodie this week, but I’ll be back “live” next week with an interview with an international fat superhero…)

In a recent workshop, one of the participants brought up the fact that she sometimes doesn’t like to eat leafy greens because they remind her too much of her dieting days.  Whenever she eats greens (salad in particular), she feels what she used to feel while dieting — restricted and annoyed, and even a phantom-like feeling of hunger.

The kid loves jam. Image courtesy of boingboing.net.

How many of you can relate to that feeling?  I know I can!  When I first started working with the concept of intuitive eating, I felt like I was fighting a never-ending battle with a variety of food rules, even food rules that conflicted with one another.  I had spent significant portions of my life as an Atkins dieter, an Overeaters’ Anonymous member, a low carbohydrate vegetarian and a Weight Watchers’ points aficionado.  As you can imagine the Atkins part of me and the low carb vegetarian part of me had some things in common but highly disagreed with the Weight Watchers’ point keeper and the O.A. dieter!  Did I believe in low carb or low fat?  Was a scooped out bagel a good choice or a terrible one?  Was I overdoing the olive oil or should I slather it on?

And while I have come to terms with my diet rule demons, as a counselor who often talks about intuitive eating, I can run into some problems.  I’m often asked about what foods are good to consider when you’re suffering from low energy, but whenever I talk about food in this way, I often have to work my way around my own fears of sounding like a Weight Watchers or O.A. leader.  Whenever I talk about leafy greens and added fiber and drinking adequate water,  I get a creepy feeling that I’m imposing food rules on my clients, even though I have no intention of doing so.  To me, I care more about how my clients actually feel when they eat certain foods than how they should feel or what they should be eating.

Image Courtesy Of The Graphics Fairy

Diet rules impede intuitive eating because they stop you from connecting with your body’s wisdom.  Whether you’re confining your eating habits to old diet rules or avoiding food that reminds you of your dieting days, you end up being a slave to diets.  I’m sure that wasn’t (or isn’t) your intention if you’re trying to break away from diets.

So here are some tips for letting go of old diet rules to make way for a more connected, body-centered way of eating.

1) Get Clarity – Take a moment to write down all of the diet rules that still haunt you.  They may be conflicting, nonsensical, or sometimes sort of sensible.  Whatever they are, get them all out on paper.  Then decide if any are worth keeping.  Only keep the ones that really honor your body and its changeability – such as getting adequate water, avoiding allergenic foods, stuff like that.  Throw out any rules that limit the types of foods you can eat (unless you have allergies or other health concerns) and definitely toss the calorie and carb counting.

2) Listen To Yourself – We all have a voice within us that tells us what foods nourish us and advises us as to our hunger and fullness.  Note, we ALL have this voice.  Sometimes this voice has been stifled by pushy parents or diet rules or our emotional torment, but trust me, it is there.  Take steps to actively listen for this voice.  Honor it no matter how quietly it speaks.  If you think you heard it and turned out to be wrong, listen for it again tomorrow.  Trust me that it is safe to trust yourself.

3) Pay Attention – Notice which foods feel best to you.  Do you like a muffin and coffee in the morning or an apple and almond butter and tea?  Does it depend on how much sleep you got, how much stress you’re under?  What time of year it is?  Are comfort foods comforting sometimes and sometimes not so much?  Notice the effects on your energy levels.  Notice comfort and discomfort.

Continually repeat the above to get better and better at tuning in.

In truth, the only rule is that there are no rules.  You make the rules.  It’s okay to be heady with that power as long as you let your body lead the way.

Golda Poretsky, H.H.C. is a certified holistic health counselor who specializes in transforming your relationship with food and your body. Go to http://www.bodylovewellness.com/stay-in-touch/ to sign up for her newsletter and get your free download — Golda’s Top Ten Tips For Divine Dining!

Are Old Diet Rules Getting In Your Way? originally appeared on Body Love Wellness on June 13, 2011.

by Golda Poretsky, HHC
http://www.bodylovewellness.com

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Recently, I was interviewed for an article about HAES(SM), and the interviewer asked, “What was your earliest experience with dieting?”

I felt a little funny telling her that I did my first diet when I was 4 years old. Even though I include that fact in my bio and I hear similar stories all day long in my practice, it still  felt funny to say it.

My mom is a big Sophia Loren fan (as am I) so I figured I'd put up this lovely picture of her with her kid.

I actually remember quite a lot about that first diet. I don’t remember what I ate or how I went about it, but I remember telling my Mom that the kids at nursery school were calling me fat. After some discussion (I was a really talkative kid) we decided that I would go on some sort of diet, and I would get a gold star on the calendar every day that I stuck to it. After a certain number of gold stars accumulated, I would get a toy.

As you might imagine, I think that this set me up for a lot things that some of you may have experienced too. For years, I had underlying beliefs like:  it’s important to focus on weight and food, it’s important to please people in order to get something (a toy, approval), I need to change how I look to be accepted, and in some ways, a belief that the bullies were right.

Maybe in reading this, you’re thinking, “I would never put my kid on a diet at such a young age.” And perhaps, you wouldn’t. But when I think about my Mom’s experience of life, how she was the chubby one among her thin siblings, how her Mom (my Grandmother) worried about her weight and my Mom’s weight, how she had gone through life thinking she was fat, starving herself to fit in, etc., then it doesn’t seem so weird. In fact, it makes perfect sense. My Mom was trying to avoid the pain that she had experienced as a fat kid.

Antique French Postcard (Graphics Fairy)

When I write in my gratitude journal, I often find myself writing about my Mom. I feel grateful to her for so many things, but I’ve also come to a place where I’m really grateful that she put me on that diet at age 4. That diet, and the diets that followed, were part of my journey to where I am now. I would never have been the anti-diet crusader, the fat activist, and the healer that I am today if I hadn’t gone through the intense torment of repeated dieting. I wouldn’t wish it on another kid, but I see that journey coming to fruition in the fat activists around me, and I think there will be legions more of us in the years to come since childhood obesity has become such a lightning rod issue (phony as it is).

I inherited so much from my Mom. I have her wavy hair, her love of learning, her zeal for social justice, her love of humor, her love of creature comforts and beautiful things.  I know she blames herself for my inherited weight, even though I would love for her to let go of that.  I think that would be a great Mother’s Day present to herself, even though my Mom hates Mother’s Day and thinks it’s a commercialized, fake holiday.  (I guess my Mom’s hatred of fake holidays is another thing I inherited, though I solemnly and devoutly celebrate International No Diet Day every year (and every day, really).)

Antique Postcard (Graphics Fairy)

So here’s a tip for finding some healing from the guilt and blame cycle.  Take a moment to picture your mom (or whomever was like a mom to you) in different stages of her life.  Picture her as a young child, a preteen, a teenager, and a young adult.  For each of these stages, ask yourself, “What were her dreams for her life? What were her fears and insecurities?”  Doing this exercise may help you understand your mom a bit better.

It’s a good reminder that, as Louise Hay says, “our parents were doing the best they could with the understanding, awareness, and knowledge that they had” at the time.   (And by the way, if you’re not there yet in acknowledging your parents’ journey, that’s okay too.)

Please share your insights in the comments section below.

[PSSST.  HEY, YOU.  IF YOU'VE BEEN THINKING THAT YOU WANT TO WORK WITH ME, GET SUPPORT IN HEALING FROM THE STRESS OF DISORDERED EATING AND BODY HATRED, THEN YOU SHOULD KNOW THAT REGISTRATION FOR MY TRULY AMAZING GROUP PROGRAM ENDS THIS WEEK.   IF YOU'VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT IT, NOW IS THE TIME.  CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO.  I HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE!]

Golda Poretsky, H.H.C. is a certified holistic health counselor who specializes in transforming your relationship with food and your body. Go to http://www.bodylovewellness.com/stay-in-touch/ to get your free download — Golda’s Top Ten Tips For Divine Dining.

In Honor Of Mother’s Day: Taking A Break From The Guilt/Blame Cycle originally appeared on Body Love Wellness on May 9, 2011.