I was chatting with a client who assured me "she's never been a dieter." But in our conversation, I picked up on many soundbites that sounded like a less than happy relationship with food and body. I thought I'd send this over to see if any of these thoughts or statements has ever felt true to you. If so, while you might not identify as a "dieter," you might be food and body hypervigilant. I want you to know that you don't have to spend another moment of your life in this mode, k? So, what does chronic diet and body hypervigilance look like?
It doesn’t always look like “dieting.” Things like:
> Tracking
> Weighing
> Measuring
> Diarizing
> Meal plans
> Food scales
Here is what food and body hypervigiliance can sound like...
"I get on the scale every day, just to make sure I’m not letting things get away from me."
"My pants are fitting just a little differently than they were 12 hours ago. I wonder what I ate to get fat so quickly?"
"I love to travel and get away but it’s so hard to keep food on track while I’m gone. I always fall off the wagon. I worry about vacation weight gain."
"My ADD meds have really knocked down my appetite and I have been forgetting to eat lately. I know it’s not healthy but I don’t mind this “skinny era.” It will sort itself out once I go off the meds but for now …I’m not mad about it!"
"Usually I gain at least 10lbs over the holidays, but this time I only gained 4. Whew! Now I just need to buckle down at the gym to get rid of it."
"I feel like I just need to do a quick cleanse, just to kickstart some fat loss; I always feel leaner when I drink nothing but lemon water + cayenne pepper for a week."
"I behave really well when [all factors are perfectly in place] but as soon as [a slight deviation] happens, I fall off."
"I know exactly what I need to eat every day to keep my weight in check. I don’t measure or track anything, so it’s not ‘dieting.’ But I never deviate. I CANNOT deviate."
You may have been conditioned to believe that the statements above represent a normal relationship with food and body. That they aren’t “diet-ish” at all.
But they aren’t healthy, and they sure aren’t normal.
Just because something’s been NORMALIZED, doesn’t make it normal.