Pathway to Normal Eating: Choose to Do Whatever It Takes
22 July 2007 by livingrainbowcolor
It’s thrilling to start a new diet, give up all dieting, start changing your life. The attraction of “change your shape, change your life” is enormous. Who doesn’t get a thrill of thinking, “If I can just get to the right weight, I’ll be so much better off?”
This is just another version of the Cinderella story: the “Prince” (the diet) whisks you off to a world in which you are not only beautiful, but also loved, popular and perfect. With beautiful clothes on top of all that.
A pretty dream, but Not True.
One of the first reality checks we get come when we realize that the diet or the intuitive eating philosophy isn’t perfect and it’s quite easy to cheat or fight it. But it’s not the imperfection of the system that fails us, because we all know that nothing’s perfect. It’s a false hope that the diet or non-diet will fix things, and we slowly learn that we are responsible for converting the false hopes into real goals.
We must acknowledge that diets and WLS can be cheated on. We must acknowledge that no therapist can force recovery on us, only we can recover. Only we are responsible.
It helps to know that true permanent recovery happens when we recover in 3 areas:
- our thinking
- our physical activity
- our emotions
None of the commercial diets, or the surgeries, or the IE philosophies is perfect, and none of them can mix recovery in all three areas that is perfect for you. Only you can do that. And you CAN do that.
For someone like me, who went far into the compulsive eating disorder, or like friends of mine who have gone far into bulimia or anorexia, it’s a long way out of the disorder, but it’s possible. It’s more than possible - it happens, and when you learn to persevere, you will go all the way.
Perseverance means to keep going, even when it’s hard. Even when you fail. Even when you fail big. Even when you want to give up. Even when you give up for a while. Perseverance means that you pick yourself up, brush yourself off, and choose to try again.
Perseverance means doing whatever it takes to recover. It’s a choice, not a magic potion, not a person, not a tool.
You can do it. One choice at a time.
