Come on with the pleasure! Why should we eat normally again?
The day I decided I would never go hungry again, I took a hammer out of the tool box, went to the bathroom, and slashed at my scales until all the tiles were speckled with white plastic splinters.
Then I undressed naked and stood in front of the large mirror in the hallway. "That's you," I said aloud, "and you should start slowly liking what you see here, because nothing will change that."
I looked at my thighs, their insides sticking together like teenagers in love. I looked at my exuberant hips. The rather flat stomach in the discreet bacon coat. Basically, I looked like always, just padded up a bit. And while I was there to wrestle with benevolence, there was at least one bosom that did not produce any air holes in my A-cups. I had gained weight. Five kilos.
For 20 years this self-hatred
Usually it's three, they're gonna kill me, for 20 years it's like this: As soon as I let my guard shoot for more than two weeks, the three kilos between me and my usual dress size, and then one morning I wake up and pass in no jeans.
In such cases, I wallow myself in routine self-hatred, and at the same time I prescribe myself an extra portion of discipline: breakfast cereal. Lunchtime salad. No carbohydrates in the evening. Cheese ban in the fridge. When hungry: fruit.
A reliable, proven strategy. But this time she did not work. My hunger was too big. Whenever I ate fruit, I devoured a watermelon, five apples, two mangoes, and ate until I could not stand upright because of my stomach ache.
When I got home in the evening, I was so hungry for food that I rushed into the kitchen with my coat and bags, tore open paper bags, and stuffed smoked turkey breast slices into it until it was quiet. Which I used on a Sunday in week four of my strange stagnation then but sometimes to think.
My self-image was closely linked to my fat cells
Since I was grown up, I have belonged to the army of slim-looking women whose self-image is essentially defined by the extent of their fat cells. When my weight was in the morning in the green, I felt my figure for a few moments like a precious pledge that allowed me to walk through life more upright.
I never questioned this ideal. Giving everything and leaving a lot to stay in shape was part of my normality. The fact that my body simply could not be created for my ambitious dream weight, had not even penetrated as an idea in my consciousness, but now it seemed to me a serious thought.
Maybe my age was getting in the way, and women are naturally picking up on menopause. I am 44.
So what do you do? As a teenager, I did the last "right" diet in cabbage soup style, because I had learned first hand what is scientifically well-proven: that a starvation diet is likely to cause weight gain - the famous yo-yo Effect.
Why not just eat instead of diet?
But if I did not want to go on a diet and suddenly lacked the strength to go with my day to day control, there was only one alternative: to eat. And just to see what happens.
The first effect came the next morning: I felt fat. To feel fat is independent of the figure, I know women with size zero, who pinch disgusted in the abdominal skin and moan "buxom jellyfish".
Crucial and uniting all weight classes is rather the inner judgment that we make in the "I'm Fat" mode above us. Namely worthless, uncontrolled, unattractive, invisible, unhappy and ashamed.
Which makes it quite logical, what so many women hope to become thin: valuable, attractive, competent, to be happy. It is really absurd, but in fact I have grafted this promise of salvation in the past on all unpleasant situations.
Weight loss as a solution to all problems
The man leaves, the boss is unfair, diffuse world pain clouds the brain? The instant solution: lose weight, now!
No tomorrow is so murky that a gratifying number on the scales could not miss him a small upward trend. The intention to lose weight acts like a pressurized stun for any kind of grief.
Every diet, no matter how stupid it is, gives us a perspective in no time at all, the feeling of control. It promises an end to our despair.
Accordingly, I felt miserable on the first day without a balance: as if I had torn my ticket to paradise. It was like saying goodbye to the little tired hope of being able to love me and my life in the near future.Because one thing is crystal clear: There is no disturbed eating habits without self-esteem problem, without feelings of excessive demands, inadequacy and fear of failure.
Eat normally - without control
The American nutrition expert and author Geneen Roth, who has been holding anti-diet seminars with great success in the USA for years, writes in her current US bestseller "Women Food and God" about the expectations of her workshop participants:
"They really seriously believe there's something that solves their weight problems and fixes them in that way, something they can not put into words: what it feels like to be in their skin, to live their specific lives, with What is it about their specific family, their specific emotional state, what it's like to have diabetes, or a friend with a breast cancer diagnosis? "" Intellectually, they realize that losing weight will not eradicate their girlfriend's breast cancer, but the promise of weight loss promises to make it possible will be to live on a magical piece of earth from which everything else can be done. "
Obviously, women commit themselves to this belief against better knowledge, against all their own experience, because who has reached his dream weight before and even held over phases of his life, could quickly find that the everyday life was by no means careless.
Even the ubiquitous life crises lean Superpromis give little cause for hope. One undeniable effect, however, is the constant circling around our own weight: we create a side-scene that absorbs all our attention and keeps us from looking where it really is burning: into our hearts.
If we plug a sense of emptiness with chocolate, our lives will not be richer, but for a while the pain subsides, and soon there will be something concrete to do: lose two pounds, subito! If we answer the end of a love with a lightning diet, make ourselves fit for the mating market, let's skip our grief towards activity.
Two types: Erlauber and Verbieter
Which strategy we favor to beam out of the danger zone is a type thing. Geneen Roth distinguishes between "Verbieter" and "Permit".
The forbid gutters believe in the power of control. About themselves, their food intake and if possible: the rest of the world. They try with their eating or hunger behavior to avert the ever-threatening chaos in their lives. "If I limit my body measurements, I can (I think) limit my suffering, if I limit my suffering, I can control my life, if less of me is visible then less hurt," says Roth, describing the belief behind compulsive Discipline that leads to anorexia in the worst case.
The strategy of permitter At first it seems more enjoyable, among them are the unrestrained eaters, who do not understand why they have already gained weight again. The diets hate, fail and dive into a piece of cheese cream when life becomes incalculable. They eat themselves unconscious, eat so much until they do not feel anything. And where you feel nothing, there is no need for action. They still suffer from their weight.
"Both the Verbieter and the Erlauber believe that there is not enough to make ends meet to get what they need," says Roth. "But while the Bidders respond to the perceived deficiency with voluntary renunciation before anything is denied, the Liberals try to stockpile before generosity / love / attention runs low."
Eating normally also means facing up to your feelings.
Fortunately, the end of all diets is not always sad. In between, there is plenty of delicious food.
Compulsive, writes Geneen Roth, is both. It is always about protecting ourselves from feelings that we believe we can not endure. Some control and others stun, and after each starvation and after each binge we sooner or later change camp. Whether we are starving or slamming, we are leaving the dust. And the madness about food seems to stop only when we're ready to face each other. Our fears, our weaknesses, our shame. When we look at all these facets, like someone we can really enjoy. So I started to look. And, unsurprisingly, I quickly realized that the impulse to eat or to leave was in many cases a reaction to lewd feelings. I ate out of boredom, a bad mood, stress.
I put the cookie aside for fear or shame, because I had a date with a thin colleague in the hammam the next weekend. Or on a recent vacation photo looked like a friendly manatee.
There were moods that I quickly recognized and those that I had to work hard to dig up. Loneliness was one of the harder, I met her at a cheese orgy in front of an open fridge door, and when I realized what I wanted to bury under goat-brie, my appetite abruptly vanished. Lonely. How terrible.At first I did not know where to go with me. Then I called a friend who lived far away and asked her if she had experienced it. Such a breathtakingly clammy loneliness. Yes, she knew. We both started crying.
Stop the nutritional neurosis
Fortunately, the end of all diets is not always sad. In between, there is plenty of delicious food. The English psychotherapist and passionate diet opponent Susie Orbach sets in her small but powerful book "Praise of food" five simple rules that put any food neurosis death blow:
"Eat when you're hungry, eat the food your body needs, do not eat when you're not hungry, enjoy every bite, stop eating when you're full!"
That's all. And it works. Better than anything I've tried so far.
It was on a Friday, I was sitting in the canteen, in front of me on the table a plate of fried fish. Add potato rocket salad. Broccoli. A fat blob remoulade. In a bowl next to it: strawberries with a lot of whipped cream. A feast, to eat everything. Slow, enjoyable. Beguiling until the last bite. I did not quite get the dessert. In the evening I was still full, until about nine I ate a small cheese bread.
Eat normally - and get full faster
That was my breakthrough. When I stopped stuffing tons of low-calorie greens into myself and getting fat instead, my hunger stopped. I did not need snacks anymore. When I started eating only things that I really wanted, each meal became a fun adventure.
I sat on my bike home, listening for a full 20 minutes. Then I drove to a cafe around the corner, famous for its pies, and ordered a piece of juicy chocolate cake.
While I ate it, I laughed out loud. Suddenly, there were no more forbidden foods and no panic cravings. Only hungry or not hungry. "If you eat even though you are not hungry at all, there is no body-recognizable reason to switch to food intake, so his signal will be 'tired', meaning nothing and nobody will slow you down," writes Susie Orbach, and I had suffered exactly that a hundredfold.
However, when I started eating hungry and enjoying what was on my plate, I got fed up faster than I had ever experienced before. Incomprehensible.
The relationship to my body improved
Yes, and then there was the big topic of self-love. Unfortunately, this does not stop immediately, just because you swallow a portion of fries for a change. But my relationship with myself and my body has improved significantly just because I stopped kicking my ass permanently. Impose prohibitions and scourge me for exceeding them. With pressure and coercion and rejection you can not reach anything anyway, I know that at the latest since I have children. And to meet someone - even yourself - with affection and understanding not only creates a greater willingness, but also good mood. Cleverly enough in the matter of self-love for the beginning completely pretend to pretend. To do, as if we had long since our dream figure and therefore would find extremely lovable. In any case, the experts claim, and what can I say: That too works. "When You Eat at the Refrigerator, Pull up a Chair," is the name of a previous book by Geneen Roth. If you eat in front of the fridge, make yourself comfortable in a chair. That means: Whatever we do, we should be good to ourselves. To sit with a food cravings and to enjoy is already much nicer than to snuggle while standing. It takes the contempt out of the whole event.
Wear red, recommends Roth in response to a funeral the night before. "Wearing red supports the idea that your past does not determine your life, it's a message to your psyche, saying that although I ate bread pudding and my belly is wavy yesterday, I still feel strong and powerful the right to be loved. " Of course I also tried it out, and yes: Red is the salvation, if you would like to dissolve in the air with self-loathing. It also helps to banish everything from the closet, which pinches at the hips. And to wear my most beautiful things on stink-normal days. And every day I choose something good to do. And always carry a chalkboard of my favorite chocolate with me and give me a bit, if I feel like it. That's how you learn self-love.
Susie Orbach blows in the same horn:
"What do you associate with the idea of being slim, open-minded, super sexy, funnier, serene, wiser, more desirable, more resilient, and what else? Try to tackle such desires right now, starting today Nothing to do Bring everything in the wings, now on the stage of your life Make it a part of yourself - no matter what weight you weigh in the moment.None of this disappears (or appears) as your character changes. "
My figure has changed every week since the day I split my scales. First it got a little bit more, then it got less again, not much is happening at the moment. I'm losing weight, I suppose, actually everything is the same. But the person I see when standing in front of the mirror, I like it.
Eating normally: Read on and see:
- The bestseller "Women Food and God" by Geneen Roth mentioned in the text under the title "Eating is not the problem" at Kailash
- Also by Geneen Roth: "When You Eat at the Refrigerator, Pull up a Chair," 217 pages, 8 euros, Hyperion
- Susie Orbach: "Praise of Food", 128 pages, 4 euros, mosaic by Goldmann
