If Not Now, When?

I put off the decision to stop dieting as long as I could. Until it was life or death.

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Almost a year ago, I decided to stop dieting. It wasn’t a snap decision, but it was definitive. The truth is, I had known for a long time that I needed to stop. I even knew how I would do it. I just wasn’t ready. And by wasn’t ready, I mean I was terrified. Terrified of the unknown, terrified I wouldn’t be able to stop eating, terrified I would blow up and turn into the Stay Puft Marshmallow, which I do feel like sometimes. I held so tightly to this idea that I could control the size of my body, and I was terrified of letting go.

Change can be scary. And there are few things that scare us more than our bodies changing. But at some point, if all we think about is the body we hate, the food we can’t have or shouldn’t be eating, and the exercise we have to do to make up for our perceived failings, we’re being consumed by something that is keeping us from living. 

Many of us put off making decisions we know are in our best interest. We spend years silently warring with ourselves over something we should have already done. What is it that finally pushes us to decide the time is now? For lifelong dieters, it’s often the slow dawning that despite our best efforts to follow all the rules, we keep losing and gaining the same twenty pounds. We’re caught on the hamster wheel, not making progress, and always consumed by negative thoughts.

Over the years, I kept hearing about intuitive eating, and the idea of tuning into my body’s natural hunger and satiation cues made complete sense. But it meant taking a leap of faith.  Even scarier, it meant trusting myself and my body. While we’re born knowing exactly what to do, over time, we’re told quite the opposite—we shouldn’t trust ourselves or our bodies. We’re taught to fear our own judgment and ignore our own needs. We’re taught to not listen.

The decision to stop dieting remained somewhere in the recesses of my mind for a long time, but that little voice inside telling me it’s time had been getting louder.

There came a day when I could no longer ignore it. 

For many months, one of my children had been locked in her own battle with her body. She had been diagnosed with anorexia and done four months in a partial hospitalization program, where she had added some, but not all the weight she needed to regain. For a while, things were stable, but then the eating disorder returned with a vengeance.  

Leading up to the day that I stopped dieting, things had gotten really bad. Every meal and snack was a battle. Finishing often ended in protest. One afternoon, we were in the car heading somewhere, and I had brought along a nutrition bar and told her it was time to eat. My request was denied. I tried again and again, and was refused each time, both of us getting angrier and angrier. Finally, she took the unwrapped bar and shoved it in my face and screamed, “YOU EAT IT!!!

I was so stunned, unsure how this was going to unfold, but I did as I was told, taking a bite and chewing slowly. Then she took a few bites and then handed the bar to me. I took a few more, passed it back, and she finished the rest. We were both emotionally spent.

“It helps me eat when you eat with me,” she revealed after a few minutes of silence. It was the first time she had given me any kind of clue that might help her.

She didn’t know the impact of her words, but at that moment, the switch flipped. I knew exactly what I needed to do. There would be no more dieting. I would eat whatever she needed me to whenever she needed me to. 

I want to stop for a second and just say that parents struggling with their own negative food thoughts and body issues can still support a child with an eating disorder. But there are some well-established rules everyone living with someone with anorexia should be following. No one should be actively discussing diets, dieting or restriction, “good” or “bad” foods, food choices, or their or anyone else’s bodies, and no one in the home should be actively dieting. Where this gets complicated is that most of us have been fully indoctrinated into diet and wellness culture, and we often don’t realize we’re engaging in dieting behavior. Things like not eating certain foods, not eating certain foods at certain times, cutting out entire food groups or only eating at certain times of the day, for example.

I can tell you I quit dieting for my kid—my kids actually, because I decided then and there that I wanted to be a better model for all of them. But the truth is, I had known for years that I needed to stop the crazy eating behavior and overexercising driven by my futile quest to make my body into something it could never be. I had just been too scared to do it for myself. 

I stopped dieting at the most critical point, when I absolutely needed to. But I wonder if I had been a little more in tune with myself—if I had trusted in myself just a little more than I did—would I have gotten to that place much sooner?

Maybe not dieting isn’t that thing you keep putting off. Maybe it’s going back to school or taking that pottery class you’ve always wanted to try. Maybe it’s starting a business or committing to that writing retreat in Italy you've always dreamed of. 

At some point, it’s time to take action. So listen to that little voice in your head. Lean in and ask her what she’s scared of. Listen to what she’s trying to tell you and see if you can make sense of it. 

What’s stopping you? If not now, when?

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