One of my clients, Penny, is a woman struggling with dieting, food and her body. She came to me for help, since weight loss diets were not working, and she began to feel desperate. After menopause, she felt herself “getting fatter and fatter” and couldn’t figure out what to do about it.
We’ve worked together for the past few months, and gradually Penny has come to see the value in a “non-diet” approach to eating. We have talked about conscious eating, and about a hunger/fullness scale. She has practiced noticing when she’s hungry and when she’s satisfied. Recently she has really come to understand that her fullness signals are really a “whisper”, while her hunger signals are shouting at her. All of this, including allowing herself to eat what she really, really wants to eat, has recently just come together, so she has let go of dieting and is feeling very peaceful with food for the first time in as long as she can remember.
In a recent conversation, Penny shared with me that she was walking her dog one day, and as the dog pulled on the leash she suddenly realized that her diets had been like being on a leash. She had pulled and resisted every attempt to restrain her eating, and it had never worked. Now she feels as though she’s dropped the leash and is running free!
What a wonderful metaphor for dieting. Who wants to be on a leash?? And why would we ever think this could/would work?
From a Motivational Interviewing perspective, Penny came to a point of real readiness to change. She had been fighting with her urge to be thin and her natural desire to eat what she really wanted. Using a Decisional Balance or “pros and cons” approach, the list of pros in favor of dieting got so small it practically disappeared, while the pros list in favor of a non-diet, conscious eating approach got longer and outweighed the dieting mentality.
Penny reports she is at peace with food and her body for the first time in 20 years. What a great story!
