What an interesting and fascinating time in my life. I am often asked, “What’s your ‘diet’?” and “What do you eat?”. I am frustrated with the “diet” emphasis on food that has become an obsession in everyday conversations. The focus solely on food as a “diet” places limitations and restrictions on our relationship with food and eating. As my relationship with nutritional intake has changed, I have removed the words “diet” and “dieting” from my vocabulary. The latin origin of the word DIET is way of life.
In my 20’s (I love that I can say that), I did the Atkins Diet, Zone Diet, Cabbage Soup Diet, and Weight Watchers. These attempts were all about “losing weight”, never about my relationship with food and how I chose to live. These “diets” worked, I met a “goal”. I lost weight. 5-15 lbs, back and forth, up and down on into my early 30’s when I did the South Beach Diet.
At 27, I went to a Weight Watcher’s meeting with my best friend Susan, she was getting married and wanted to lose some weight. I remember during the lecture, we were being taught the point system and the points for beer. I raised my hand and said, “You mean I drank an entire weeks worth of points Friday night?” (The Taco Bell didn’t help either). The room got silent and I thought Susan was going to crawl under her seat! Clearly, how I was living wasn’t matching up with my attempts to improve my eating. These shenanigan’s and oscillating events continued on for several more years.
In 2006, just before I turned 36, after working out with my trainer for 18 months, he encouraged me to compete in a figure competition! Once, I figured out what he was talking about I decided YES and I was scared to death. Keep in mind I had not changed my eating as I worked out over the previous year. He said, “You will need to diet.” I thought “What in the hell?” So, I embarked on a new understanding and realization of food in relationship with my body.
I competed throughout 2007 and 2008. I learned to eat in a more balanced way, integrating the proper amounts of protein, carbohydrate and fat, what is termed as clean eating. For the shows there was a very specific way of eating for a finite amount of time, which made sense in order to “meet a goal”. I now understand my relationship with food. It’s at this time I gave up the scale and simply went by how I felt and how my clothes were fitting.
A few months ago I absolutely did not want meat. I was perplexed and honestly didn’t know what to do, this was way outside of what I knew. I simply had to and wanted to listen to my body. I decided to begin an amazing experience of raw foods. Believe me, this wasn’t because I was onto the next craze or “diet”. While I have been able to return to certain meats, I have now discovered and integrated into my way of life a way of eating that nourishes my body and I feel wonderful!
"Connecting to how we fit into LIFE rather than our clothes, is the amazing experience of integrating the beauty of who we are on the inside with the beauty of what we show the world on the outside!" ~Rhonda Hubler