Restraint + Enough = MAGIC! 🙌 and WISHES come true

Suffering vs suffering: not a real choice.

Image: The Penitent Magdalen, Georges de La Tour, ca. 1640, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, 1978. Used with permission.

Important: Don't miss holiday newsie / shop schedule notice at bottom.

Now then! KJ sent a really great and short note after last week. (Thank you KJ!) Here is the first sentence:

Two main issues: 1) I don't know how to eat fewer calories without going on a diet. 

That's okay! I know how, and I'm going to tell you.

First, let's define "diet." For our purposes, I consider a diet to be 1. a rigid plan of 2. someone else's design (someone who doesn't know you or your life and is definitely not coming to save you when you run into trouble on their diet) that 3. is undertaken for the purpose of weight loss (which might be covert, and masquerading as "health" of some kind) and 4. is typically intended to be temporary.

So! 1. Rigid, 2. external, 3. and 4. = too extreme to sustain, aka insufficient nutrition.

In a word: SUFFERING. Three words: RECIPE FOR BINGEING.

Well, when you put it like that...

I think we can see immediately that there must be ways to eat less without going full unsovereign extreme rigidity. There's a Mama Bear diet for each of us. Something's that's just right, not too hot, not too cold, and enough nutrition, without which bingeing becomes irresistible. 

Here is the rest of KJ's email:

2) I am afraid to even approach the idea of losing weight because I just barely learned how to eat without restricting and bingeing. I am terrified of becoming a binge eater again. I would much rather be heavy but not gaining weight than bingeing and gaining weight. 

Good news: It's not an either/or. The choice is not between staying heavy or bingeing again. In fact, as my mentor Martha Beck taught me, we should be very suspicious about situations that seem to force a choice between two terrible alternatives. 

Such a situation is never real. The choice is never Do you want THIS kind of suffering, or THAT kind of suffering?

Look around! We live on the same planet as Bruce Lee and Maria Bamford. There are NEVER only two choices. The appearance of "two choices" is always a trick of the mind.

(Extra credit: who or what benefits when we believe the lie of only two terrible choices?)

There are infinity choices, and you can find what works for you, which by definition will mean 1. no suffering and 2. adequate nutrition. Just make your choices, and pay attention. 

I'm not talking about that exquisite, tender attention to every single bite that some systems ask you to pay. Dear heaven, NO. (Unless you want to.) We're just talking about seeing what happens as a result of your choices. Looking at the data, tinkering with the inputs.

You'll also want to use a little restraint when making your choices. Restraint is a superpower that adults who have enough nutrition on board to fuel some good thinking can deploy. 

Restraint—not restriction, not formlessness—is the real opposite of bingeing, btw. (We'll talk more about motivation, will and restraint next week.)

That's how you pull magical weight !oss out of hat: Get enough to eat. Not as much as your insatiable lower brain would like. Or as Michael Pollan would say, not too much. See what happens and tinker with the inputs. Think about other things and start passively taking apart food obsession. Learn Arabic or get a prison pen pal. Do things that feel good to your body and start expanding the single-input pleasure system. Give yourself a foot massage every day or make friends with a cat.

(Extra extra credit: Keep your new thing a secret if it feels fun.)

And don't go on a diet. <— But obviously check with your physician, nutritionist and/or psychologist. Because as you know, I am not qualified to give medical or nutritional advice.

I'm heading to the beach soon 🌴

Starting July I'll be on VACATION, and so will this newsletter. I will of course be in close touch as usual with everyone in Body of Knowledge! 💛 

Otherwise the newsletter will return in August, and the shop will be closed from midnight June 30.

This week is your last opportunity to get No More Binges, at least until the fall. If you want freedom from chaotic eating and you want it now, get in there immediately. 

Details here.