I had a thought yesterday as I was holding a big soup spoon in one hand and reaching for the peanut butter jar with the other. I don't walk around hungry anymore. I don't go to sleep hungry. I'm not generally physically hungry (as in stomach growling) before meals. I don't try to delay breakfast in the morning, or stop eating at a certain time at night. I eat what I want to total satisfaction every time, as opposed to trying to stop at "just enough," or some numerical fullness level, or some planned portion.
This is recent. This is like in the last year or so since finding The F*ck It Diet and Tabitha Farrar. Up until then I was still trying to make "smart choices," which is another way of saying "restrict food." You know, just a little bit! For health! It feels so much better NOT to be doing that. Health is eating enough. It's plenty of variety, lots of energy for fun things, and a robust metabolism. It's freedom from obsessive thoughts. Nothing brings on obsession and worry like chronically underfeeding yourself. Cue the crisis chatter. "When can I eat next? What can I eat? How much are they eating? Should I eat that? I can't wait to eat! No, I can't have that! How will I stop eating? Don't eat too much! Oh, no! What have I done?"
Eating without all that stressful commentary results in better food choices, I think, more in line with actual needs, not so reactive. But get too hungry or too controlling and the obsessive commentary gets really loud, like an obnoxious sports announcer, basically drowning out what your body is trying to tell you.
My first "all in" experience was post-anorexia when I gained a lot of weight very quickly because I just couldn't restrict anymore. Mentally, I was ready to surrender, and biologically my body was going for it. At the time, I couldn't have restricted my food if I wanted. After a year or two of eating freely, my body and mind calmed down, and of course I started restricting again, leading to decades of struggle. This was a kind of limbo land where I was never severely under weight again and never gaining uncontrollably (as I had feared), but just struggling pointlessly to lose and gain the same 15-20 pounds over and over again. I tried "all in" multiple times in that state, gained weight quickly, panicked, and went running back to restriction. I saw every attempt as proof that I couldn't eat normally.
I really think it depends on the person and where they are mentally and physically on whether it's better to just eat, gain some weight and get it over with, or whether that's going to cause so much panic and chaos that it leads back to restriction. In some cases it's better to drop the reins gradually and build freedom and self-trust through a lot of smaller decisions adding up. I've done it both ways. This last time, I shed restriction gradually over about a ten year period. Which is funny, because I was thinking I had shed it when I started this site, but I kept finding layers of old rules and restrictions that I had so internalized I didn't even recognize them as such. The stuff runs deep!
Do you think you could have gotten to this place without years of slowly trying to shed restriction and dieting? Or do you think if you had found The F*ck It Diet and Tabitha Farrar 10 years ago, you would have been able to go all in?