Do You Want To Be Thin Or A Dieter?

by Meg Meranus

Dieters deny themselves cake for weeks or months and then crack and binge on it.

With your Healthy Thin Mentality, you have the power, the cake doesn’t have power over you…

Dieting is:

  • Rigid rules
  • Ignoring your body
  • Joyless eating
  • Feeling victimized by circumstances

A thin mentality is:

  • No rules
  • Listening to your body
  • Extremely joyful eating
  • Feeling completely powerful around food

Example:

THE DIETER:
AT 11 PM, she gets up and looks in the fridge.  She knows that she shouldn’t eat anymore, because she has already had all her “points” today.    To make herself feel full, she pours a huge glass of water and drinks it.  Then, she goes up to bed feeling kind of sad and empty and hoping that she can sleep.

THE THIN MENTALITY PERSON:
It is 11 PM and she notices that the hunger pangs she felt an hour ago aren’t going away and that she really needs to eat something before bed.  She goes into the kitchen and looks for something warm and cheesy.  She doesn’t know why she is craving that and she doesn’t care.  She trusts herself, and knows that if she eats when she is hungry, she is eating with respect for her body.  She makes a delicious cheese toast.  Feeling very pleased that she has the food she likes in her fridge, and that she can take care of her hunger, she takes her bedtime snack up to her room and eats it happily.  She is relaxed, feels lucky, and anticipates a nice night’s sleep.

Yes, the dieter in this example may be lighter the next morning because she has forgone food.  But over time, ignoring your body will backfire on you.  Eating when you are hungry, as the thin mentality person does, will never make you fat.  And when you respect your hunger, and non hunger, you will normalize your relationship with food and begin to understand this:

What got you fat or heavier than you want to be, wasn’t eating a snack when you were hungry, it was eating when you WEREN’T hungry.  And remember, all food, even organic, highly nutritious food, will make you fat if you aren’t hungry when you eat it.  

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