Hi ,

I spend a lot of time defending moderation.

It feels odd at times considering I spent a decade yo-yo dieting, gaining and losing the same 20-30 lbs multiple times and always having a diet “start date” on my calendar. I was an obsessive dieter who thought about food all the time.

Fast-forward a few years and I was absolutely miserable.

Hungry all the time. Cravings for sweets through the roof. Constantly thinking about food, and yet actually not getting any results for all the time and effort I was expending.

It was then that I experienced my ‘aha’ moment.

It came in the form of looking at the reality of what I was doing, and seeing that as much as I wanted to be someone who could “eat clean” all the time and stick with a diet and reaaaaally do it this time, I just … wasn’t.

Every week I’d vow to do better, be better, eat cleaner, reeeeeally do it this week!

And every single weekend I would binge.

I’d come to the end of the week exhausted from trying so hard, disgusted from the diet food I was making myself eat and feeling as though I deserved a reward for all my effort.

And so, I’d say screw it.

And then, once again, by Sunday I’d be disgusted with myself, ashamed of how much I ate over the weekend and vow to do better THIS week!

Lol. I did this week after week after WEEK.

No change in outcome. Not getting better. Just racking up a show of evidence that this deprive-then-binge weekly cycle I was in, was simply not working, no matter how much I wanted it to.

Einstein said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

And my reality was that as good as my intentions were, I was expecting a different result while not doing anything actually different.

Enter moderation.

Moderation for me started by giving myself some “nutritional relief” earlier in the week. Maybe it was a couple squares of chocolate, or a protein bar, or a few bites of cheese, or a glass of wine.

This was hard because I was so used to be either strict or totally off (aka all-or-nothing).

It felt wrong to allow myself non-diet foods every day. Like, uh, this doesn’t feel good enough, hardcore enough, like I’m trying hard enough?

And it was also scary because I didn’t trust myself to not overdo it. Besides, a glass of wine normally turned into: I’m just “drinking wine” now so I might as well make the most of it and drink ALL the wine because at some point this wine will be off-limits so I need to take advantage now.

I also didn’t trust that my naturally-huge appetite would adjust. I thought if I allowed myself some of these off-limits foods that I’d eat until death. Lol. Or gain 50 lbs overnight. Surely I would be able to regulate my eating?

But something interesting happened over time.

My appetite did even out.

I started to see evidence that these small “nutritional gimmes” didn’t have me gaining 50 lbs overnight.

I started to trust myself to be around some of the foods I was most scared of.

I stopped overindulging at night and on the weekends. The “preemptive cheats” I was giving myself earlier in the week helped even out the highs and lows in my eating.

And miraculously, I did start thinking about food less.

At first even that was disorienting! Because I’d be so used to obsessing that this felt too easy, like I wasn’t trying hard enough, surely eating is a battle every second, right? Right??

But my practice became taking bites of things or having a single portion of something or a sip of this, and then … letting that be it.

Moderation.

It took a long time to get good at it, but I did. With patience, self-compassion, resiliency and building a show of evidence that I could trust myself around food.

If you are on the path to quitting the all-or-nothing trap, I’m proud of you for trying something new, something different and being courageous enough to do what I think is way harder than all-or-nothing.

Moderation is a final solution.

It’s not an easy path, but it is worth the work.

Hope you are having a great week, and please let this be a little reminder to keep going, to keep trusting yourself, to keep digging and practicing mindfulness.

If you are here and open to this message, then you are well on your way!

… and our journey continues.

Xo,

Jill

P.S. If you are on Instagram, be sure to follow the @moderation365 account, where I share tools, tenets and strategies regularly!