Rewilding myself

[galadhir]

Having thoughts about how restoring ground is all about encouraging it to do the things it was going to do naturally if it had only been left alone. About how the earth's ecosystems are complex interconnected systems that exist in a beneficial equilibrium and can self-correct in order to stay healthy... IF they are not pushed too far out of kilter by unwise forceful intervention.

Then thinking about how the same is probably true of the human body. Also a self-correcting ecosystem of many interconnected systems.

Maybe the human body evolved to keep itself at a weight that was healthy for it. Maybe it's the human intervention of unwise forceful starving to try to bend it into a form that we like, for arbitrary reasons, that throws the whole system out of kilter.

Maybe if we just trusted the hugely complex system that we are to know what to do, things would be better with us?

Idk, but the parallels feel relevant to me as I'm currently trying to learn to eat intuitively after a lifetime of dieting. I've tried to control my body so long I have no idea what it would be like if it was allowed to do its own thing. But maybe... maybe it would pleasantly surprise me? I hope so. Watch this space.

Comments

[mistressofmuses]

I definitely think there's something to that!

There are an awful lot of things that would do pretty okay if just... left to their own devices.

Not everything, and I'm certainly delighted for medical science that means sickness and disability can be managed.

But there are *many* things that we try to control to death, and I don't think we do any good in the long run by doing so.

[galadhir]

Oh yes, I'm definitely all for medicine and disability accommodations! I'm just at the end of 30 odd years of dieting and facing the fact that I can't keep doing that to myself. Like 95% of people, diets don't seem to work for me in the long term. So I'm left with the hope that if I just try to eat when I'm hungry and not eat when I'm not hungry, maybe things will eventually come into some kind of homeostasis. (They do for my husband, and my children, none of whom diet.)

It was just occurring to me that possibly dieting was to the body what modern farming was to the earth--an attempt to force it beyond its natural boundaries that ended up rebounding into multiple much worse problems.

I've really got to hope that self-acceptance will work for me (and still let me dance) because I don't think I have another choice any more.

[ranunculus]

Weight loss for me happens when I get lots of excercise AND do not have access to food all the time. So when I'm working I both loose weight and gain muscle. This year has been really hard with major stressor after major stress plus, since January, a knee injury. Gained an additional 10# which is a big deal for me.
If I had had a sedentary job I think I would have been chubby all my life. Instead I had a hard, physical job and was pretty thin my whole life.

[galadhir]

Yeah, I am mostly sedentary, except that I cycle 40 miles a week. I used to dance a lot too, three evenings a week and most weekends, but as that was a social thing I haven't been able to do that over the past year. For me the fear is not so much being fat as the fear that I will never stop growing fatter until I can't move any more, because if I have an upper limit on how much I'll weigh, I haven't found it yet. I just keep going up and up and never level off anywhere.

This time, thanks to therapy and not restricting myself (and therefore not binging) my eating seems to have stabilized, but my weight gain has been sudden, dramatic and ongoing. If it levels off anywhere, even if that place is at chubby, I will be happy.

(The intuitive eating books tell me that this is how it goes - you go up to the top of your weight range and then slowly come back down to settle somewhere in the middle. So I have some hope that that's what will happen to me too. But the process is pretty horrifying.)

[ranunculus]

I really hope you find something that wors for you. I know it is a very difficult problem.

[galadhir]

Thanks! I'm going to give the intuitive eating a year to be sure it's had a fair chance before I start really panicking :)

[mistressofmuses]

I agree! I feel like my attempts to diet have generally made things worse for me in the long run. I hope that intuitive eating helps you! I've seen a few articles to that effect before, stating that most bodies have a point at which they become comfortable, and relatively consistent for weight.

That's an interesting parallel with modern farming. (Or even some things like "enriching" white flour - which is an attempt to add nutrients back in... most of which were present in the whole wheat flour, before it was processed into white flour.)
I feel like we (general, human "we") put an awful lot of effort into "fixing" things that only need it because we keep breaking them as a matter of course. If we'd just stop breaking it in the first place, we wouldn't need to go to extraordinary lengths to shoddily repair it, and cause more problems as we do.

I think self-acceptance is one of the best things to strive for, tbh. I struggle with it sometimes, but am definitely trying.

[galadhir]

Thanks! I really hope that there is a set point for my weight, but I have no idea what it might be, if there is. The books say that in the process of re-feeding yourself after a diet, your body piles on weight, goes up to the top of your weight range, and then - as long as you don't panic and start dieting again - slowly comes back down to the middle.

But the process can take a year, and I'm currently in the 'OMG, I'm so fat! What if it doesn't work?! What if I carry on getting fatter until I can't move?' stage. Keeping my nerve and trusting that my body knows what it's doing is surprisingly difficult.

You're absolutely right that if we as humans would just stop breaking things, we would spare ourselves so much effort and angst! I wonder if the propensity to just do everything the hardest and most painful way possibly is what original sin is all about? It does seem to be baked in to the entire species.

[mistressofmuses]

I remember reading that, about weight hitting the natural max until your metabolism kicks in and knows you aren't going to starve, and then settles back to a base point. My weight *used* to be like that, and then like so many, I got out of my 20s and suddenly didn't have that same comfortable settling point.

I feel your pain, so I hope that things get better! (I'm in that same place right now... I was fairly slender for a long time, and over the last couple years have gotten heavier. I'm struggling a bit with it, and hoping that a summer *not* spent in lockdown will make it easier for me to get some exercise.)

Hmmm... that sounds like a very interesting philosophical question!

[galadhir]

It's funny, my son was absolutely rake skinny until he hit his twenties, at which point - without changing anything about his diet - he suddenly became burly. But he put on maybe a couple of stone and then stopped again, and now he's holding steady at the new, higher weight. It's one of the things that makes me think they're right about weight set points, because there wasn't any change in diet or exercise that caused that, it was just genetic or hormonal. I think our bodies are probably much more mysterious than we give them credit for :)