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

[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 :)