Thanks for all the comments to the “Sick & Tired of ‘Food Decisions?'” post! Emails and tweets abounded. It was great to hear from you!

The quest for permanent weight loss MUST eventually become non-diet weight loss. Our willpower sooner or later deserts us. In fact, willpower was not equipped for long-range quests. In other words, diets have to morph into intelligent, sustainable lifestyles in order for the change to last. Diet mentality, on the other hand, has us yo-yo-ing our weight and repeatedly coming back for more dieting.

Many of the themes I heard from reader responses were from diet mentality and clearly centered on controlling food or controlling behavior with food, rather than focused on real needs. Let’s have a look:

1. But I Have to Eat – Nope! Not true. Diet mentality has forced this one on us. There are many times when it’s better for our bodies or minds NOT to eat. Sometimes, if you’re sick, slugglish, under the weather, or simply not feeling energetic, it may be a signal from the body that you need a time out. The duration of a time out might be a couple hours, or even an evening. Sometimes the body just needs lighter fare for a few days. If the body is not hungry, and tells you that, it’s time to listen.

If the body is not hungry, and we feed it anyway, we’re calling out the fat squad and telling it to “build more FAT!”

I’ve seen many clients transform their relationship to their bodies when they start to actually pay attention to what it is saying.

For example, many women experience a day of quite strong hunger before their period, then discover a day or two of very reluctant hunger signals during it. This is just the way the body balances itself. Does it make sense to pay so much heed to the hunger days and feed the voracious body but then ignore the signals of “leave me alone – I’m busy with other body functions” or “sorry – busy healing”??

Another time we may not get hunger signals from the body is when strong or conflicting emotions are present. Eating can interfere with sorting out thoughts and emotions. At these times, getting quiet and really hearing or feeling the inner concerns is more important than eating.

2. I’ll Freak if I Miss a Meal – This is diet mentality coupled with fear gone wild. Of course, many people start a diet program after quite erratic behavior with food or after withholding food from the body. If that’s the situation, eating at regular intervals is important in order to coax the body into feeling safe again (and to positively influence blood sugar highs and lows that may have developed from excessive dieting).

But this “diet rule” doesn’t continue forever! It’s funny how we often dump the diet but keep rules like “eat every 3 hours” around – we just substitute cheese puffs or donuts for the “snack.” I’ve seen the diet rule of “eat every 3 hours” help a lot of clients as they start the journey of body involvement but I also see many of them opting for eating meals and nothing else once they let go of the diet mentality and really get connected to their bodies.

Continual eating doesn’t give your digestion a break to do its work, and it takes enormous amounts of energy away from us… which usually leads to MORE eating. It’s a vicious cycle when we don’t listen to the body. Plus, if we eat to soothe or reassure ourselves, which is an emotional need, eating often doesn’t let us learn to do that in the realm where it should happen: the emotional.

3. Isn’t That Dieting? – This is a good question. In leaving behind the destructive behavior of diets and food avoidance, we sometimes over-attach to “gotta eat.” In fact, I think many of us avoid long-term weight loss because we like living in the food focused or foodcentric land of diet mentality, where we “have to” eat. It’s just a convenient excuse to maintain a negative attachment to food. Admittedly, it is a fine line to define. Diet mentality tells us to avoid food because it’s wrong, bad, evil, fat-making, or because we hate our body size, shape or condition. When we choose not to eat because we’ve tuned in and listened to the body and it says “NO”, we are responding to the body’s innate intelligence. It’s a choice.

That’s really the point: choice, based on internal signals, is very different than following a set of rules that comes from outside ourselves.