The F*ck It Diet. Caroline Dooner
We evangelize, we spread the good news, and in a strange way, through diets, we are also seeking salvation and eternal life. It is our way of convincing ourselves that we are safe. It lets us feel better for a moment because at least we’re doing better than them. It’s the dark side of humanity wrapped up in a new cult.
And let me tell you! I have been a member of some diiiiet cults. (Mostly through online diet message boards.) I was a disciple! I spread the word. I drank the organic probiotic Kool-Aid. I paid the membership fees ($30 for a jar of raw sprouted almond butter). I’ve been a sucker. I’ve been judgmental. I thought I was possessed by the devil of refined sugar and food addiction. I’ve been there, and I speak firsthand.
I know what it feels like to believe. I know what it feels like to think that your cult is, well, first of all, not a cult. But I know what it feels like to believe that your diet is the right way. I know how safe it feels to follow a plan and really, really hope and believe that it will actually deliver on all of its promises.
And it all stems from fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of mortality. Fear of imperfection. Fear of losing control. Fear of aging. Fear of not being safe. Fear of the sins of the flesh. It’s sad, it’s lonely, it’s isolating, and it is so, so human.
Part of the big problem with the diet and beauty industries (and many other industries that capitalize on your insecurities) is that your fears are being exploited. They want you to believe you aren’t good enough as you are. They make you believe we are all supposed to look the same. They want you to believe that you need them to save you.
So if there’s any part of you that’s looking at me and hoping you end up where I ended up, or looking at anyone else and hoping to end up where they ended up, that’s a habit that I want you to become aware of. It’s a very human habit, we all do it, but it’s not helping. Trying to be someone else is what got us into this mess in the first place.
Your best self is probably the one who trusts yourself the most, is able to relax and be social when you feel like it, and is able to seek quiet time when you need it. Someone who is able to be spontaneous when it suits you, and willing to take up space, speak up, take risks, use your creativity, is willing for things to be messy and imperfect—and is an all-around happier human.
Some people are hesitant to go on The Fuck It Diet because they don’t know if they actually like who they really are. They’re not sure if who they really are is that special or interesting or attractive enough. I get it. That’s a scary thing to think. Thanks to lots of insidious messages from the media, from princess fairy tales, from family, from dysfunctional relationships, from other insecure women, or from diet, drug, fashion, and beauty companies, it can be hard to trust that you’re actually okay as you are, and that you don’t need to change or appease anyone. We’ll be exploring these concepts even more later in the book.
I want you to free yourself from diet cults, but I’m not ragging on God. I am a big fan of spirituality and “whatever word you’d like to use for God.” But beware of dogma. You can tell it’s all going south when you are experiencing lots of fear, judgment, and feel all-holier-than-thou.
Here is where I also tell you that once anyone starts making The Fuck It Diet into a cult—including hypothetical, foolish future-me—that is when you remember that you are your own boss, and that your own intuition is king.
Right before my own Fuck It Diet epiphany, I was paleo and kicking myself for eating too many bananas. It was around the holidays, and I was bingeing daily on paleo ginger snaps and paleo pumpkin pie made out of butternut squash and honey.
This had been my pattern for ten years. I would follow a diet religiously for a month or two or ten, and eventually find myself constantly hungry and thinking about food. Then I’d start to really take advantage of the “allowed” foods, normally bingeing on them at midnight. I would be furious with myself and every morning would try to regain control. Eventually I’d stop the diet completely, heartbroken that it didn’t heal me, or my bingeing, or my food addiction, and move on to another diet.
And now, here I was again, gaining weight again because I couldn’t even stick to a reasonable, very-low-carb paleolithic diet like the one our ancestors apparently ate. Get it together, Caroline!
My first inkling that something might be truly wrong, beyond my self-diagnosed “food addiction,” was when I started walking by the mirror and having really opposite reactions just a few minutes apart. I’d walk by and think, WOAH, I’m actually really thin . . . weird. I guess I didn’t gain ten pounds from all the almond flour ginger snaps I ate in bed last night.
Then a few minutes later I’d walk by the same mirror and think, WHAT!? How am I so big!? Oh GOD! Look at my FACE! Then the next morning, Wait, wait, I actually do look thin. WTF. I felt crazy.
It was only a month later when I had what I refer to as “my epiphany.” I was staring in the mirror over my bathroom sink, and it hit me like a bolt of understanding. I realized that my dysfunction with food was never going to change if I kept getting into this cycle over and over again. It would never change if I held on to my need to be skinny. In one moment it became so clear to me that not only was dieting metabolically backfiring, but my relationship to my weight was the core cause of my misery.
What came after the epiphany was hard, but the decision in that moment was simple. I intuitively believed that if I could surrender to the process, it would all work itself out—mind, body, and spirit. Nobody could promise me that it would work out, but on a deep level I knew that if I could be brave and embrace a higher weight, and feed my body what it needed, then I’d be free.
Most of the people I work with have already tried to heal their eating. They’ve tried intuitive eating or some other version of “just be balanced” or “just listen to your body.” They come to The Fuck It Diet after being so frustrated that they Google “Why doesn’t intuitive eating work?!” Really. That’s the number-one search phrase that brings people to my site.
If you’ve tried to heal your eating by not dieting before, and it didn’t work, that is most likely because you were ignoring your relationship to your weight and still trying to make intuitive eating into some kind of diet. Most of us think that if we can just “eat intuitively,” we will eat like a bird and become the naturally thin and happy version of ourselves. So many of us try to heal our eating without changing our relationship to weight as well. Ignoring how closely our feelings about eating and weight relate to each other is our big mistake.
Before my last-ditch-effort diet on paleo that led to The Fuck It Diet, I thought I was “eating intuitively” for six years. I thought that intuitive eating was the same as “sensible portion control.” I thought my “successful” stint of trying to eat like a “French woman” was intuitive eating. But it’s all a fucking diet in sheep’s clothing.
Now I realize that the entire time I thought I was eating intuitively, I was still focused on weight, and still scared of most foods, whether I was letting myself eat them or not. My intuitive eating was still used to try to eat less, which is inherently going to backfire.
Think of all of the unspoken things that dieting promises: that if you follow this simple four-month plan, you will become someone else—someone better. Eat only raw foods and practice daily sungazing at dawn, and not only will you be beautiful, but you will transcend this earthly plane. The promise is that with lots of willpower, you can obtain a perfect body, and when you do you can finally be proud. If you follow someone else’s rules, everything will finally become perfect and easy. And if you let yourself slip