Last night, I had dinner and drinks at a friends house. This friend of mine has always been thin, seemingly without trying. If she did ever gain weight it only went to the good places, so I assumed she was one of those lucky ones who didn’t need to worry about fitness. That’s why I was surprised when she told me about her vigorous new gym routine. As a fitness enthusiast myself, I’m happy to hear that anyone is starting to lift weights; it’s good for the bones, physical and mental health, and for the spirit, so I’m all for it. But when my already-thin friend began to tell me about how much she’d be training and how few calories she was going to be eating, alarms began to sound in my head. I’ve been into fitness for the last ten years of my life, and because of extreme dieting, I’ve spent much of that time rectifying issues with food.

I had the foundation laid for eating issues before I began dieting. As a kid, I was a good eater. I found comfort in carby food, and I was stockier than my friends who were naturally skinny — and I noticed. Still, the occasional over-indulgence never got out of control until I started cutting calories at age twenty. At 5'6, I was adhering to a strict intake of 1400 calories while cycling weightlifting and cardio. I always ate below my basal metabolic rate (the calories your body burns at rest) so I would be at a deficit and therefore be burning fat. That worked great…for a while. At 135 pounds, my washboard stomach caught shadows in the light; my jeans fit with a comfortable inch between the button and my skin; my obliques outlined a lovely V shape that made me proud. I thought I was honoring this body of mine, but truly, I was laying the groundwork for an eating disorder while taking my energy away from things that actually mattered. Ten years later, it’s easy to step back and see the big picture. In the thick of things, however, the gradually increasing toxicity of dieting was hard to see.

A​t night when I had reached my allowed calorie intake, my stomach would go into frenzy. In the beginning, I convinced myself to enjoy this feeling because that meant fat would be burned for energy in my sleep. Later though, I remember having to leave my bed at night because the pain was too uncomfortable. Hurrying past alluring East Coast Pizza joints filled with normal people enjoying a slice with friends, I would out-walk and out-talk my body’s desperate cry for fuel. The will power I could have been using to excel in college was being drained convincing my starving body that we were in fact not starving. This worked still, with some occasional slip-ups, for another few years.

A​bout four years into this lifestyle, the slip-ups were more common, often anticipated. My body needed sustenance, and by willpower alone I kept it away until biology took over. After some alcohol, I would leave parties to hit the junk food stops on the way back to my apartment. That was far more exciting than talking to girls and trying to get laid at the time. Around this era in my “fitness” journey, I was heavier than 135 pounds (because I was over-eating to counter starvation) but I desperately wanted to get back to that number. I wouldn’t eat off-diet in public ever; my rules were etched into stone. My friends and I would be out late, living life being normal twenty-somethings, and end the night at a diner at two in the morning. I would eat vegetables if anything, but mostly sit there and drink water like a maniac. It was weird. It was also wasted effort because many of those nights I woke up at 6 AM, unable to quell the discomfort of starvation, and drove to get all the junk food a 7-Eleven had to offer. Then I made sure to work extra hard at the gym to undo this “sin”.

I​n the later years of this decade of “fitness”, I evolved to intermittent fasting. In this way, I could relax on eating perfectly clean and opt for time constricted eating. Some days, I sipped black coffee and went twenty hours without eating, then I’d ease my rules within a feeding window. That felt less manic at the time — but it wasn’t for me. This can be healthy for many people, but for my distorted mind it was just another insidious obsession. I was still far away from my weight goal. I was over-eating constantly when I’d lose control. I was running and lifting weights five times a week while also pretending to live a life outside of fitness, but I had already chosen a life. There was little time to be present or real in any other situation with workouts, eating windows, calories, and the ever-present NEED to lose weight occupying my heart and mind.

Skipping over darker times and vivid detail, I finally stopped dieting at thirty years old — and I mean not at all. I eat whatever I want whenever I feel hungry. At first, this seemed like a green light to indulge, but as the months went on, I noticed that I stopped lusting after the bad foods. I began to be okay with my body even though I am twenty-five pounds overweight this time. Slowly but steadily, I am seeing the weight go down, and I believe forever this time. This solution can last because when nothing is forbidden, there is no desire to sabotage my progress with all the bad foods. It’s been almost six months now and the weight is coming off gradually by eating a little less, moving a little more, and allowing indulgences as they arise rather than banish them away where they grow to become an unconquerable monster.

I watched my friend that night when dinner arrived. She nibbled on a bread stick briefly, but commented about why she shouldn’t, and pushed the rest of them far away from her salad. Myself and others indulged in our ranch dressing, bread sticks, salads, and a Tri-tip sandwich in my case without guilt or worry. When we left, she made sure to send us home with all the tempting foods. After ten years of experience, I learned its far better to have one or two slices of pizza with friends then to nibble on broccoli and pretend you’re satisfied. You are racking up interest on a credit card and someday that amount is due — with interest! You’ll order an entire pizza for yourself, and your primal brain will take over control while you eat the whole thing. Sooner or later, the debt is due. If you’re spending an hour burning calories your body isn’t used to burning, it will demand fuel. If you’re lifting heavy weights, tearing and rebuilding muscle, putting the body under a stress it’s never felt, it will cry out for nutrition. Food is fuel; some fuel is more efficient than others, but that’s all it is. Don’t turn a bread stick into a temptation of biblical proportions — it’s only a bread stick.

I believe if I never dieted to such extremes, I wouldn’t have had extreme weight gain on the other side of the coin. Discipline is a good thing, but you won’t win if you’re fighting impulses that endured for hundreds of thousands of years to keep us alive. You can exercise to honor your body or to punish your body, and the exercise can be the same. Intention is important. Honor your body. Run and lift weights and push your limits, but please give your body the food it needs to live up to these demands. Gradual growth is better. Rapid change is usually met by a reset and balance of equilibrium. I reinforce the power of gradual change by thinking of it this way: reading ten pages of a book each day racks up to three hundred pages in a month, which would mean finishing many books. A personality like mine tends to want to read one hundred pages each day, then can’t keep up with that arbitrary demand, and the same book will collect dust on my desk, unread, for six months. Gradual dieting could have brought me down ten pounds or so over a few years, slowly chiseling away the fat and sculpting the body I wanted. But I wanted it quickly; immediately, before the next beach day. I demanded an impossible caloric intake or starved for eighteen hours with only a garden salad to satisfy. That led me to develop an appetite for the forbidden foods didn’t exist before.

To my dear friend and new friends reading this, go ahead and lift weights; go run and sweat and push and triumph. Clean up your diet if you wish; eat clean most of the time not because cookies and ice cream are evil, but because whole foods make you feel better after eating them. But do me a favor: Have birthday cake at a birthday party. Have pizza when your friends order it for movie night. If you’re craving a greasy double cheeseburger after a night of drinking — get one. That’s the beauty, get ONE. Let your body have those little indulgences so that you keep them at little indulgences. Remember, it’s only a bread stick. Now go live your life!