Lane 9 Project’s May 2018 Writing Prompt: It was supposed to be easy
Armed with a new approach to nutrition, my own LLC, and an empty notebook ready to be filled with client details, I was ready. I was SO ready to tell you about the non-diet approach, food freedom, and how you’ll never need to step on a scale again. I knew I had to pace myself, that you wouldn’t be ready for this message right away, but I had so much to share! I was ready to do right by you, instead of indulging in desires for meal plans, exact answers, and calorie counts. It was supposed to be easy to undo diet culture’s message, because I was ready.
I knew that you wanted a weight loss goal; I refused to give you a number. I refused to indulge the weight-centric narrative. I refused to do the math with you, or to promise the “results” you were looking for. My anti-diet armor was on; my intuitive eating brain was bursting with one-liners it was sure would change your mind; my pen was ready to write different goals for you to work on.
You wanted none of it. You weren’t ready to hear my message, and you didn’t ask for it. You felt uncomfortable in your skin. You didn’t trust a dietitian who wouldn’t help you diet. You wanted weight loss and you wanted it yesterday.
It was supposed to be easy to give you my new talking points! It was supposed to be easy to convince you that diets don’t work — isn’t it obvious? Would we have been in that room together, talking about weight loss, if diets did work? It was supposed to be fun and exciting and easy to bring you back to eating intuitively–actually, to reintroduce you to it for the first time in decades. It was supposed to be easy to pull you over to this other side of nutrition, and then to do the work together.
It wasn’t easy. You weren’t ready. I wasn’t listening to you. I hadn’t even finished reading the Intuitive Eating book yet, so I didn’t know that I was jumping too far ahead of you (and my own IE-counseling skill level at the time).
If I could do it again, I would give you more space to explore. I would meet you in the middle for as long as needed, to ease you into the world of notdieting, and to be there with you, supporting you in that space. I would know that we can’t jump right to hunger and fullness. You can’t just drop decades of dieting because I said so.
It’s a process. It’s not linear. It’s yours to have and mold and embrace on your time, with a little help from me.