Perfectly Timed Food Experiments When Breaking Free From Dieting

I remember the period of time when I stopped dieting, quit following diet culture, and removed myself from the whole dieting world. I'll be honest, it was messy! The thing is the rules and regulations of dieting can create a sense of safety that you're doing something "right" and you're in control. When you have potentially been relying on a diet for years to provide you with the "rules" on how to eat, it can bring up all sorts of emotions no longer having those regulations to abide by when eating. Throwing out all rules and regulations when it comes to food can feel overwhelming and dysregulating that you find yourself back on a diet to feel that sense of safety from the structure.

Moving away from dieting will mean cultivating trust within yourself and your decisions and finding other ways to feel safe and in control that have nothing to do with food. To foster this sense of trust in your body, experimenting with food formerly labeled as "bad" or "wrong" or "unhealthy" will be important to de-label all foods and re-learn how your current day body responds to different foods. You then get to make Food Decisions based on your current day bodily feedback which can create that sense of trust that your body can talk to you and you will listen and honor its messages. You get to decide though when is the optimal timing to engage in these food experiments.

We all have what is called our Window of Tolerance. The Window of Tolerance is the optimal zone of “arousal” for a person to function in everyday life. When a person is operating within this zone or window, they can effectively manage and cope with their emotions.​ In this zone, you're able to self soothe and self regulate.​ If you have experienced an event that was processed as traumatic in the body, your nervous system can become more sensitive where ​your Window of Tolerance narrows and ​it can ​feel​ more difficult to regulate.​ Additionally, feeling overly stressed and overwhelmed can push you ​outside your Window of Tolerance making it more difficult to navigate your emotions and your external world.

On a food and body healing journey, widening your Window of Tolerance will be important to feel like you can navigate your inner world with more ease and we need to approach this in a bite-sized way. If you engage in a food or body experiment on a day where you're already outside your Window of Tolerance you will further move into a fight, flight, or freeze response where it can feel more difficult to cultivate the new relationship with food you're striving to create.

So, what does it feel like to be out of your Window of Tolerance?

Body cues you can look out for include:

• Anxiety

• Panic

• Fear

• Defensiveness

• Anger

• Activated

• Difficulty sleeping

• Difficulty concentrating

• Reactive

• Feeling threatened

• Shaking

• Tension

• Ridgidness

• Impulsive

• Repetitive thoughts

• Stuck

• Shutdown

• Numb

• Low energy

• Emotionally flat

• Lack of Appetite

• Intense urge to reach for food

Getting to know when you're outside your Window of Tolerance will be an important part of healing your relationship with food so that when you feel the urge to reach for food or restrict it can become your red flag that you're outside what you can handle. Having the awareness of your bodily cues that you're outside what you can tolerate, you can then actively engage in regulating acts. Structure on these days will be helpful of making sure you're eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner, eating foods you feel comfortable eating, and providing yourself plenty of emotional self care will be important to move back into your optimal zone of functioning.

Body cues you can notice when you're inside your Window of Tolerance include:

• Balanced

• Calm

• Relaxed

• Feeling in control

• Sense you can take on whatever comes your way

• Rational

• Clear thinking

• Able to focus

• Alert

• Can more easily navigate discomfort

• Ability to flow with emotions

The days or moments you notice you're within your Window of Tolerance that is the day or meal that will be the optimal timing to engage in a food experiment as you are in a space where you can more easily navigate whatever emotions, thoughts, reactions arise from eating a food that perhaps feels uncomfortable to eat because it has been labeled as bad or wrong or unhealthy to consume. In this state, you will be able to more easily hear how this food actually digests and assimilates in your body. With that information, you get to make your own decisions about whether or not you want to eat that food in any moment based on how it makes you feel instead of that you shouldn't or its wrong or bad to eat.

If you notice you're outside your Window of Tolerance, here are a few actions you can explore:

Bring your attention your breath. Dropping down from the stories in your mind to the consistent nature of your breath can be calming and regulating. Breath in for a count of 4 and exhale for a count of 4.

Describe your environment. Often this very moment, this very second, there is not much going on. You can describe the color of your clothes, the things on your walls, what you see outside the window. You can come into the safety of this moment.

Write down your emotions and sensations. You can explore imagery that goes along with what you're feeling. Get curious if there is something you're needing to know or hear or do. You can attend to your needs to fill yourself up emotionally.

It takes time and practice to notice when you're outside your Window of Tolerance to guide yourself back in again and again and over time your Window of Tolerance can grow. As a reminder, you never have to figure this out on your own. If you're ever looking for support, email me at support@stephaniemara.com anytime.