I don’t have a diet mentality per-se, but having battled life-long food addiction (and other behavioral addictions) I lack trust in my body’s signals. I read with envy the way other folks are able to listen to what their body needs and follow the carnivore or keto path ad libitum. Even after all these years (low carb since 2002, keto since 2017) my addictions seem to override my signals, with a definite catastrophic worsening due to perimenopause hormonal disruptions. To the point I started reading about addiction recovery for any kind of hints!
Annoyingly, most addiction recovery literature is about hard drugs and irrelevant, I don’t even struggle with alcohol, thankfully, but I was still curious as to the addiction mechanisms. The food addiction books and coaches are, of course, more relevant but the best advice they give is on managing behavior. And if they are suggesting keto to curb cravings, I’m already there and still I struggle. I went carnivore for 3 years to shut down as many of the relentless addiction messages coming from my own head as I could, and it still didn’t bring full relief.
Luckily I feel no shame only chagrin. I was set up from literally day one to be an addict when I was born with a predisposal to addiction genetically, then given soy formula loaded with corn syrup when my mom was unable to breastfeed.
All this to say, I really feel for food addicts! It’s a bear. I am relentless if nothing else, though, and I will stay the course forever. This way of eating gives me more health and freedom than any other.
Last night I ate a 1 pound fatty ribeye, 10 strips of bacon, 4 ounces of cheese, some unprocessed pastrami, and I could have kept going but I ran out of time lol. I’m 54, 5’ 7” and 166 pounds. I want to eat to satiety, but I’m not sure I have that. I want to trust the process but I have gone down wrong paths doing that before. But here we go, let’s do this again. I’m game.