What happens when someone who gave up dieting six years ago drops her calories by just 300 a day?

Apparently, a full-blown flashback. Within days the food noise was back. So was the bargaining (“if I skip this at lunch, I can still have that dinner”), along with the 5pm “sod it, I’ll eat anything that isn’t nailed down” moment I’d honestly forgotten used to be my normal.

I lasted less than a week. And it turned out to be one of the most useful weeks I’ve had in ages.

In this episode I share:

• Why I decided to try building muscle and losing fat this year, without scales or photos
• The surprisingly big difference between 2,000 and 1,700 calories (spoiler: it wasn’t the hunger that got me)
• How the same “failure” that used to send me spiralling became simple information
• What it means to put peace at the centre of your decisions, and why that doesn’t mean giving up on results
• The third option between rigid dieting and total chaos, which nobody tells you exists

If you’ve ever promised yourself “this time will be the one,” this episode is for you. That includes the version of you who’s already planning next Monday’s fresh start.

Come and say hi on Instagram @lifeeditwithalix, and if this one landed, send it to a friend who’s still on the Monday-reset merry-go-round.

Welcome to the Busy Woman's Guide to well Being.

I'm your host, Alex, and I am here for every single one of you who is nailing so much in your life and is so busy looking after everybody else's well being while your own, well, it often ends up getting put on the back burner.

Here's where we fix that.

Today we're going to be talking all about a recent experiment that I did on myself where I cut my calorie intake.

And I'm going to talk about what it can tell you about the all or Nothing diet Life Core.

Let's get into it.

Hello, welcome back this week and we're going to be talking all about a little experiment that I inadvertently did on myself a couple of months ago and how it relates to the all or nothing diet cycle, what it reminded me of, what it told me and what you can learn from it that is going to help you to make different, better decisions for yourself in the future around diets, around food, and around how you look after yourself in that area.

Now, just to give it a bit of background, the reason this happened was that at the start of this year, end of last year, I decided that I wanted to challenge myself.

I'm turning 50 this year, in fact, in a couple of days time.

And I decided that I wanted to gain some muscle and I wanted to lose some fat.

Now, for those of you that have listened to this for a little while, you will know that I gave up diets probably, I'm going to say, six years ago now.

I'd got to the point where I just, I just knew in my body I was like, I cannot do this to myself anymore.

I'd been doing it for almost 20 years.

I had been, you know, pretty disciplined with it, apart from when I went on holidays and things like that where I just went completely mental.

But I'd, I'd just been doing it for a really long time and I was just sick of that.

I was sick of thinking about it all the time, bargaining with myself all the time, limiting what I was eating, all the time feeling guilty for eating certain things all the time.

And I just wanted a bit of flipping peace.

I just wanted to be able to enjoy the experience of food without all of the stuff that went around it.

And so my journey began of really letting go of that, learning how to let go of that and learning a lot about myself as well.

You know, one of the things for me that was really important in that time was, was working on my self esteem, self worth, the stories and beliefs that I had about myself.

And that all played into how I.

How I went about getting myself into a place.

Food felt a lot more peaceful.

And so I did that over a sort of extended period.

And it was lovely.

You know, it was so nice to just feel more relaxed around food, to eat the things that I wanted to eat, feel less guilt and all, all of that.

But what happened is I put a bit of weight on because obviously, after having kept my weight very low for a very long time, that was going to happen.

Not because I was particularly out of control, but just because my body kind of needed to put a bit on because it was like, we've been here for a really long time, we need to sort that out, balance things out a little bit.

And so I got to a point where actually I didn't feel bad about my body, I didn't hate my body.

But I also thought, you know what?

I'd love to see what I can achieve this year.

And muscle gain was a really big thing for me.

But I knew that in order to do that, I'd need to lose a bit of fat as well, because then you can see the muscle better.

And I was going to need to track my protein and things like that so that I could make sure I was eating enough to build the muscle that I wanted to build.

And so I started the year on that track.

And I was originally eating 2,000 calories a day, and I was losing weight, doing that.

Now, just so you know, I don't weigh myself.

I don't actually have any idea how much weight I've lost this year.

The only thing I did was measure myself.

I didn't take any photos either.

A lot of people do that.

I was like, no, I know that that's going to send me on a spiral.

I'm not doing it.

So for me, it was literally just a weight.

I measured myself and I judged myself on how my clothes are fitting.

And so I.

Eating 2,000 calories a day and I was losing weight, and that sort of just steadily happened.

It wasn't super quick.

It was really manageable.

It was really sustainable.

And that continued to happen over the first few months.

And then towards the summer, I sort of got to a point where my progress had stalled a bit.

I mean, if I'm honest, I was sort of relaxing a little bit more at weekends, things like that.

And so, you know, progress kind of slowed down and stalled.

And honestly, it was such a huge reminder of what I used to deal with all the time.

It was a huge reminder of the thought process processes that used to happen, the things I used to feel, the sensations I used to have.

And I didn't like it very much.

I didn't last for very long.

I think I managed about a week, if that.

And then I was like, no, we're not doing this anymore.

And what I really noticed happened as soon as I cut back.

I'd been like perfectly happy, really satisfied.

I wasn't going hungry.

It was great.

And then that 300 calorie cup made a massive, massive difference.

All of a sudden, food noise.

I was starting to think about food all the time, starting to be hungry.

Quite a lot of the time.

I was bargaining with myself.

There was a lot of, well, if I cut back here for breakfast and I cut back here for lunch, then it means that I can still have that dinner that I want to have.

And so that was starting to kick in and I started to get that, that fuck it moment back where you get to 4 or 5 o' clock in the afternoon and literally your brain goes to, I'm really hungry right now.

I don't care what I eat tonight, I'm just gonna eat anything and everything that is going to fill me up and make me feel better.

And so straight away, I was like thrown all the way back into, wow, this is what I used to do all the time.

I had normalized living like that.

And do you know what?

I'm really quite gl.

I sort of did it because it was such a huge reminder for me of how far I had come, how I was not willing to make those sacrifices anymore and how important the peace that I have created is to me.

And I think that's the big thing for me is that quite often when we're dieting a lot, when we're in that all or nothing cycle, we're coming at it from quite a negative mind space.

A mind space of look at the state I've got myself into.

I need to sort myself out.

I don't like how I look.

I feel yucky and I feel horrible and I feel fat and, yeah, I really need to pull my finger out and do something about it.

And so often when we're in that space, we're going from that to, I've lost a bit of weight, I feel great, I feel amazing.

But then it doesn't sustain.

And last and then so we bounce back into the other side of it.

And it, you know, it really showed me that what I was able to do now was actually come at it from a very different angle.

I was able to look at that and go, do you know what?

Yeah.

I quite quickly lost some weight.

Literally within the space of a few days.

I could feel that my clothes were already getting bigger on me, but it wasn't enough because I was not willing to sacrifice the peace that I had created for that slightly quicker result.

And so what happened was that rather than, I failed at this, I'm rubbish at this.

Why can't I be more disciplined?

Let's find another strategy so that I don't get hungry.

It just became information to me.

It became information that said, do you know what?

1700 Calories does not work for you.

So we're going to stop that right now.

Because I am not willing to live like that.

And I think that was the thing.

It was like, I have, over the years, created a new priority.

Whereas my priority before was lose weight at all costs, stay small at all costs.

My new priority was peace.

I want to be able to eat the things I want to eat.

I don't want to feel like I am restricting myself all the time.

I don't want to feel hungry all the time.

I don't want to be thinking about food all the time.

I've got a life to live and I want to do all of those things.

And so I was then able to, like I say, use that as information, act on the information and do it peacefully as well.

Not thinking, bloody hell.

That means I'm never going to lose the weight.

But just go, okay.

Just means that we do it differently.

It just means that maybe it's a slightly slower result and that's fine.

Maybe my body is saying to me, actually, I'm pretty happy where I am right now, and that's okay as well.

So the work that I have done on myself means that peace is at the center of every decision that I make.

And it was really nice to know that that was the thing that kicked in for me.

I didn't rebound back to where I was six years ago.

I went back to.

This is what I have been doing for the last six years.

And I'm not going to stop doing that.

And this is, for me, the thing that I want to get all women too.

All of the women that I work with.

And I think the thing is, it's not about that.

Just means you'll never get the result.

You'll Never lose the weight.

That is not what it's all about at all.

What is it is about is actually coming at this from a very different viewpoint.

So instead of the negativity bias that I talked about where it's, I feel fat, I don't like my body, I feel uncomfortable in it, it needs to change, I need to sort my shit out.

It becomes actually, I found the peace with myself doesn't mean that I love myself every day or I look in the mirror and I think you look amazing.

But I found a level of peace in who I am and in where I am and in the way that I want to feel and the way that I want to live.

So that's where I'm going to make my decisions from at this point.

And that's where you start to get the longer term results.

More slow results, sure, but the longer term results, because we've all been there spending 20 years, 30 years, 40 years on diets and still not feeling the way we want to feel.

How about we actually go from how do I create peace first?

And then use that as my stepping stone to make the changes that I want to?

And it really just like say, changes your entire perspective.

It changes the way you make decisions, it changes the things that you do.

And you can still get results, you can still make changes, you can still lose weight, all of those things can happen.

But we're just doing it from a completely different space.

We're doing it with completely different priorities.

And I think that that is the jump that we need to make.

The jump from diets are the only way I'm ever going to lose weight.

And in order to diet, I need to be disciplined.

And in order to be disciplined, I need to get okay with just being hungry all the time, thinking about food all the time.

So that's.

We see it as that or the other side, which is complete chaos.

Because that is what happens, isn't it?

If you've been dieting and then you stop dieting, then it feels chaotic because you're just like all of a sudden you've got no boundaries, you've got no structure.

And so everything feels like, or you feel like you have no control over what's going on, over what you're putting into your body at any given time.

But there is this, there is this third way.

There is this third way where you get to make the decisions that work for you in the moments that work.

Because that's the other thing.

There might be times in your life where finding your peace is more important.

And There may be other times in your life where getting a result might be important, just as what's happened to me, you know, yeah, I gave up diets and I put some weight on.

And, you know, it was very, very slow that I put that weight on, but I did over sort of the space of a few years.

But in that time also got to a point of.

And I'm okay with that.

I'm allowed to change it, but I'm okay with it.

And so it allowed me to approach this year with a very different mindset to the one that I might have had before, where I was using what was happening as information.

I was adjusting my course off the back of that, and I was doing it with peace at the very center of everything that I was doing.

And so I'd really encourage you to do that if you want to get off that all or nothing diet cycle.

That rather than, I'll just try one more time, this will be the last time, I promise this is the one that's gonna work.

I'll just be more disciplined, I'll have more willpower.

You start going, hang on a minute.

Can we just take a step back and can we think about how is it I actually want to feel?

How is it I actually want to live?

What are going to be my non negotiables?

How am I going to make decisions?

So what can I do about that?

Let's see what feels better for me.

Let's see what gets me to the point where I'm not thinking about food all the time, I'm not obsessing over it.

So you can start to actually kind of adjust your course and make those decisions based on ultimately your peace.

So like I say, if the all or nothing diet cycle has got a bit old, which it did for me, if you've got to a point where you're like, oh, God, I hate doing this, I don't want to do it anymore, then that is the first step for you to make.

And I know it feels counterintuitive because you have spent years, decades using negative forces to keep you motivated.

So starting to use a different way to motivate yourself is going to feel a bit weird at first, but definitely what I have learned is that doing it that way around for me is the thing that is working, is the thing that is keeping me in that space that I have created for myself.

And you can do that as well.

So let me know what you think about that.

You can always connect with me over on Instagram @lifeeditwithalix, but that's where I'm gonna love you and leave you for this week.

If you have enjoyed this episode, share it with a friend who needs to see it and I will see you back here again next time.