I do not deny that every person needs to find their own way through the high processed foods / ersatz foods epidemic. But it has to be done in one way or the other. It’s like with triggering foodstuffs. If sweets are especially troublesome for you, then you end up having to thread the needle. You have to control yourself from consuming the worst kinds of fat/sugar amalgams that capitalism throws at you. And yet you are likely better off not pretending that you can disavow sweets altogether. What you cannot do is pretend that you don’t have a problem. You gotta confront it.
The solution at the end of the day is to consume as much real food as possible, which in turn will allow your body to restore its natural eating patterns. Avoid the chemically pre-digested bread as much as possible because you are simply not built to consume it without spiraling out of control. Eat beans, proteins, fruits, veggies and so on. Even the fatty hummus you make at home won’t be as dangerous to your metabolism as the frankensauces that are served out there with impunity.
In a food environment designed to hjack your hormonal processes and turn your intuition towards overconsumption (and food industry profits) fasting is far from a fad diet. Its a form of resistance against a poisonous food environment. Is it a silver bullet? Probably not. Behaviorial change is down to each individual, and many people will be able to ward themselves off against ersatz foodstuffs via many smaller dishes over their day. The point is that safeguarding one’s body against this environment has to be done one way or the other.
What is already not working I believe is the usage of semaglutides as anything other than a diabetes medication. Because let’s face it, that’s what is happening. If your entire food environment is designed to inflame your appetite, then taking semaglutides as a suppressant is like placing a bandaid atop an open wound.
I don’t think the other person is going to reply to this comment because there’s a fair few things that you have said here that are, to put it bluntly, pretty insensitive to a person who has just brought up the fact that they struggle with disordered eating.
I’m not saying that you comment should have a trigger warning on it, but there are topics and ways of discussing things like food and diet which can aggravate disordered eating. A healthy lifestyle is clearly something which is important to you. It’s worth considering whether your comment in this context is working in service of that outcome or whether it’s working in a counterproductive way.
Every single line written in my comment comes from a place of dealing with disordered eating as well. Specifically the parts where I talked about triggering foodstuffs and how everyone needs to charter their own course.
We can’t ignore the facts. We live under a food environment mostly made up of ersatz foods which are designed to trigger disordered eating. In acknowledging that, we come to understand the industrialized way in which are psyches are subject to siege. That is the context where I believe it becomes not only insensitive but also counterproductive to label fasting a fad diet. It’s not even a diet, it’s a behavior change that does work for lots of people because it resists the worst influences of the food industry in a direct and straightforward manner.
I don’t believe my comment was insensitive and neither was theirs, I think we put forward both of our points of view and walked out with mutual understanding of them. It wasn’t the first time I’d hear that fasting = disordered eating and I’m sure it wasn’t the first time they heard about risks associated with semaglutide medication.
I’m referring to a subclinical eating disorder or a label for someone recovering from an eating disorder here, in the sense that the other commenter has used the term, and not just “eating in a way that is unhealthy”