The F*ck It Diet by Caroline Dooner May Book of the Month

I've made no secret of the fact that I struggle with my weight and my perception of myself. This is something I have had problems with since my teens and as much as I like to portray a happy, healthy person to my own children, deep down I know I can't fool myself. I still feel the need to change myself. And how do we all like to make ourselves appear better to others? By going on a diet.

And so the vicious cycle starts.

I recently saw a tweet put out over on Twitter by HQ Stories, who were looking for people to read and review a new book. The title of this book immediately appealed to me, The F*ck It Diet, in my head I was thinking another diet to try, little did I know that this wouldn't be a typical diet, this would be the 'diet' to eliminate all other diets!

Because diet books don't work. In fact, they're really, really bad for us.

So F*ck it!

If you have ever been on a diet, felt bad for not being on a diet, or just felt guilty for eating something you shouldn't ... this book is for you.

Caroline Dooner is not a medical professional, what she is real and realistic in her approaches towards food and eating, something that chronic dieters will know is really hard to achieve because as much as we try, being on a diet makes us entirely irrational.

Now I have tried so many diets in not so many years. The 5:2 diet, intermittent fasting, the no carb diet, the 3 week diet, counting calories, counting macros. Each and every one having varying results but not one of them was a long term, sustainable fix and every time I wasn't left feeling happy with the results, I found myself looking for the next solution to my body woes.

Eating should be easy.

And that's the thing with diets, they take the joy out of eating, they make something that should be a simple task into a chore, having to meal plan, to think about what your buying, can I afford that extra bite, do I dare have a dessert? They leave you with a permanent feeling of guilt whenever you take even a mouthful of food.

What Caroline does with The F*ck It Diet is strip things right back. Going back to the root of the eating problems. Looking at why a person started dieting in the first place, all the myths surrounding the foods we eat and when we consume them.

When I began reading this book, which was at the beginning of the Easter holidays (hello chocolate) I actually began to feel quite silly about my eating habits because everything that was being explained in the book sounded so logical, why hadn't I thought about everything this way before?

The reason why was quite simple though, it was because of food.

My lack of eating had actually left my brain in a state of being unable to think logically, it's like I'd trained my brain to see food as the enemy, which it clearly isn't.

This is not a diet book.

The F*k It Diet is broken down into three parts. The physical part, the emotional part and the mental part. Each part playing an important role but some take longer than others to work through. 

I chose to read the book over the course of three days, I started to put things into practice as soon as I started reading however after I finished reading the book, I then went back to the beginning and really slowed my reading pace. 

Throughout the book there are little writing prompts and activities. You may feel ridiculous doing them but I can assure you it's worth it.

4 weeks after reading this book, I feel like I am still at the physical part. I've got a sort of invisible barrier that I'm finding hard to break down but I'm getting there. I think the most difficult part is learning to not be so harsh to myself. A lot of not dieting is learning to forgive myself and knowing that eating or not eating isn't some sort of punishment, it is a thing of necessity and hopefully enjoyment.

Break free from diet culture.

My favourite thing to do now is 'brain dump', releasing thoughts from my head that would otherwise go round and round on a constant loop, forever keeping me up at night. It's surprised me just how much my mental state affected my eating habits.

I'm not going to lie to you and say that after reading The F*ck It Diet I'm all of a sudden cured, I no longer struggle with eating and I can look in the mirror and like the reflection that stares back at me. No, life just isn't that simple but what I can say is that I am slowly getting better.

I still have 'fat thoughts' and a fear of putting on weight but they are slowly ebbing away.

That's what I really like about Caroline and her methods. She doesn't proclaim that this will be a quick fix, what she tells us is that this could take months, even years. And that to me makes perfect sense, I mean I've been dieting on and off now for going on twenty years, that urge to diet isn't going to disappear in the blink of an eye.

The F*ck It Diet is a breath of fresh air in a generation fuelled by the diet industry. It is a book that lets us know that we are in charge of own bodies and that we can have a happy and healthy relationship with food, we've just got to be willing to reject all those myths that we've been subjected to over the years.

It's time for us to say f*ck it and rediscover our own identities.