Just before Christmas I signed up for a dieting course with psycho dietitian Mikołaj Choroszyński. What I love about living in a different country to the one I was born is that I can choose what’s best in both of those countries instead of being stuck with what doesn’t work for me. Mr Choroszyński works in Polish so I can’t recommend him to an average reader of my blog but I wanted to write here how different his approach is to Britidh and American diet coaches who often advertise on Facebook.

So British and American diet coaches will tell you what to eat (more fat, less carbs is the trend now, even if you don’t want to go keto) and apart from that you will hear: do X,Y,Z because it works. They did it and it worked for them. ‘Stop looking for excuses’ they will say.

And believe me, I even tried Noom and Second Nature, and it just really didn’t work. I think it was the fact that someone was telling me what to eat.

Mr Choroszyński says: different things work for different people but feeling resistance is normal, that’s how the mind works. And I immediately feel that I’d better work my issues out.

Obviously I ate a lot during Christmas but it was Christmas so that is different (at least at the beginning of my dieting course; I do hope that next year will be a bit better). But I managed to freeze a few slices of Polish poppy seeds cake instead of eating it all.

Although Mr Choroszyński is not against fasting, I decided I won’t be doing it any more; yes, it did seem to work for me on a physical level, but emotionally it was difficult. I was often catching myself thinking that there’s something wrong with me if I have to use such challenging methods to control my food intake.

Yesterday was a test day: we had sweets and a cake at work. And did I ever tell you that I don’t really like most British sweets? Yet, I used to eat them when they were available. I think I learned to see sweets as a reward. Mr Choroszyński says we can unlearn this type of thinking by practicing. So I tried yesterday and, success: I didn’t eat any!

Mind you, today I decided to have one slice of cake I froze on Christmas day (Mr Choroszyński says we have to be realistic) but it’s a cake I like and yes, I only had one slice.

Those methods seem to work for me, even though I’m autistic. Don’t you think that’s interesting?