Ditch Diets and Establish Peace with Food
If I tell you, “Don’t think about a purple alligator hanging from a trapeze,” what are you going to think about? This is a similar situation when it comes to food. Have you ever obsessed or thought uncontrollably about a particular food, specifically a food that you were restricting? It’s the same thing when you’re on a diet such as a low-carb diet, and all you can think about is bread and pasta. This is the natural reaction that is triggered by the deprivation that diets create. When you severely restrict the amount of food that you allow yourself to have, this sets you up to crave even larger amounts of that food.
If you have foods that you are restricting not only physically, but also mentally, this produces the same response. Although you may allow yourself to eat something, but you’re saying to yourself “I shouldn’t be eating this, why am I doing this, I’m such a bad person,” that is considered mental restriction. Those restrictions are also going to fuel you to eat more of those foods and cause you to feel out of control.
Diets are sneaky because it typically doesn’t feel this way in the beginning of a diet, when the initial stages of diet euphoria take over. But the more you restrict or the longer you follow a diet, the larger the cravings become. Establishing peace with food means giving yourself unconditional permission to eat all foods. When we allow ourselves to eat ALL foods, these foods become normalized in our life, and all the intense desire and urgency for them disappear. This also allows us to eat more mindfully and causes us realize how food truly tastes and how it makes us feel physically, mentally, and emotionally because we are able to be more present during the eating process.
Establishing peace with food allows your intense cravings to diminish and you get to a point where you no longer feel out-of-control around food. Many people do claim, and truly believe that they give themselves permission to eat all foods. However, often times this is only the case on a “cheat day” or perhaps on a holiday or birthday party, but that is not the same as true unconditional permission to eat all foods.
Guilt versus Deprivation: The Seesaw Syndrome
The more food is forbidden, the more alluring that food becomes. To make more sense of why establishing peace with food is so important, let’s talk about the Seesaw Syndrome. When restricting certain foods (i.e., sugar, snack foods, carbs, pasta, candy, etc.) eating these forbidden foods causes an extreme sense of guilt for the dieter who “gives in” to cravings. As this guilt continues to increase, the amount of food intake increases as well. Feelings of guilt versus deprivation work in an opposing manner, like two kids playing on a seesaw. When one goes up, the other goes down.
While dieting (or restricting certain foods), the longer you go depriving yourself of these foods, the less guilt you feel, because you have not consumed any of your so-called “bad" foods.
Once the level of deprivation increases to a point where it can’t increase anymore, where you can’t go one more day of restricting, the limit has been reached, and coincidingly guilty feelings are now at their lowest due to all the restriction.
At this point, because there is no guilt whatsoever, you feel more open to allow some of these “bad” foods back in. However, as you eat these forbidden foods, guilt increases. This guilt triggers negative feelings, which causes you to eat more of these forbidden foods, so guilt continues to increase.
As guilt continues to increase, deprivation continues to decrease. As time goes on be it hours or days, you increasingly feel worse about allowing yourself to break your diet rules. Guilt rises once again, and deprivation is now nonexistent because you have been indulging in all of the foods that you previously restricted.
After this, the syndrome cycles over and over, the seesaw goes up and down, and your only way off the seesaw is to lighten up and release yourself from deprivation.
How to Establish Peace with Food
The fundamental approach to establishing peace with food, and eradicating the restrict-binge cycle is to give yourself unconditional permission to eat anything you want. Specifically, this entails: Ditching the idea that foods are either “good” or “bad”. There is no one food that can make you healthy; eating without rules such as telling yourself you will make up for “indulging” on a particular food; truly eating what you actually want. Once you are able to fully embrace this approach, without any thought or future plan for restriction, you remove the urgency to overeat or binge.
In other words, establishing peace with food means absolutely no more food restrictions. This means that the decision to eat a piece of cake is the same, emotionally, as the decision to eat a salad. Your food choices have nothing to do with your personality, character, or morality. It is beneficial to remember, once your subconscious really understands that you can eat whatever you want, the intensity to eat these foods decreases immensely. In order to get to this point however, you must expose yourself to the foods you have forbidden yourself to eat.
Why It’s So Crucial to Establish Peace with Food
Establishing peace with food decreases binge eating: Restriction often times leads to bingeing. When we restrict certain foods, we want them more and more. However, when you allow all foods in, your brain begins to recognize that you can have whatever you want whenever you want it, and therefore you will want those foods less often. Once you allow your subconscious to really understand that you can eat whatever you want, the intensity to eat greatly decreases. For example, potato chips used to be a food that I considered as “bad.” Therefore, when I was trying to be “good” and eat “healthy,” I would restrict them and avoid eating them entirely. When it came time for the weekend at the next party or gathering, I would try to control the amount of chips or snack foods I would eat, but what would actually happen is a whole different story. I couldn’t stop eating the chips! Now that I allow myself to have whatever I want when I want it, I don’t feel out of control around chips, or anything else anymore.
Your relationship with food will improve significantly: Over time, when we try diet after diet, or follow food rules that dictate what to eat and when to eat, this can cause us to label food as “good” or “bad.” This causes us to place moral value on the foods we eat and eventually we begin to fear food and feel guilty after we eat certain foods. However, once you are able to allow yourself to eat anything you want, food becomes neutral, you place no moral value on the foods you eat, and you realize that no one food can make you “healthy”. Once you are at this stage, you are also able to think clearer about what you actually want and what makes your body feel good. You will then be able to freely enjoy whatever foods you want, whenever you want them.
Shame and guilt around food will be a thing of the past: Eating the foods that you have forbidden yourself to eat typically causes an intense sense of guilt once you “give in” to these foods. The more you restrict a food that you think is “unhealthy” or “bad”, the less guilt you feel in general. However, the more you eat that “unhealthy” or “bad” food, the more guilty you feel after eating that food. Therefore, once deprivation hits an all-time high, there is absolutely no guilt, and you feel more open to allow some of the “bad” foods back in. But as you eat these foods, guilt continues to increase (the Seesaw Syndrome previously discussed). When you allow all foods in, this deprivation-guilt cycle ceases to exist and you are able to eat any food you really crave because you won’t fear binging or overeating on that food. You have ultimately established peace with food.
Common Fears to Allowing Peace with Food
If you are someone who has been restricting certain foods and dieting, there are some common fears that come up when attempting to “eat whatever you want.” First, you may fear that you will overeat, that you will feel so out of control around food, that you will keep eating and eating. This one is the most common fear. Here’s the thing. Just the simple thought that you will overeat, can sometimes be enough to cause you to overeat. The truth is, these are just thoughts. When establishing peace with food, it is important to release these thoughts, trust the habituation process, and you will do just fine. Another fear is the thought that if you allow yourself to eat whatever you want, then you won’t eat healthfully. The truth is, when you have the knowledge of healthful nutrition, and combine that with listening to your body’s natural biological signals like hunger and fullness, your intuition will lead you to the right path.
A point to consider in all of this is that…
Eating whatever you want, whenever you want, without any regard to your hunger and fullness signals, is not likely to be a process you enjoy very much. This may cause actual physical discomfort. Therefore, staying attuned with your body’s natural cues is a crucial part to establishing peace with food.
Implementation: in order to establish peace with food, following these steps:
Take an inventory of what foods you have forbidden yourself to have. Rank them from the least extreme to the most extreme.
Begin to try these foods starting with the least extreme. Choose a relaxing environment, only a couple hours after a meal so you aren’t too hungry. Eat this food mindfully, with full awareness and no judgement, using all of your senses. Notice anything that comes up, whether it’s anxiety, guilt, joy. Keep eating until you are emotionally neutral.
After that fear is gone, you may decide to have a couple cookies because you know you can have more later. Or, you may eat more because they taste amazing. But either way, you will eat them with mindfulness and intention.
I know this principle can feel scary, but the more exposure you have to these foods, the less fearful you are going to be, and the less out of control you are going to feel. You do not need to introduce all of your fear foods at once. Take it really slowly and reintroduce one food at a time. In the beginning of the intuitive eating journey, it is normal to want more of the play foods, the foods that you’ve restricted, but in time this will level out and you will able to fully enjoy the foods you desire without worry.
So, you tell me… Are you someone who has restricted your so-called “bad” foods in attempts to eat “healthy” or achieve a particular goal? If so, are you tired of feeling deprived, binge or overeating, feeling guilty after eating, and feeling like you put all your energy into thinking about food or your body all day long? Do you feel stuck because it’s such a daunting process and you feel like you will eat everything in sight if you were to allow all of your favorite “bad” foods back into your life? No worries, I got you. If you want help with this, check out this 16-week online group coaching program where like-minded women come together to break the generational cycle of chronic dieting and heal from food worry, body shame, and mental agony around what to eat and how much. Click here to learn more.
