You're out to dinner.
Before you even pick up the menu, you think- what's the healthiest thing I can order?
You look at the salad section. Healthy choices there! Cobb salad or Chicken Casaer? Ugg. Is cheese okay? Is bacon okay? How about croutons?
Actually. You don't even want a salad. You had a salad for lunch. Plus, it's freakin' cold out. The last thing you want to eat is something cold.
You ask your friends. What are they ordering? You don't want to be the only one at the table that doesn't order a salad.
You start to look at the sandwiches. This restaurant has the BEST sweet potato fries. But, what's up with all of those calories? Does a grilled chicken sandwich really have that many calories? Uggh.
You look around the restaurant to see what other people have ordered.
Steak? No. Salmon? Oh. That could work. But they are serving it with potatoes. Too many carbs.
How about a soup? Shoot. They only have French Onion. Ugg. Sounds good but way too heavy. Not healthy.
While the rest of your friends are chatting and catching up on life, you're going through the mental gymnastics of ordering your dinner. You're missing out. And it's straight out exhausting.
What's going on?
Two things.
1. You're trying to follow food rules to be good.
2. You are missing the internal cues that offer you guidance on what would taste good, feel great in your body and what you'd enjoy eating.
When following external (diet or health) rules, all of your decisions making is outside of you. That's why you second guess yourself. You're not confident. This is really exhausting.
You left the restaurant overfilled but still feeling empty.
When you tune in to the information that comes from the inside (hunger, fullness, satisfaction, preference), you can make food choices with ease.
You'll be free to enjoy dinner out with friends.
Let Go of Fear-based Eating
From day 135, Intuitive Eating for Every Day
Do you ever worry that a meal, dessert, or snack just harmed your health?
Did that slice of bread trigger an inflammatory response?
Or did that piece of chocolate spike your insulin levels?
Diet culture sends messages all of the time around what's determined to be dangerous, health-harming, inflammatory foods.
Whether this information is true or not, consider how fearing foods impacts your relationship with food and your health.
When we experience fear, we’re anxious and worried. This stress impacts our emotional well-being. Stress triggers an inflammatory response (by the way, inflammation is a natural way our body responds, heals, and protects).
Feeling guilty about your food choices takes you out of your awareness of your body. It’s harder to tune into hunger and fullness.
When guilt makes you feel uncomfortable, there is a part of your brain that wants comfort or distraction. As a result, you may eat more.
Fear-based eating robs you of enjoying food. How can you receive the pleasure of eating, whether it’s from the taste of food, how the food feels in your body, or the experience of eating if you fear the food is harming you? You can’t. You couldn’t enjoy driving a Porsche if the brakes don't work.
You don’t need to tune out all health claims around food. Be aware of where health claims are coming from. And of course, your body offers you plenty of information about food.
The truth is no one meal, snack, or day of eating is going to harm your health.
Letting go of fear-based eating gives you an opportunity to care for your health, your body, and your well-being at a deeper level.
You Can't Heal Food Insecurity With Restriction
If you have a history of food insecurity, dieting and food restriction are holding you back and making things worse. Here's why.
Food insecurity is defined as a lack of consistent access to enough food for an active and healthy life. Food insecurity can be experienced in several different ways.
Growing up (and even now), your family may not have had the financial means to provide enough food. You may have been hungry at times, or just never quite full enough. You may have had enough food some days or weeks and not enough on others.
Or, growing up a parent or guardian may have been withholding certain types of foods from you. You weren't allowed to have treats, sugary foods, or "junk" foods. You may not be calling this food insecurity. You may be seeing this as a way to be healthy by trying to avoid bad foods.
Whether the food insecurity was due to financial or "health" reasons, both experiences of food scarcity were well out of your control.
When someone with past food insecurity tries to control their weight and restrict food, experiences of "not having enough" continue. Dieting and restricted eating leads to overeating and binging. For those with a history of food insecurity, they may have even more intense experiences of overeating because of their unmet need of having enough food available to eat.
Folks with a history of food insecurity feel unsafe in their body when they don't have enough food.
Purposeful, voluntary food restriction will only activate past food insecurity responses: anxiety, worry, fear of not having enough. Feeling helpless and out of control.
To heal past food insecurity, let your mind and body know that you will be offering yourself enough food consistently. Reassure yourself that food is available to you and that you will not need to experience the discomfort and trauma of hunger.
When you notice that you've had enough food, be clear with yourself that this is what you're experiencing. Note it to yourself by saying "I have enough food. I'm safe." File it away so your body can identify what enoughness feels like.
What do you notice in your body when you've had enough food?
Night Time Overeating (through the lens of intuitive eating and health at every size)
** I know overeating can be uncomfortable and painful. I understand you want to stop. Remember that your body isn’t doing anything wrong when you overeat. It’s working to keep you in balance. **
Late afternoon and evening are the most common times folks overeat.
There are three common things your body could be needing around this time.
But first, let’s take a lesson from archery. When you pull the string of a bow back, you’re putting tension on that string. The further you pull back, the harder it is to hold the string in place. This takes effort. Eventually, you let go and the arrow flies.
It’s the same for when we restrict ourselves from what we need. Restriction takes effort and puts tension on our minds and bodies. Eventually, we can’t hold on and overeat.
1.Steady energy from food
Are you someone that skips breakfast and has a light lunch on the go? Late in the day, you find yourself so hungry that you would eat almost anything in sight?
Your body needed fuel all day long, but you didn't offer it the energy it needed with regular meals and snacks.
When you finally slowed down and gave yourself a chance to eat, your body demanded that you fuel up fast.
When you’re over-hungry, it’s hard to eat calmly and mindfully.
2. A variety of foods that you desire
Many folks try hard all day to stay on a formal diet plan. They eat the “right” breakfast and lunch, but then when it comes to the end of the day, they can’t seem to stay on track. This is because our minds and bodies aren't designed to live under diet restrictions like this. I know diet culture tries to convince us otherwise.
It takes a lot of resolve and energy to maintain this restriction, something most people don’t have at the end of the day when they’re tired. In addition, when you tell yourself you can’t have something, you generally want it even more (the forbidden fruit phenomenon).
If you’re eating “forbidden” foods at the end of the day, it’s because your body is asking to eat a wider variety of foods (with unconditional permission, of course ;)).
3. Rest, downtime and fun
So many people hit the ground running the moment they wake up and don’t stop until the very end of the day. Slowing down, building in time for relaxation and having fun are rarely prioritized when they have laundry to fold, dinner to get on the table and emails to catch up on.
As amazing as our bodies are, they need rest. We need space and enjoyment to feel balanced and at ease in our life.
Many folks don't know what slowing down feels like because they don't prioritize it. Our culture glorifies the hard worker, just like diet culture glorifies the disciplined eater.
If you’re noticing that you look forward to a food “treat” or “reward” at the end of the day, this is your body’s way of relaxing, slowing down and enjoying part of the evening.
Nighttime eating is really how your body reacts to the restriction of energy/calories, a variety of foods, and downtime and fun.
What is your body asking for?
Why It's Important to Not Value One Food Over Another
Diet culture tells us that:
Sugar is addictive.
Carbs are bad.
Animal protein is good or bad (depending on the diet).
Eat clean foods.
Greens are good.
Certain fruits are good, some are bad.
Intuitive Eating guides us to know that all foods are (emotionally) equivalent.
What? This may take a bit to wrap your head around.
I'm not saying that all foods are nutritionally equivalent. Without a doubt, some foods have more nutrients than other foods.
** Valuing certain foods as "bad" doesn't keep us from eating them. Thankfully. Eating a variety of foods is healthy. **
Here is valuing all foods as emotionally equivalent is so important:
Eating a food that you think has more or less value changes how you feel about yourself. When you eat what you think is "crap", you likely feel like crap.
And who wants that? That crappy feeling generally makes you feel guilty and even ashamed of yourself.
No, you don't need this guilt to prevent you from eating certain foods. When has that ever worked?
When you make choices on what you "should" be eating, you miss the important conversation with your body around what you would like to eat, what would taste and feel good to you, and what you would enjoy eating.
As a result, you miss the opportunity to enjoy what you're eating. You miss the chance to eat something really satisfying.
When you try to avoid certain foods because they are "bad", you end up fighting yourself. This dynamic puts more energy on the food you're trying to avoid. You likely feel exhausted because of it.
There is no freedom in this. There is no ease around food.
And take this one step further. It's okay to find out what foods you prefer to eat. These preferences are personal to you. To discover these foods, you need to see that all foods are valued (and emotionally equivalent) the same. Without that, it's really hard to know yourself and restore trust in your own body.
You Weren’t Put on This Earth To Have a Thin or Perfect Body
When it comes to your health, food and your body, dieting and pursuing weight loss aren’t your only options.
For decades, I never thought I had a choice but to try to make my body smaller. I learned at a young age that I shouldn’t be eating certain foods and that exercise was a way for me to keep my weight down.
I never challenged the idea. And in a super judgy way, I felt better about myself that I was so committed to my health. I'd be proud of my juicer, the smoothies I carried around with me, and my to-go bags of celery and carrot sticks.
Yet, eating “healthy” and being “good” wasn’t something I could do all of the time. I’m sure you can relate. I overate and binged a few times a week. If my husband and I got take out on the weekend, I'd always over do it so my belly felt way too uncomfortably full. If I started to eat chocolate, cookies or brownies, I couldn't stop myself from eating way too much.
This is the trap that many dieters are in. It’s nearly impossible to stay on a diet. Overeating and going off the diet is just inevitable. Yet, when you don’t realize you have another choice, what do you do?
You keep trying other diets, hoping a new one will work.
Because diet culture convinces us the diets do work, you may blame yourself when they don’t work for you.
Yet, the research is clear that diets only lead to weight gain after 3 years.
You may even say “screw it” and just decide to not pay close attention to how you’re eating and how food makes you feel. You refuse to diet, even though a part of you still wants to lose weight. You may feel like you’re betraying yourself.
To get yourself out of this trap, you need to know you have another option when it comes to food and your health.
You can eat a wide variety of foods that you enjoy and not feel guilty about eating.
You can tune into your body’s hunger and fullness signals and allow them to guide how you eat.
By letting go of trying to control food, you can allow food to be a source of joy, nourishment and satisfaction.
This option exists!
When you practice this, you will reclaim time and energy and feel peaceful around food.
What Do I Eat When I Start Intuitive Eating?
This is the question most ask when starting any new eating plan or health protocol.
If you're wondering, it's like you're asking for the playbook so you can know the rules.
I get that. We all want to know how to be successful.Yet, intuitive eating is different.
The short answer is that with intuitive eating, no food is off limits.
Now, you may have heard that before on other diets.
Intuitive eating doesn’t have cheat days. The focus isn’t on trying to moderate yourself.
Intuitive eating is a non-diet approach where you change how you value certain foods.
With intuitive eating, all foods are considered neutral and emotionally equivalent.
Which means you enjoy foods without guilt or shame.
Intuitive eating isn't a “free for all”. Eating all forbidden foods can feel like a "free for all" when you're not dieting, but still trying to be good.
Discovering what to eat will be a journey...
from needing rules and a guidebook where someone tells you what to eat,
to being curious around what foods you enjoy and feels good in your body,
to knowing what foods you'd prefer to eat and make you feel satisfied because you're honoring the internal wisdom of your body.
Starting this journey may feel scary. You may be afraid of eating the wrong thing or eating way too much of it. Guidelines can make us feel safe!
Offer yourself some kindness. You’re taking a step away from rules and restrictions and stepping toward food freedom by creating your own internal guidelines. Ones that you can trust. Meanwhile, it takes time to unlearn diet rules and reconnect with your body’s wisdom.
One fun way to start is to ask yourself a new set of questions-
If all foods are neutral,
What would taste best right now?
What would feel nourishing?
What food would I enjoy eating?
Then, experiment and be curious. What do you notice?
Do You Stop Eating When You’re Full?
Why this matters
You and I can both relate to operating on autopilot. This is when you’re going through the motions in your life without even realizing or paying attention to what's happening on the inside (body sensations, thoughts, etc.) and outside (your environment, conversations, etc.).
It can be so easy to do this when you're eating. You may have a plate of food in front of you and only stop eating when you’ve eaten everything on the plate. Or you may have a snack bag of chips or baby carrots, and not stop eating until the bag is empty.
This isn’t wrong or bad. You’re just missing an opportunity to tune into the information your body is sharing with you around how much food would be satisfying.
Why this may be hard
Just like any new practice, being mindful and noticing fullness takes some extra energy on your part. At least, at first. It will become easier over time.
Honoring your fullness will be really hard if you're dieting or food restricting. I know this may sound counterintuitive. For example, if you're eating a food that you consider to be unhealthy or bad and you tell yourself that you can’t have it tomorrow, you may engage in the last supper mentality and eat more of that food because you can’t have it later. It won’t matter how full you are.
The same goes if you’re not getting enough calories. If you’ve been in a state of deprivation, your body will demand more food when you finally allow yourself to eat. To honor your fullness, you need to honor your hunger.
And, if you let yourself get too hungry, it may be hard for you to slow down and notice fullness. You may feel too urgent around food and may naturally eat really fast.
One thing to practice that may help
Start by choosing a meal or snack where you give eating all of your attention. If you often eat in front of your phone, laptop or TV, this may be challenging. Choose the easiest meal and take it slowly.
Remind yourself that you’re not trying to limit how much you eat, but instead, you're interested in what kind of sensations your body shares with you around fullness.
Allow this to be a discovery process.
Here are some signals your body may share with you when you’re full:
Your belly may no longer have an empty or void feeling. (I know this is obvious).
You may start to lose interest in eating more food. Food may not look or smell as good as it did when you first started to eat.
The food you’re eating may not taste as flavorful.
The opportunity
Eating can be a pleasurable experience, especially when you’re eating foods that you enjoy.
When on autopilot, you will miss the taste, smell, texture of foods, and how the sensations in your body change while eating.
Just like going outside and feeling the cool (or warm) fresh air can be a savory experience, we can miss these bounties if we aren’t tuning in and paying attention.
By practicing honoring your hunger, you’ll be expanding and noticing even more opportunities to be filled and nourished by everyday experiences. Ones that do and don’t involve food.
Hunger Is a Basic Signal Our Body Shares With Us. Are You Tuning Into It?
Yet, when I start working with a new client, we always need to start with getting to know and honoring hunger.
Bottom line: It's basic but not always simple.
Getting to know your hunger is a beautiful opportunity.
When we eat on autopilot, without tuning into our body's signals, we miss out on creating a nourishing experience for ourselves.
My invitation to you today is to notice how you tune into your hunger.
It’s okay to eat when you’re not hungry.
It's okay to eat when it's convenient to eat.
It’s also okay to let yourself get hungry.
The bigger question is:
What are you noticing about your hunger?
To go even deeper...
What signals does your body share with you to let you know you need nutrition?
Are you consciously choosing to eat because you're aware of hunger or the absence of it?
Do you allow yourself to honor your hunger?
Or, do you follow the clock when you eat?
Being unconscious and unaware isn’t bad.
You may just be missing an opportunity to be more connected to your body, enjoy food more, and feel more peaceful when you eat.
One Reason You Keep Dieting. Even When You Know Dieting Doesn’t Work.
This may be hard to hear.
When I interviewed Virginia Sole-Smith on my Hungry: Trust Your Body. Free Your Mind podcast, she confessed something that I’ve heard before and I could personally relate to.
She knew that diets didn’t work. But that didn’t stop her from trying to lose weight. She told herself that she'd be the exception. She would be the 5% (it’s well documented and researched that 95% of diets only lead to weight gain after 3 years). She wanted to be her own “after” picture.
Virginia and I both talked about our determination. Our discipline. Our strong work ethic.
We both concluded, without telling a soul, that we had what it took to lose weight and keep it off.
Although it’s painful to admit, we considered ourselves not only to be the exception, but BETTER people than the vast majority of diet failures.
And it’s not surprising that we held this belief. Considering what we commonly hear from folks that just lost weight on a diet.
If I can do this, you can too.
It was hard for me at first, but it’s so worth it.
My life has changed now that I’ve lost all of this weight.
Diet culture tells us to be strong, hopeful and never to give up.
Even when we understand science. Our body is designed to protect and defend its set point. Significant weight loss isn’t possible because our body will override any conscious decision-making and ensure that we eat by increasing our drive to eat and slowing our metabolism.
We live in a world where we are told our body isn’t good enough. After all, a “perfect” body is reserved for a very small margin of folks. Six pack abs are rarely achievable without genetics, significant time and an army of resources.
If you live in a body that’s not perfect, you’ve already been told you’re a failure. And who wants to be a failure?
No one. Our one way of digging ourselves out of feeling like a failure is to be exceptional.
We need to prove we aren’t a failure. We need to prove that diet, restriction and weight loss are something we can accomplish.
Consider the popular, yet controversial reality TV show The Biggest Loser. An interesting play on words. Taken one way, each contestant is called a big loser. Or a fat failure. Taken another way, the winner is the contest that lost the most weight.
Do we need any other proof than that to summarize exactly how you may be feeling about your body weight?
You may feel really trapped. You may NEED to prove your worth and without a diet and weight loss plan, you feel defeated because you’ll be stuck in a body that’s just wrong.
Moving out of this trap takes a few steps.
Understand the role diet culture has played in your belief that your body is wrong and that you need to fix it.
Be open to the real science of setpoint. I wrote more about it here. Your body is brilliant at keeping itself in balance.
It’s okay that you wanted to be the exception. You are exceptional. But you don’t need to lose weight to prove that to yourself or anyone else.
Allow your body to take the lead. Start to be curious about its signals. With practice, you’ll eventually trust it to guide you and your health and well-being.
Important Science You Need To Know About Weight Loss
Let’s talk about setpoint
I'm sharing much of the science from Dr. Lindo Bacon and Health At Every Size. Learn more here https://haescommunity.com/
Every body has a unique set point, which is the amount of fat storage and bodyweight that is optimal for the body to protect itself.
Although set point can’t be determined by a formula or in a laboratory, it’s estimated that your setpoint falls within a range of 5-20 pounds.
When your body is below your setpoint, your body will start to defend its setpoint by:
Increasing hunger signals, including a desire to eat a wider variety of foods.
Reducing fullness signals, and
Slowing metabolism.
This is one of the reasons 95% of dieters gain weight within 3 years. Our bodies won’t tolerate being at a weight below our setpoint. Your brain will work with other systems in your body to ensure your body comes back to its ideal weight.
When your body is below its setpoint, you’ll notice:
You get cold easily.
You’re preoccupied with thoughts of food.
Low energy, irritability, and loss of interest to do pleasurable activities.
When your body is above its setpoint, you’ll:
Have a hard time recognizing physical hunger.
Often eat beyond comfortable fullness.
Skip meals and then overeat.
Eat for coping, comfort, or distraction.
Overeat because of guilt and when you fall off of your diet.
What to do:
Restoring your body to its setpoint takes time and patience.
If your body is not at its setpoint, it’s because you’ve overridden your body’s signals. There is a variety of reasons you’ve done this. This isn’t something to feel ashamed or bad about. Diet culture encourages us to follow diet rules over the signals of our body.
Start by listening and tuning into your own hunger and fullness. This can often be a challenge if you’ve been chronically dieting, emotionally eating, and engaging in other coping strategies.
But remember, your body knows these signals. It may just take time and reassurance to get reacquainted with them.
12 Practices to Feel Satisfied and Peaceful Around Food This Thanksgiving
Eating to satisfaction is the cornerstone of Intuitive Eating.
When you feel satisfied, you eat an amount that feels right for you at that moment. You also feel content, nourished, and even spacious because you’re eating foods that you like and that taste good to you.
Only you will know what satisfaction feels like in your body.
Thanksgiving is an awesome opportunity to practice eating to satisfaction. And, for obvious reasons, may be even more challenging.
Here are a few things to practice.
You can:
1. Eat foods that would have been off-limits in the past. Remind yourself that you can also enjoy these foods tomorrow. And the next day. And the day after that.
2. Enjoy these foods without guilt or shame.
3. Wear comfortable clothing.
4. Let go of standard portion sizes.
5. Fill your dinner plate with foods that you're curious to try, will enjoy, and will make your body feel great.
6. Be aware of your environment and notice people, memories, expectations, overwhelm, and responsibilities that may move you off your center. How can you be gentle with yourself?
7. Not finish everything on your plate. Wrap it up and save it for later or throw the food away.
8. Invite yourself to challenge any "shoulds" and explore if they still feel right to you. “I should make my grandmother's apple pie.” “Everything should be perfect.” “We should eat dinner at a certain time of the day.”
9. Notice a part of you that may want or need to burn extra calories in advance of Thanksgiving dinner. Can you replace that with moving in a way that's inviting and fun for you?
10. Pause every once in a while throughout the day and take some deep breaths. Notice what you're experiencing in your body. Check in with your hunger and fullness signals.
11. Rest often. Take a 10-15 minute, or hour-long nap. Take a break. Give yourself some downtime.
12. Eat pie for breakfast (thank you for this suggestion Evelyn Tribole!).
And if you're brand new to Intuitive Eating, let yourself stumble and fumble. It takes practice and time to unlearn outdated patterns of food restriction and restore connection with yourself and your body. You get to do this imperfectly!
Have a peaceful and lovely Thanksgiving!
It’s common to want to FIX your struggles with food and your weight. Common. But not helpful.
When you’re trying to fix,
You may be thinking…. I need to STOP overeating, STOP eating emotionally, STOP eating the wrong foods.
You may feel really urgent (maybe even panicked) to find a solution (program, coach, or book) that will take away the struggle.
You likely beat yourself up and feel bad when you overeat or emotionally eat. It’s generally right after these situations that you want “to fix” most.
The most common forms of fixing are food restriction, rigorous dieting and more frequent or longer exercise.
If you’re trying to fix your relationship with food and bodies, you’ve likely forgotten:
Your body is universally perfect because it’s here on earth. You came into this world divinely and nothing has changed. It’s only our culture and the biases we’ve absorbed that have led us to believe that something is wrong.
Disordered patterns with food are coping mechanisms. You’ve put them in place to keep yourself safe and protected.
By trying to fix unwanted behavior, you may spend more time and energy on the behavior instead of inviting in healing the part of you that created the unwanted behavior in the first place.
When we try to fix, we see ourselves as wrong or broken.
And this is simply not true.
And, you’re not wrong for wanting to fix something painful! Of course, you want your life to be better.
My invitation to you is to notice when you want to fix. When you catch yourself, gently remind yourself that the way to heal is through connecting with your inner state and practicing self-compassion.
Honoring Your Hunger
3 things that may make this hard
Your body knows when it’s hungry and is brilliant at communicating hunger signals.
But, if it were only so easy.
Some of my clients don’t recognize their hunger until they are starving. Which may lead to urgent and panicky eating.
Others rarely let themselves get physically hungry. This means they don’t have that internal mechanism to know when to stop eating because they aren’t experiencing the contrast between hunger and fullness.
When we honor our physical hunger, we are setting ourselves up to eat a meal or snack that truly satisfies us.
Here are 3 reasons you may have a hard time honoring hunger.
#1: Lack of Modeling
Caregivers may have encouraged you to eat all the food on your plate.
You may have learned to eat out of necessity because food was only available during certain times of the day.
While at family events, you ate, not because of your hunger, but because you were in community.
#2: Weight loss pursuits (aka dieting, clean eating, intermittent fasting, being good)
Dieting encourages the dismissal of hunger and prioritizes following diet rules, such as portion sizes.
Some diet rules encourage you to not eat after a certain time in the evening or not eat before a certain time in the morning.
You may try to eat as little as possible.
#3: Fears and Negotiations (due to past restrictive eating patterns)
You may fear the discomfort of hunger, therefore you may eat in anticipation of hunger.
You may “shouldn’t” your hunger away because you just ate a short time ago.
You may be afraid of hunger because you believe it will lead you to overeat.
We don’t question our need to pee. Growing up, no one may have reassured you to trust your hunger. But the mechanism is still inside of you. Being aware of these reasons can help you reconnect with your body's need for energy that will support you in so many ways.
Just for Today, Are You Open to Letting Your Struggles With Food and Weight Go?
I know it's a lot. And you've been carrying it around for so long.
It may feel impossible for you to imagine what it feels like and looks like to not be struggling with food, your body, your health.
What if the meaning behind the struggle is the struggle?
Could the narrative you have in your mind about who you are when you overeat, eat emotionally, and worry about your weight is what's wearing on you?
Notice what you say to yourself when you overeat. Are you bad? Disgusting? Out of control? Crazy?
What if you let those ideas loosen their grip on you?
Imagine you're holding these ideas of yourself in your fist.
Feel the weight, the pressure.
Now open your palm and let the energy of these ideas be.
Do they want to stay in your palm? Are they willing to drop? To float?
When you're not holding onto these words, ideas and meaning so tightly, how does your body feel?
What to do with Halloween candy
Four options to consider along with possible outcomes.
Option 1: Eat it.
Option 2: Don't eat it.
There is NO right or wrong way to be with Halloween candy. I’m not advocating for one way or another. It can be helpful to know how your choices may impact how you feel about yourself and your relationship with food.
If you've been restricting, believe you have a food or sugar addiction or are worried you'll be out of control around the candy if you just have one piece, then I get how you may not believe it can be this simple.
So, let's break it down.
Option 1: Eat it.
You can eat the Halloween candy while telling yourself you shouldn't be eating it and feel really guilty about it.
Possible outcomes:
You may not enjoy eating the candy.
If you’re telling yourself, “I can eat this today, but I can't eat this tomorrow” you’ll likely eat more today knowing you have to restrict tomorrow.
As a result of feeling guilty, you may trigger a restriction response which means you’ll try to limit your food intake and increase your exercise. This will likely set you up for a future binge or drive you to overeat.
You may feel like you’re a failure.
Another way to eat it.
You can eat the Halloween candy with full permission to eat the candy you like and enjoy it.
Possible outcomes:
Eating mindfully means you'll be noticing the taste of what you're eating. You may even pay attention to how your body feels when you eat it and afterward.
This will be interesting information for you to know what candy you like and what you don't like.
You’ll enjoy the candy and can practice tuning into your body to know when it’s time for you to stop eating because you’re satisfied and don’t want any more.
Option 2: Don’t Eat It.
You may want Halloween candy but choose not to eat it. If you're choosing not to because you're afraid to start eating it, you don't want to eat bad, sugary foods, or you just want to be good, you may feel deprived and like you're missing out.
Possible outcomes:
You may choose to eat other foods to replace the Halloween candy.
You may notice you eat a lot of that food and still don't feel satiated or content.
You may still want Halloween candy and eventually choose to eat it. (See Option 1).
Another way to not eat it.
You may choose to not eat Halloween candy because you know you can have candy anytime you'd like. It's not novel or special to you.
Possible outcomes:
You've checked in with your body and you're just not interested in Halloween candy right now.
You’ve reaffirmed the trust you have in your body to guide you to eat joyfully.
You give yourself full permission to eat Halloween candy anytime for any reason.
What Food Cravings Are Trying To Tell You
When you crave a glass of water, do you question it?
When you crave a hug, do you second guess yourself?
When you crave a nap, do you dismiss it?
When you crave an empty bladder, do you ignore it?
Your body is fantastic at communicating its needs.
Yet, when it comes to food and how we eat, diet culture and wellness culture have convinced us otherwise.
Here is what we hear:
Sugar is addictive.
Inflammatory foods harm our health.
Be more disciplined.
Avoid cravings by eating "healthier" foods.
Drink a glass of water so you feel full.
Basically, we're told that cravings are bad.
Which makes me insane. Ultimately, we've been taught to NOT trust our bodies. Our bodies offer us an incredible amount of information.
Your body is your wisdom, your source of peace and security. Yet, you've been told that your body is the enemy. You've been told that it must be changed, and it needs to be fixed.
Trust your cravings.
And if that feels like a big stretch, start by getting curious around them. They are not wrong or bad. They are offering you information.
Cravings are letting you know what your body (and soul) needs.
Why You Can't Stick To A Diet
I know how to diet, but I can’t seem to stick to it.
Put another way, I know what to do, but I can’t seem to do it.
Here is what’s going on.
I hear this ALL the time. I even said this to myself back in the day. I added, “what the hell is wrong with me?”
When I first joined WW in the early 2000s, I ate big batches of veggie soup. I lost my post-pregnancy weight quickly.
When I tried WW a few years later (after I had my second child), I thought I’d try what worked the first time. So I made veggie soup again. Yet this time, it would stay in the fridge for a week. I’d toss it out. I made batches of soup week after week, with the best of intentions. But I could never bring myself to eat more than a cup or so.
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t seem to follow the diet again. I knew what to do, but I couldn’t seem to do it.
Sadly, I spent so much time beating myself up. And you may be doing this too. Here is what’s really going on.
While dieting, our body is in a state of deprivation.
But, bodies are NOT designed to be deprived, they are designed to survive (and thrive).
Which is why, if your body isn’t getting enough calories, it will do everything it can to ensure it will. This is often why folks cycle on diets with periods of restriction followed by overeating.
Our mind and body are closely linked.
If we experienced deprivation in the past (aka a diet), our body tells our mind to anticipate danger. The danger is the deprivation.
For me, veggie soup = deprivation. Which is why I couldn’t eat that food no matter how hard I tried. I was anticipating deprivation.
My mind and body were working together to ensure my survival.
See how genius our mind and body are?
If you’re noticing the same pattern, please know:
Your body and mind are working perfectly. You’re not doing anything wrong. Diet culture convinces dieters they need more discipline. No amount of discipline can override this mechanism.
Food Struggles Aren't About Lack of Willpower
It’s time to stop blaming yourself and understand what’s really happening
Your fridge is filled with healthy foods, yet you snack on salty treats from the pantry. You have all the fixings for a salad, yet you order take-out. You’ve been trying hard to avoid certain foods. Yet, after a few weeks, days, or hours, you decide that one handful won’t hurt. Then one turns into too many.
According to popular diet advice, you’re doing all the right things. You’re meal planning and removing the “bad” foods from your kitchen. Yet, something seems to stop you.
It’s frustrating when you work so hard toward something and you don’t get the results you’re looking for.
Especially when diet culture tells us that diets will work when we work hard enough. Diet companies show us before and after weight loss pictures. We read testimonials from folks that have finally lost weight because they stuck to the plan. They were driven and focused.
If they can do it, why can’t I?
When you feel derailed, again and again, it’s not surprising for you to conclude that you must be missing something. You take your diet failures personally. After all, if Mary Jo from Arkansas can drop 40 pounds, why can’t you? You conclude that you must be lacking willpower.
Weight loss companies play the blame game
If your car doesn’t drive, it’s not because you’re a bad driver. Your car needs repair.
If your doctor prescribed a medication that was supposed to improve your health and it didn’t, you wouldn’t blame yourself. It’s the wrong medication for you.
Yet, when folks regain weight after being on a diet, they don’t blame the diet. They blame themselves.
Weight loss companies profit when dieters continue to try their programs again and again. They purposefully design their marketing material to make you believe their product works by giving you proof.
What they don’t tell us is that their program is only designed for short-term (one year or less) success. They don’t ever tell you that the research is clear. Dieting leads to long-term weight gain.
Consider the study done on participants of the Season 8 Biggest Loser reality TV show. Thirteen of the fourteen contestants regained weight after 6 years. Four of the contestants regained all of their weight loss and now weigh more than they did at the start of the competition.
The blame is subtle because the promises of weight loss are loud and the truth is hidden in the fine print.
Let’s consider the truth
I’m willing to bet you have plenty of willpower. Most of my clients are driven, motivated women that know how to get shit done. They often say to me, “why can’t I just figure this ONE thing out?” They are juggling work, family and personal time. They’re at the top of their class and continue to climb their professional ladder.
When it comes to dieting and weight loss, the adage “the harder you work the luckier you get” does not apply.
You’re not sabotaging or lacking anything. There is something else happening inside of you.
When you are tempted to eat forbidden foods, do you notice a voice that says:
“Come on. You deserve to eat that.”
“Oh no! Don’t eat that. You know you can’t control yourself around that food.”
“You want that, go ahead and eat it.”
Those might sound like unmotivated words. This voice taunts you and coaxes you to eat the foods you’re trying to avoid and to keep eating when there is a part of you that wants to stop.
This voice is your inner food rebel
It ignites a battle within yourself. You may naturally want to argue with this voice or silence it. After all, on the surface, it’s this voice that leads you down an undesirable path. But it’s important to understand where the inner food rebel comes from.
Humans want to make their own choices and decisions. One of the most basic needs humans have is autonomy. We want to have a say in what happens to us and not be controlled or told what to do.
Growing up, I recall saying to myself “You can’t be the boss of me.” I’d literally and figuratively stomp my foot and plant my hands firmly on my hips when anyone or anything tried to tell me what to do or what I couldn’t do. I was hell-bent on not being pushed around.
Where the inner food rebel was created
Yet, that’s exactly what a diet does.
Dieting takes away our autonomy and our own choices around what to eat and when to eat it.
Yes, I know. We are generally the ones that put ourselves on a diet. No one is making us count calories or eliminate sugar.
In many ways, our dieting and weight loss efforts did feel mandatory. We’ve been told our body needs to be slimmer to be more attractive. We see our slimmer friends and want to fit in. In our society, dieting has been considered a worthy sacrifice.
Yet, what’s really happening is we’re sacrificing our free will. Humans are designed to be free, and freedom can’t be sacrificed. This is why your inner food rebel was created.
Inner food rebel reframed
Many of my clients describe the age and tone of their inner food rebel as a young version of themselves. Often because the voice was created during a time when their choices were taken away, as early as 8 or 9 years old.
During this time in our life, we experienced inner conflict. A part of us was so eager to fit in and follow the rules. Another part wanted complete autonomy over what she eats and when she eats it.
The inner food rebel was created to protect your independence and free will. It’s there to assert yourself when it wasn’t safe to do so. The inner food rebel isn’t your enemy. It’s your protector and the part of you that wants to be expressed. It wanted to protect you from losing yourself, from not having a say, and from being trapped into doing what you didn’t want to do.
It’s understandable to confuse your inner food rebel as a lack of willpower.
Get to know your inner food rebel
Your inner food rebel doesn’t need to be silenced for you to make choices that serve you best. That’s the good news. You can work with your inner food rebel to move forward to changing your relationship with food.
Start to tune into this voice. Listen for it with curiosity. There may be an opportunity here to heal some of your past hurts in your relationship with food and your body.
You can co-exist with this voice without making it your enemy or see it as a character defect. Allow your inner food rebel to have her space on the stage and you can still make a different choice around what, when and how much you eat.
It’s not your fault that you’ve been blaming yourself for having a lack of willpower. Your inner food rebel is a complicated mechanism. On one hand, she doesn’t appear to have your best interests in mind. But really, when you understand her better, she’s been advocating for your needs from the very beginning.
3 Reasons You Keep Looking for Your Next Diet
You may feel like a crazy person, but here’s the truth
When people talk to me about their relationship with food, they tell me they’ve tried every diet out there. They list them off to me like state capitols. We’ve all heard of them and visited a few of them ourselves.
Before I began my food freedom journey, I was always looking for a way to lose weight and slim down.
Weight loss ads would catch my eye. My ears would perk up if I heard someone talk about how they just lost weight. I’d enviously study weight loss before and after pictures hoping to learn their secrets.
When I found that new diet, I’d quickly order the book on Amazon. I’d create a membership account and join their online community. I’d start with all of the enthusiasm and eagerness of a college freshman on her first day of school. I’d clean out my pantry and go to the grocery store with the list of “acceptable” foods in hand.
You know what comes next. Eventually. Inevitably. Maybe 3 months, 3 weeks, or just 3 days.
I couldn’t follow my new diet any longer.
Instead of losing weight, I lost hope. I wondered what I did wrong. I wondered why my new diet worked for the person in the before and after picture, but not for me. Did I not give it enough of my time and energy? Was I not disciplined enough? Was there some self-limiting belief that was holding me back?
I could only assume the answer to each of those questions was yes. It wasn’t the diet. It was me.
After a few months, I’d start this cycle all over again with new hope and enthusiasm by looking for a new diet.
Does this craziness around searching for a new diet sound familiar?
If you’re wondering why you keep doing the same thing and hoping for different results, I want to offer you some insight. There are some very valid reasons you’ve been chronically dieting.
1. You’ve been told that you haven’t YET found the right diet for you.
Weight loss companies with big marketing budgets and manipulative marketing messages tell us that their diet works. They’re masterful at sharing research, testimonials, and celebrity endorsements letting us know that their solution will help us lose weight.
Most often they tell you that they have a secret that no one else has. They will tell you that you’re just eating the wrong foods, you shouldn’t be combining certain foods, you need to be eating at the right time of day, eating more or less frequently, or that you’re exercising too much or too little.
This has likely led you to conclude that even though you’ve tried so many different diets, that this one will be different.
The truth is:
Diets aren’t effective for intentional weight loss in the long term. In fact, 95% of dieters will gain all of the weight they’ve lost and more after 3 years. I’m suspecting you know this. If diets were effective, the first diet that you and I tried would have been our last.
2. You’ve been promised a better life when you lose weight.
When we read weight loss success stories and see before and after pictures, we don’t just see a smaller person. We see a happier person that’s in a new relationship, working in a better paying job, and driving a nicer car. Or we see them at the beach in their bathing suit on vacation having the time of their life. We see someone that looks healthy and vibrant with a big smile on their face.
We’ve been told and shown time and time again that thin bodies are beautiful bodies. These messages we get from diet culture can be subtle and not so subtle. You may have been bullied or people may have made cruel comments to you because of the size of your body. I have. You’ve been told (and even believe) that your next diet will make you more attractive. You may be looking to diet to protect you from being on the receiving end of hurtful comments about the size of your body.
The truth is:
Sadly, we live in a fatphobic culture that offers people in thin bodies privilege and discriminates against people in larger bodies. I wish it were different. I want to create a world where our children can know they’re worthy of love and belonging, no matter the size of their body (and their sex, skin color, sexual identity, sexual preference, and ability). We can survive and ultimately thrive in a culture with so much oppression and discrimination. We don’t need to put our life on hold and wait until we’ve lost weight to be happy.
3. You’ve been dieting your whole life and it’s all you know.
The average age a girl in the United States starts to diet is 8 years old. I know. It makes me sick too. When I was growing up in the ’80s, the average age was 12. If you also started dieting in elementary or middle school, those were formative years.
You may have grown up watching your mother (or father) struggle with food and weight loss. When you get together with your family, they may always talk about their latest diets. You’re looking for another diet because it’s just what you do. And it’s what those around you do too. You may even feel like the black sheep if you don’t diet.
The truth is:
Offer yourself a whole lot of compassion. We were born knowing how to nourish ourselves without following the rules of a diet. Yet, that wasn’t modeled for you. You were encouraged to dismiss the sensations in your body. These sensations are still there, they’ve been lying dormant. You can reconnect with your body and let it be the guide in your relationship with food.
Conclusion
We live in a culture that spends a shit-ton of money selling us harmful and destructive solutions. You’ve been told that you’re doing the right thing. The truth is the solution (dieting) is the problem.
If you’ve been beating yourself up for trying one diet after the other, I hope these three reasons give you some relief. It’s not your fault.