the fourth part of my deep dive into intuitive eating covering what it is, how to begin to put it into practice and my take on it as a registered dietitian.
Today’s post is all about making peace with food, the third principle of Tribole and Resch’s Intuitive Eating program.
If you missed previous posts in this series, you can catch up now:
- Intuitive Eating: What Is It? – a basic overview of what the Intuitive Eating program is
- Intuitive Eating: Reject the Diet Mentality – a discussion of the first principle within the Intuitive Eating program
- Intuitive Eating: Honoring Your Hunger – a conversation about the importance of listening to your body and the very real biological responses that occur when we don’t.
And you can always find all the posts I publish in this series right here should you wish to revisit one at any point.
If you’ve been a reader for a while, then you know how much I love trail mix. So would you believe me when I said that there was once a time when I wouldn’t even touch it?
It’s true. When I was stuck in the diet cycle, I was terrified of trail mix. Not necessarily because I felt I ‘shouldn’t’ be eating it, but because whenever I ate it, I ate the entire bag. I felt out of control with it, so I deemed it a food I simply couldn’t be trusted around.
What I didn’t realize back then (and what took me some time to finally realize as I reconnected with intuitive eating) is that this wasn’t happening because I didn’t have self-control or even because of trail mix specifically…it happened because:
- I wasn’t honoring my hunger or fueling my body properly, so my biology was taking over in an attempt to get much-needed energy and nutrients.
- I wasn’t at peace with food and just the very fact that I considered trail mix a food that was ‘off-limits’ because I was ‘out of control’ when I ate it, was setting me up to eat it to the point of physical discomfort.
Think about all the times you’ve told yourself you ‘can’t’ or ‘shouldn’t’ have a certain type of food. Do you often find that the moment you tell yourself that, it’s all you want? Or, if you successfully abstain from it for a while, do you find that as soon as you re-introduce it, you tend to feel out of control when eating it?
The minute we tell ourselves something is off-limits (food, or otherwise!) it’s suddenly all we want…and usually it’s all we want in mass quantity because we feel deprived both physically and mentally. It becomes the forbidden fruit, the only thing we’ve ever wanted. It’s just like when you ask a toddler not to do something. Their immediate next response is to do the thing they were asked not to.
Our psychological response to deprivation is powerful and the very act of telling ourselves we can’t have something (even before we’ve abstained!), makes us want it that much more.
When it comes to food, this most often results in intense cravings, a hyper-focus on that food and eating far past the point of physical comfort. This is then followed by a lot of shame and guilt, which just starts that cycle all over again (you ate something or more than you ‘should’ have, so you restrict, you restricted so you eat something or more of something than you ‘should’ have and so on and so on…). Once you’re in this cycle, it can feel very hard to get out.
Tribole and Resch’s describe the pattern of restriction followed by overeating in their book as “deprivation backlash.” No matter how long we’re able to “hold out” and abstain from a certain food, deprivation backlash catches up to us.
If you’ve ever felt alone in this, I’m telling you that you’re not. The responses you experience when you restrict are not shameful. They’re universal and very normal as the body and mind attempt to get back to a stable place. There are a number of great, relatable case studies in this chapter of Tribole and Resch’s book. I highly recommend reading them if you’ve ever felt like you’re the only one experiencing this.
When we restrict our intake via self-imposed rules we often experience what Tribole and Resch discuss as the what-the-hell effect. Essentially, that moment when you’ve eaten (or even considered eating) something ‘off-limits’ and all those self-imposed rules you’ve set up fly out the window. You’ve ‘screwed up’ so now it’s time to throw caution to the wind and eat whatever you want, rules be damned. This attitude usually results in eating to the point of physical discomfort. I think it’s safe to say nearly all dieters experience this at some point.
Studies on restrained eaters have shed a lot of psychological light in the world of dieting. They show how ineffective outlawing particular foods can be, and how it sets you up for [eating in past the point of what’s comfortable]”
Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program that Works
This eating experience is often driven by immense feelings of guilt for ‘failing.’ Tribole and Resch describe this as the “seesaw syndrome.” When you’re depriving yourself, the guilt you feel about eating the ‘wrong’ things is very low. The longer you deprive yourself, the lower your guilt is (think of a seesaw with deprivation on one end and guilt on the other…as your deprivation rises, your guilt lowers). When your guilt is low, you can ‘justify’ allowing yourself a little wiggle room. It may start in a very controlled way, a cookie here, a piece of bread there, whatever it was you were denying yourself. However, each time you ‘give-in,’ the deprivation side of the seesaw goes down and the guilt rises a little more. Eventually the guilt side of the seesaw is in the air while deprivation is on the ground until you begin to deprive yourself again because you can’t take the feelings of guilt. Up and down you go with no real end in sight (because like we discussed, deprivation backlash will always find you, so deprivation will never stay high in the air for long)
This where the idea of unconditional permission to eat whatever you want comes into play. It’s the only way to break this cycle.
Like we talked about in the first post of this series, that can be an incredibly scary thing for many. It’s OKAY if it’s scary to you and if you feel like you’re not ready to take that on yet. Learning to re-embrace your innate intuitive eater is a journey and it doesn’t happen over night.
When you feel ready to move forward with this step, here’s where you should start:
- Rid yourself of the idea that there are ‘good’ and ‘bad’ foods. As I’ve said so many times before, no one food is going to cause weight gain or loss, nor will food alone going to help or harm your health.
- Listen to your body and your cravings and eat those foods. This really requires you to let go of what you think you should be eating and eating what you want.
- Eat with no strings attached. As we talked about in the first post, this doesn’t work if you’re secretly telling yourself that you’re going to ‘get back on track tomorrow.’ To make peace with food, you need to let go of the notion that another diet or ‘getting back on track’ is around the corner. This part of the intuitive eating process is not about nutrition or weight, it’s about making peace with food.
If this is scary to you, I don’t blame you. For those who have followed some sort of restrictive eating pattern for a while, the idea of giving up all control can feel terrifying. I remember feeling the same exact way when trying to reconnect with intuitive eating. I had a lot of false starts where I told myself I would eat without inhibition, but somewhere in the depths of my brain, I still had some of my old rules floating around.
It took a lot of time, experimentation, self-compassion and patience to finally get to the point where I truly ate whatever I wanted, no guilt, no conditions, no stipulations attached. And you know what? Half the foods that I thought I was dying to eat, didn’t even taste that good once I gave myself permission to eat them. I remember eating a Poptart once just because it was there and it was a food I never would have allowed myself previously and it tasted like stale cardboard. I couldn’t even finish it (because it was so unenjoyable, NOT because I felt guilty) and had to laugh at myself for holding it in such high regard simply because I deemed it ‘off-limits.’ (For any Poptart lovers out there, it’s likely my holding them up on such a pedestal added to my lack of enjoyment – given how strict I was about not allowing myself to eat them, I was expecting something so mind-blowing I’d eat the whole box. It’s likely very few things could have lived up to that expectation).
For those that have expressed the fear that you’ll never stop eating or you’ll gain an endless amount of weight: Once you truly take everything off the “do not eat” list and give yourself permission to eat anything, the allure of those ‘off-limit’ foods wears off (as does the guilt and feelings of out of control eating). In addition, the act of allowing yourself to eat whatever you want, and actually seeing that you’re not out of control builds that trust we talked about. Your body begins to trust you as you begin to listen to it and allow it to find its equilibrium. You, in turn, also begin to trust your body as episodes of guilt-driven eating die down.
“…the process of giving yourself permission to eat is actually the stepping-stone to rebuilding your trust with food and with yourself. In the beginning, each positive food experience is like a tiny thread. They may be few and far between, and seem insignificant, but eventually the threads form a strand…[which] multiply into strong ropes…[that] finally become the bridge to a foundation of trust in food and in yourself”
Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program that Works
If weight gain is your concern, try to dig deeper into your internalized weight stigma. Why do you feel weight gain or living in a larger body is bad? This really doesn’t bear out in the research, so what’s driving those thoughts for you? If it’s stemming from the diet mindset, revisit the rejecting the diet mentality principle.
When I first started this phase of the intuitive eating process in earnest, I ate whatever I wanted – pizza and chips every day, chocolate first thing in the morning, ice cream and french fries every night. Basically all the foods that I had deemed ‘off-limits’ when stuck in diet culture. But eventually, as the allure of the off-limit foods wore off, I found I wanted to add in other foods. I started craving fruit, salads, yogurt, sandwiches…not because I felt like I should be eating them, but just because it’s what my body was asking for. I still ate pizza and chips, chocolate, french fries and ice cream, but I also ate a whole variety of other foods too.
“In case after case, when people are given free choice and access to all varieties of food after going through the peace process, they end up balancing their intake to include…[all foods].'”
Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program that Works
Once I let go of all the restrictive rules, I was able to eat and taste everything without feelings of guilt crowding the experience and determine what I actually wanted and liked.
Is this step easy? No. Can it be scary? Absolutely. But I can tell you with absolute certainty (because I’m living proof) that making peace with food ultimately leads to a more full and happy life. It’s worth putting the work in for a lifetime of an easy relationship with food and eating.
If you feel ready to take on this phase of the IE process, but would like a little more guidance, Tribole and Resch have a 5 Step Guide to getting started in their book that I think is very helpful.
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