First a disclaimer: Parts of talking about this topic aren’t going to be pretty. I don’t bring them up to induce shame, blame, or guilt. Believe me, I’ve lived in the same neighborhood and hung out with these good-for-nothings for most of my life. If you have, too, read on. There’s a whole new paradigm coming your way. Also, the comments in this post don’t take into consideration any religious guidelines or medical conditions a person may have. But even considering these issues, listening to your body is vital.
Let’s start by stating loudly, and clearly YOU CAN TRUST YOUR BODY TO LET YOU KNOW WHAT IT NEEDS.
Does that statement make you squirm or want to argue with me? I know the first time I honestly considered it might be true, not just for some magical, super-evolved people, but for me, I was too scared to really believe it. I felt too vulnerable. It seemed too good to be true. If I let myself buy into that belief wholeheartedly only to find out I couldn’t live like that, I’d be crushed.
I have said for years that my goal was to come to a place where I was so attuned to my body that I could eat as much as I wanted of whatever I wanted whenever I wanted it because I knew I would be eating for my best good. I believed it was possible…theoretically.
When I started connecting with people who not only believed it, too but lived that way (not perfectly, of course), I got scared. What if it’s not that it’s impossible, but only impossible for me? What if I was too broken, too messed up in this area of life to live like that? As I took a hard look at what came up for me, I realized how little I trusted myself in this area. Ouch. That lack of trust was fostered by culture and experience. Eating-wise I was exactly who I was raised to be. Educating myself helped me restore that trust.
I’ll share some crystal clear indicators of the lack of trust I had for my body (this is the not pretty part). These are all barriers to eating intuitively. Maybe you can relate to some of them.
1. Believing there are “good” foods and “bad” foods – Foods have absolutely zero moral or ethical value in and of themselves. All they are is a combination of molecules. Some combinations affect different bodies in different ways, but that doesn’t mean they’re good or bad. They just are.
2. Having food rules – “I won’t eat anything after 8:00 p.m..” “I’ll only have sugar one day a week.” “I’ll eat exactly three meals and two snacks a day.” I could go on and on. It’s actually pretty pathetic how many of these rules I’ve had over the years.
In raising my kids, the more I trusted them, the fewer rules I gave them. The same is true with my body.
3. Restricting my eating – Only allowing myself precise portion sizes or kinds of food – no carbs, no fat, no red meat, no animal products. Rather than having confidence in my body to let me know what or how much it needed, I would listen to whomever the latest expert was, allowing them to tell me what was best for my body. If our body is calling us to adopt a vegan (or any other type) diet for a period of time, that’s an entirely different thing than if we’re letting anyone else tell us it’s how we “should” eat.
4. Not trusting myself with food – Thinking, “If I allow myself to eat as much as I want of whatever I want, I’ll never stop eating.” and “It would be so much easier if I could survive without eating at all.” A) That’s simply not true! And B) Can you hear the profound lack of trust embedded in these thoughts? Sad.
5. Trying various diets – First, the long-term effectiveness of diets is dismal. Statistically, over 95% of people who lose weight on any given diet regain what they lost and more within 2 – 5 years. Second, going on a diet gives more credibility to someone else than to your own body in determining what it needs.
6. Experiencing shame around eating. – Have you ever felt self-conscious about what you put in your cart at the grocery store or avoided having dessert, not because you didn’t want it, but because you were afraid of what someone else might think if you did? That’s food shame.
I’ll say the same thing to you that I say to myself when I think like that.
Stop. It!
To be blunt, it’s nobody else’s freaking business what’s in our cart or what we put in our mouths If they think it is, that’s their problem. If we believe it is, then that’s our problem, and we have the power to let it go.
7. Sneaking food – If we’re being secretive in our eating, it circles right back to feeling shame around eating. Unless you’re a mom with kids living at home. You get a pass. Sometimes a mom just needs something she doesn’t have to share. You go ahead and hide in the pantry and munch away. That’s not about shame. That’s about self-preservation and mental health!
This isn’t at all a complete list of the disordered and counter-intuitive ways we eat. It’s just a few examples to get you thinking.
Now that we see some of what intuitive eating isn’t, what is it? In their book Intuitive Eating, Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch describe an intuitive eater as one who, “makes food choices without experiencing guilt or an ethical dilemma, honors hunger, respects fullness, and enjoys the pleasure of eating.”
Read that quote again, carefully considering what it would be like to live like that. Doesn’t that just make you go ahhhh and feel like your world just got a little better even thinking about the possibility?
If you’d like to read more, here’s a great post on the Intuitive Eating blog.
Hopefully, the wheels in your head are turning and your heart is singing at least a little. Stick around next week for learning about honoring hunger. There’s no need to fear it or fight it.
THIS WEEK’S CHALLENGE – Notice the counter-intuitive ways you eat. You don’t need to try to “fix” them, just notice them for now.