Finding Food Freedom: What You Stand to Gain by Giving Up the Food Fight
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“I’m so tired of worrying about food all of the time, but I’m afraid of what will happen if I’m not actively trying to control what I eat.”
“I feel so defeated when I step on the scale every morning and, despite doing everything right, the needle doesn’t budge.”
“I think I must be addicted to food. I’m good all day and then, when nighttime rolls around, I just lose control. I can’t stop myself from eating everything in the cabinets.”
“I just can’t trust myself. If I don’t have rules, I’ll want to eat all the bad stuff.”
These are the statements I hear from my clients on a daily basis. Many of whom have been at war with food and their bodies for a long time—years if not decades. They are people who have experienced great success in many areas of their life and for some reason just “can’t get it right” with food. Perhaps you can relate. After all, these stories aren’t uncommon.
The food culture we’ve created is complicated. Too complicated to cover in a single blog post. But, suffice it to say that the combination of seductive food marketing, particularly for highly palatable, often labeled as “bad” foods, with expectations to “eat clean,” resist temptation, and limit your intake to only low-calorie and/or nutrient-dense foods creates quite a conundrum for our brains. Not only are we surrounded by alluring foods we are trained to believe we shouldn’t eat, we are trying to navigate this environment in a state of restriction, often both physical and psychological. It’s a recipe for feeling out-of-control around, addicted to, and/or guilty about food.
Here are some truths about food rules and diets
They make us obsessed with food. When we are operating from a position of restriction, our brains, which are wired for survival, activate those survival mechanisms that encourage us to seek out food. Food actually becomes more appealing and tastier, which is part of what makes it so difficult to resist. It’s not that you don’t have willpower, it’s that biology is far more powerful than willpower. You need food to survive and if your brain perceives food scarcity, even if self-imposed, it will enforce a state of food preoccupation until you are fed. Your obsessive thoughts about food are actually a survival mechanism, too. And, because experience tells us more restriction is likely just around the corner, as is the case with chronic dieting, our brains encourage us to “stock up” while we’ve got the chance. The result is usually eating a lot, because again, it’s about survival. Thus, the solution here is not more restriction, but actually greater permission to eat.
We want to eat the “bad” stuff more when we believe it to be forbidden. It’s our inner rebel (we all have one) attempting to preserve our autonomy. You know that saying, forbidden fruit tastes the sweetest? It’s true. We want the things we perceive we cannot or should not have. So, when we label foods as “bad” and try to banish them from our lives, our desire for them only grows. The first step is reframing how we view food and moving away from assigning them morality. The second step is making them not forbidden.
We find ourselves operating in extremes. When we do “break the rules” and the guilt sets in, we tend to adopt a “what the hell” or a “f*ck it, I already blew it” mentality, where we go from one extreme (restriction) to another extreme (excess). Food rules lead to black-and-white thinking, which leads to black-and-white behaviors. This is where those out-of-control feelings around food often stem from. It’s a natural response to restriction, not addiction, though it can certainly feel that way.
The result is often a slower metabolism. When you are “doing everything right” and the scale isn’t budging, well that’s your brain, too, saying, “uh oh, she’s not getting enough fuel to sustain life, better slowdown that metabolism and stop wasting so much energy.” The reality is, we have far less control over our weight than our diet-obsessed culture would lead us to believe. Each and every body has a unique weight range in which it really prefers to stay. And, they are very resistant to deviations from that range, particularly in the downward direction. So, if the scale isn’t budging despite your calorie-restricted diet, it’s a good sign that your body is in survival mode and working hard to protect you, not that you aren’t working hard enough.
So, you see, the problem here isn’t you. It’s not lack of willpower. It’s not that you don’t care about your health. It’s that you are wired for survival (which we could argue really isn’t a problem at all!). Your brain is very committed to keeping you alive (thank you, brain). And, diets and food rules are perceived as a threat to survival by your brain. Your inability to stick to a diet and your body’s resistance to lose weight is evidence that your brain is doing its job.
Trying to out-willpower biology does not offer a path to ending food and body struggles in the way diet culture would like you to believe. It actually only serves to worsen them. It’s also not your only option.
Take a moment to imagine the life you want, the life you envision when you’ve achieved those elusive diet goals. What would be different? What would you do? How would you feel? Now imagine working toward all of that without a prerequisite of weight loss. The truth is, all those diets and food rules that have promised to provide you that path forward haven’t worked. Worse yet, they are standing in your way. You can find peace with food, you can care for your body, you can live the life you crave, all without pursuing weight loss first.
Imagine a life free from diets and food rules.
What would it be like to:
Never feel guilty about what you eat again?
Eat in a way that honors your body’s needs, supports your well-being, AND includes ice cream (and not the low-calorie kind)? I promise, giving up on dieting is not inconsistent with eating for health.
Have more time, space, and energy to engage in activities and with people you enjoy?
Find joy in movement again?
Experience greater happiness and life satisfaction?
This is the life that awaits you when you decide to ditch the diets for good.
Here are some truths about diet-free living
When you can stop relying on external food rules you will start to learn how to trust yourself and your body around food again. You can learn to recognize and respond to hunger without fearing or avoiding it, find the point of comfortable fullness and satisfaction where you can stop eating with little effort, and eat in a way that nourishes your whole body—mind, body, and spirit.
You will learn that your body craves balance. While a diet of nothing but salmon, kale, and brown rice won’t be satisfying or sustaining long-term, neither will a diet of cupcakes and potato chips. You will be able to find a middle ground with food that both honors your nutrition and health needs and is pleasing to your senses.
When you aren’t spending so much time plotting and planning how you are going to control your food intake, you will have a whole lot more time and mental energy to devote to other important things in your life. You will be able to go out to eat with friends and actually enjoy the experience without being preoccupied with thoughts and fears about food. You will be able celebrate holidays and other special occasions without feeling guilty for fully partaking in the food experience.
You will learn to relate to movement in a different way—one that prioritizes pleasure and enjoyment not calorie-burning and paying penance for diet deviations. This will actually help you build a more sustainable movement routine, which will be more supportive of long-term wellbeing.
There is so much to be gained by giving up on dieting. It does not mean that you are giving up on yourself, rather you are liberating yourself to live the life you desire, the life you deserve. That’s not to say it’s easy or that it happens overnight, but that is to say that it’s possible to find greater peace with food and freedom from diets and food rules.
Looking for some support as you get started on your journey to food freedom? Join myself and my colleague Dr. Haica Rosenfeld for a 4-week workshop on Breaking Up with Diets: Finding Peace with Food, Body, and Self, starting July 7, 2020!
Together we’ll explore what diet and wellness culture get wrong about body size and health, why diets aren’t the answer, and how to eat, move, and care for yourself in a way that honors not just your physical heath, but also your mental, emotional, social, and spiritual wellbeing. Based on principles of Health at Every Size® and intuitive eating, this workshop will help to ease the suffering you experience around food and body, creating space for you to start living the life you crave.
Click HERE for more information and to register.