Reconnecting with Your Innate Inner Wisdom: 3 Tips to Get Started
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What if I told you that you already have inside you all that you need to know about how to nourish yourself well? That you don’t need to follow some set of food rules sold to you by the diet industry to inform your decisions about what to eat and not eat? That you don’t need an app to calculate every calorie or gram of carbohydrate you consume to make sure you don’t “overdo it”? That you can trust yourself to be your own authority on your decisions about food?
Would you believe me?
Maybe it sounds too good to be true. Maybe you are thinking you should stop reading here because this dietitian clearly doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Maybe you are thinking “sure, that’s probably true for some people, but not me.”
Whatever you are thinking is OK. Even if you don’t believe it’s possible to feed yourself well without following food rules, perhaps just the idea is intriguing enough to read on a bit more.
At this point in my career, I’ve worked with hundreds of people who have dedicated much of their lives to finding the perfect eating plan. People who care about their health, who want to do the “right” thing when it comes to feeding themselves. People who find themselves skipping from one food/diet/lifestyle “plan” to the next only to wind up back where they started months, weeks, or days ago, more frustrated, defeated, and discouraged than the time before.
Usually, they attribute this to some personal failing. For some reason they just can’t stick to the plan long enough to reap the benefits, to arrive at the place where food is no longer an issue in their life. Be it lack of self-discipline, laziness, or some other self-deprecating adjective, the reason they’ve yet to experience success is a reflection of their personal flaws. So, they try, try again.
But the truth is, the reason they can’t seem to find the solution to their food struggles is not because they lack self-discipline or are lazy. Generally these are people who are very accomplished in other areas of their lives. It’s actually because they are looking for an external solution for an internal problem.
How Diet Culture Breaks Down Body Trust
We live in a toxic diet and wellness culture. One that started with the creation of the thin ideal, where worthiness is determined by being thin or the never-ending pursuit of thinness if you are not. It then morphed into one that is seemingly less superficial but just as toxic, where it’s not so much about appearance, but rather about “health.” Except that thinness still matters, as thinness has inaccurately been deemed an important (the most important?) indicator of health. And, in addition to thinness we piled on a bunch of virtuousness around food. So not only do you need to be thin to be worthy, you also need to eat the “right” foods, do the “right” exercise, follow whatever the rules of wellness culture declare, because pursuing “health” is also a moral obligation and a reflection of your character.
Ironically, none of these things really make us more healthy. But they do lead us away from our innate wisdom about how to nourish and care for our bodies in ways that meet our unique needs in any given moment. And, they do make us reliant on the ever-changing arbitrary rules of the industries who profit from our disconnection.
Diet and wellness culture teach us that we cannot trust ourselves to make decisions about food. If left to our own devices we will subsist on only the most sinful and indulgent foods, and we’ll never stop eating, which will spell disaster for our bodies. If we’re hungry – diet culture tries to teach us how to ignore that cue or to prevent ourselves from feeling it to begin with. If we want chips – diet culture tries to convince us that some low-calorie alternative will be just as satisfying (hello air-popped popcorn with no added butter and kale leaves dried out in the oven).
What you need to know is, if these don’t work for you, it’s not because there is something wrong with you. It’s not your body betraying you. It’s actually your body, in its infinite wisdom, trying to protect you.
None of this is a recipe for true health. It is a recipe for constantly feeling guilty about, preoccupied with, and perhaps even out-of-control around food.
If Not Food Rules, Then What?
A big part of feeling better in and about your body is re-learning how to listen to, trust, honor, and respect it. Things I know about bodies:
They want to feel good and when they don’t, that’s important information to pay attention to.
They know what they need to function well and are programmed to seek that out.
They are generally good communicators and can tell us what they need, but we need to listen to them.
I also know that if you’ve been disconnected from your body for a while, it takes time to restore that connection and trust. Here are 3 tips to get you started:
Tip#1: Identify, and begin to discard, the tools and rules keeping you caught in toxic diet culture.
How do you manage your eating? Meticulously tracking calories and macros in an app? Religiously weighing yourself every day? Participating in structured weight loss programs? Buying only low-calorie foods or using diet food delivery services? Eliminating certain foods or food groups from your diet? Only allowing yourself to eat at very specific times?
How do these tools and rules make you feel? How do they impact your decisions about food? What would it be like to choose one to let go of or start using less? For example, can you put the bathroom scale in the garage for a week and notice what it’s like not to have that piece of plastic and metal determine what kind of day you are going to have? Can you remove the tracking app from your phone for a day, and notice how you feel when you aren’t reinforcing the belief that this app knows your body better than you?
I’m not saying it’s easy to let go of these things, it’s not. Will you worry about not having that thing to “keep you on track?” Probably.
But we can never reconnect with our bodies and our innate wisdom if we are constantly relying on external tools, devices, and rules to try to control them. So, a very hard and necessary step of this process is to start discarding these external controls that, I promise you, you do not need.
Tip #2: Feed yourself adequately and consistently.
While the goal is to get to a place where you just know when, what, and how much you need based on internal cues, that’s not usually where we begin. When coming from a place of disconnection and traveling toward reconnection, structure and consistency can play a very important role. I know structure sounds very counter to the objective here. However, if you cannot accurately sense your appetite cues, advising you to eat in response to them is not super helpful. Some temporary and supportive structure can play a key role in helping you re-establish that connection so that eventually you find yourself at the place of just knowing what you need without specific guidance.
Regarding what that structure might look like, I typically advise my clients to plan on eating within the first 2 hours of waking and every 3-4 hours thereafter, regardless of whether or not they *think* they are hungry. This often looks like 3 meals 1-3 snacks per day. And, there is always an option to eat more.
Composition may vary, and this is something I explore at an individual level with clients. But, again, a starting place may be making sure there is a starchy vegetable or grain, protein source, fat source, and fruit and/or vegetable at most meals and that snacks typically consist of 2 food groups.
Then, as you eat, practice checking in with yourself before, during, after, and between meals. What sensations can you detect? What do you notice about how your body feels? How does that change over the course of a meal and day? If you can practice checking in with your body while also aiming for consistency in your intake, you’ll likely begin to notice the subtle cues your body uses to communicate with you, re-learn what they mean, and be in a better position to actually respond to them. Over time, you can start to back off the structured eating and rely more on your intuition.
Tip #3: Consider your values.
Then consider: how is the pursuit of weight loss, or “health” as defined by weight, interfering with your ability to live those values?
Values speak to, at your core, who you want to be as a human and how you want to show up in the world. Values are not goals. They are not accomplishments. They are, how you want to act or behave, who you want to be on an on-going, day-to-day basis. Weight and thinness are not values.
Maybe you value connection. To be fully engaged and present in whatever you are doing and whoever you are with. How might the pursuit of weight loss interfere with that? Can you be fully present if you are constantly thinking or worrying about food? Can you enjoy the company of others in social settings when you aren’t able to control the food environment? Do you find yourself turning down opportunities to connect with others or engage in activities you might otherwise enjoy because it’s not compatible with your food rules?
Maybe you value love. That is to act lovingly toward yourself and others. Is denying your body one of its basic needs (i.e., adequate food) truly an act of love? How about forcing your body to exercise when it is tired, sore, and in need of rest? Maybe the fears you’ve developed around food now mean that you won’t allow certain foods in the household that others desire and enjoy. Is that acting lovingly toward others?
There are lots of values and getting clear on what yours are can help you assess how subscribing to the rules of diet and wellness culture do or do not align. Here’s a great worksheet by Russ Harris, author of The Happiness Trap, that might help.
My intent here is not to accuse or criticize but to offer an opportunity to consider how and why external food rules are not yielding the fulfilled life you desire and deserve. Perhaps, reconnecting with your values can help you pave a different path forward on your journey. One that can be both values-aligned and health supportive.
Finding peace with food and your body is not easy in the toxic diet and wellness culture we live in. But it is possible. We can learn to tune out the noise, to direct our attention inward, to trust in ourselves and our bodies to guide us.
Interested in finding food freedom and body trust for yourself? Contact us to schedule a FREE discovery call and see if working together is a good fit for you! We see clients in Vermont, Florida, and several other states. And, be sure to join our email list for more tips and support on your diet-free journey.