First things first, what is cognitive dissonance?
Cognitive dissonance is “the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change”
What does cognitive dissonance look like in an Intuitive Eater?
- Wanting to be an intuitive eater and wanting to make decisions that are going to make you feel good, but then also wanting to move in a way that’s going to make you smaller
OR
- Wanting to be an intuitive eater but still wanting to have rules because diet culture’s rules feel good and controlled
OR
- Wanting to be an intuitive eater but still wanting to wanting to be in a smaller body
The list can go on… If you’re having these thoughts, we want you to know that this is very normal when starting your Intuitive Eating journey, and there is no guilt or shame in this. This is a part of unlearning what diet culture has ingrained in us for years. It will take time!
So, let’s touch on what to do when you are having these thoughts.
Remind yourself that this feeling is temporary
That feeling of overindulging, or that feeling of wanting to eat everything, or that feeling of being out of control doesn’t last very long. Sometimes you have to push through those feelings to get to the other side. The other side is having peace with food and ultimately having a neutrality around food. The other side is where food isn’t neither good nor bad.
This is not easy! Especially for those of us with perfectionist tendencies or those who had rules that always felt secure, but this uncomfortable feeling will not last forever. Over time your thoughts will begin to align with your new Intuitive Eating mindset and the noise that diet culture creates will be quieted.
Give yourself grace
There’s going to be times where you overindulge. There’s going to be times where you don’t eat enough and then you get really hungry, and you feel like you’re binging. There are going to be times where you get nervous around forbidden foods. It’s during these incidences that you must give yourself some compassion.
This is not an overnight thing. If you have been in diet culture for 10, 15, 20 years, you are not going to fix this in a month, two months, maybe not even in three months. It’s going to be a transitional period and without giving yourself the space for compassion, you are constantly going to feel shame and guilt. This only perpetuates the behavior of wanting to continue in these behaviors. There is no learning in guilt and shame.
We promise you that you will get to a place where you can eat foods with excitement and neutrality and feel satisfied! But you have to give yourself time to go through the learning process.
Remember, you cannot fail at Intuitive Eating! There is no pass-fail. You do not need to start over. You do not need to get back on track. All of your experiences are opportunities for learning and growth.
If you resonated with this post, we think you’d enjoy our other blog post titled Stages of Intuitive Eating
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