Many people who are new to intuitive eating have the fear of feeling out of control around food.
Social media creates a false narrative of intuitive eating in that it’s all about eating whatever you want, whenever you want. With intuitive eating, you do have unconditional permission to eat all foods, including candy, cookies, and pizza, in addition to nutrient-dense foods. You learn to listen to your body and discover what feels physically, mentally, and emotionally pleasant for you.
These ideas portrayed in social media can make it scary for people just starting their intuitive eating journey. Many of our clients who have tried intuitive eating on their own, after 5 or 10 years of dieting, feel completely out of control around food and physically and emotionally unpleasant. I am here to help you navigate those beginning stages of intuitive eating, where you are allowing yourself to eat all foods, but you have no idea what you’re doing.
We are all born intuitive eaters. We are born in this world listening to our bodies cues, allowing ourselves to eat when we’re hungry and stop when we’re full. We trusted our bodies internal cues to tell us what we needed. Today, the external influences of diet culture have led us to believe that we can’t trust our body or that we shouldn’t trust our body. Our job is to find our way back to being an intuitive eater, before diet culture, trauma, parental influences, and unhealthy relationships got in the way.
When you start to allow yourself to eat all the foods that were previously forbidden when you are on a diet, it can feel really scary. This stage is different for everyone depending on your history with eating disorders, disordered eating behaviors, and dieting. It can take years for some people to trust that they’re not going to restrict themselves again. Restriction can be physical but there is also mental or emotional restriction. For example, if you allow yourself to eat carbohydrates but every time you eat them you beat yourself up about it, that could also be identified as a restriction. There’s a big difference between eating carbohydrates in peace and allowing yourself to enjoy them versus eating them with shame, guilt, and negative emotion tied to it.
Once you start to truly believe that you can eat all of the foods that have been forbidden for so long, it is only natural that you are going to want a lot of them and you’re going to feel out of control. We call this the “celebratory binge” or “honeymoon phase” of intuitive eating. Eventually you are going to reach a point where eating the way you’re used to doesn’t feel physically pleasant anymore. For example, you might realize that you don’t enjoy the physical feeling after eating 5 slices of pizza in one sitting. You know you aren’t a bad person for eating the pizza and you understand that you have unconditional permission to do that, but it just doesn’t feel pleasant. With intuitive eating, you can use your intentions and try having 1 or 2 slices of pizza with a side salad or fruit bowl next time. You are making decisions based on what feels physically pleasant to you.
Due to our extensive experience with dieting, it is going to take lived experience and practical application to truly trust that you have full permission to eat. We know that restriction is the number one indicator of binging. If you continue to restrict food, you will continue to binge. This is why we have to allow all foods. Once you allow yourself to eat those forbidden foods over and over again, you will get to a place where you can have them whenever you want.
This can be explained by the “I love you” analogy created by Evelyn Tribole, the author of Intuitive Eating. If you have ever been in love before, think about the first time you were waiting to hear your partner say “I love you”. Maybe your hands were sweaty, your face turned bright red, or your heart was beating out of your chest. Now, if you’re still with that same partner and they say “I love you”, you don’t have that same physical response because you’ve heard it so many times before. We want to create this same neutrality with food.
When you eat a food that is forbidden, it’s like that first time of hearing “I love you”. You have an urgency to eat more of it because you don’t know if you’re going to have it again. We want all foods to get pulled off that pedestal. It’s not that we don’t want you to enjoy your favorite foods, but we want it to be just food. If you are in the “celebratory binge” phase of intuitive eating, it will not last forever. The sooner you allow all foods to fit, the sooner you will find comfort and control around food.
Diet culture is loud. And it can be really confusing, frustrating, and straight-up HARD to begin your food freedom journey. It is so important to invest in professionals that have the tools to help you start this journey. Click here to get started. And if you loved this blog post, I know you need to check out my blog titled: Sharing Intuitive Eating with Loved Ones
