When you hear the words “food police,” what comes to mind for you? The food police, AKA diet culture voices, are a huge factor that can cause you to restrict certain foods. These voices create guilt and shame around food.
Challenging the food police builds upon Principle #1: Reject the Diet Mentality, Principle #2: Honor Your Hunger, and Principle #3: Make Peace with Food. Removing morality associated with food is essential to recognize the different voices of diet culture and challenge the food police in its tracks.
Every day, our brains are flooded with different thoughts. Some thoughts are rational, whereas others are crazy notions. These thought processes are referred to as internalized sentences of self-talk. Negative self-talk can create feelings of despair, which may trigger sabotaging behaviors.
Challenging the self-talk rooted in diet culture can make us feel better. When we feel better, we act in ways that make us feel pleasant mentally, physically, and emotionally.
To begin to challenge the food police, we must start by examining the external diet culture voices that we hear. On some days, these voices are loud, and on others more subtle.
There are three voices that are commonly heard:
- Food Police
- Diet Rebel
- Nutrition Informant
1. Food Police
- The food police voice is truly entrenched in the ideas of diet culture.
- It can hurt by scrutinizing every food and eating action, continuing your war between food and your body.
- This diet culture voice will NEVER be an ally. Understanding its presence and triggers can give you the power to take away its hold over you!
2. Diet Rebel
- AKA the angry & determined voice
- It can hurt by making you feel trapped in your thoughts, often resulting in eating to unpleasantness or sneaking around to eat “play” foods.
- It can help by becoming an ally to establish and protect boundaries. It supports efforts to make peace with all foods.
3. Nutrition Informant
- Operates under the guise of “health”
- It can hurt by making you choose a different food than what you are craving. For example, you may be hungry and choose to eat an apple instead of the chocolate you want.
- It can help by becoming an ally to gentle nutrition. Nutrient-dense foods offer satisfaction and are not associated with dieting or deprivation.
Although there are destructive diet culture voices, there are also voices that can be our allies.
1. Food Anthropologist
- The food anthropologist voice is the neutral observer when choosing foods to eat or thinking of foods.
- This voice is capable of making observations without judgments.
- The food anthropologist voice can be honed with a food journal reflecting on meal times and foods eaten. Remember, this is not a voice of judgment!
2. Nurturer
- The nurturer voice is gentle and compassionate.
- This voice provides comfort when faced with emotions that arise from things out of our control.
- The nurturer can inherently create feelings of fear, due to its response to a rise of emotions—it is important to remain compassionate.
3. Nutrition Ally
- The nutrition ally voice is when the destructive nutrition informant voice becomes your ally.
- This voice is closely tied with Principle #10: Gentle Nutrition.
- Imagine this, you are going out for dinner at a restaurant that serves your favorite, most delicious, rich meals. You know you truly want to enjoy the foods being served at dinner and want a lighter meal before to leave room for more nutrient-dense foods. You came to this decision because you want to maximize your satisfaction at dinnertime, not because diet culture is pushing you to make this decision.
4. Rebel Ally
- The rebel ally voice is when the destructive diet rebel becomes your ally!
- No matter what point or stage in your intuitive eating journey, the rebel ally voice should be present as an advocate for your needs.
- This voice is closely tied with Principle #7: Coping with your Emotions with Kindness.
Learning these helpful voices is key in challenging the food police and building compassionate self-talk.
If you enjoyed this blog post make sure you check out our post “Intuitive Eating Principle #3: Make Peace with Food” here!
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