112. Back To Basics - Principle 1, Ditch The Diet Mentality

Welcome to my intuitive eating back to basics series. Each day for 10 days I'll release a new episode, guiding you through one of the intuitive eating principles. I’ll explain what it means, why it is important, and how it applies in real life.

To become an intuitive eater we first have to totally reject diet culture. If you still have the idea that you want to diet in the back of your head you can’t truly lean into intuitive eating.

Diet culture is all those messages around us that tell us we’re not good enough as we are. You might be surprised when you start to look into it just how much diet culture messaging is around us, being soaked up by our subconscious.

Today I’m going to help you to spot sneaky diet culture, and start to reject it.

Transcript

 A quick heads up before you start reading..... My transcriptions are automatically generated. I do not type them manually. For this reason there may be errors, incorrect words, bad spelling, bad grammar, and other things that just seem a little 'off'. You'll still be able to understand what is being said though, so please just ignore that and enjoy the episode.

[00:00:00] 

Welcome to my Intuitive Eating Back to Basics series. In each episode, I'm going to walk you through one of the 10 principles of intuitive eating, help you understand it a little bit, and maybe give you a couple of questions, things you can take away and think about, so that you can figure out how the principle applies to you.

Just as a heads up, this is a series, so if you're diving straight in here, you've already missed an episode. And to get the most out of this, I'd suggest that you go back and you start at the beginning. So, go catch up on the first episode. This will still be here when you're done. There's no rush. unless you're like me and then you want to binge them all.

I'm a totally all or nothing kind of girl. So, I understand if you're the same. But go back, watch the first one first. And then come watch this one. So, we're going to talk about principle one today. Reject the diet [00:01:00] mentality. In a nutshell, this means not wanting to diet. It means not wanting to restrict yourself, not wanting to exercise more in order to eat more, not wanting to be thinner to be better or to be more valuable or more lovable.

you don't need to improve yourself somehow in order to be valued and have a place in the world. And if you are still craving these things, you are still going to be in a mindset. of restriction. And while your mind wants you to restrict, can't be intuitive in your eating. So you really have to let go of that restriction if you're going to be an intuitive eater.

Why is this? Let's start at the beginning. What is intuitive eating? Well, intuitive eating is the body's natural ability to regulate how much we eat [00:02:00] and what we want to eat in order to get the balance of nutrients and energy right for our body. And a baby or a toddler is the perfect intuitive eater.

Have you ever tried to feed a child that does not want another spoonful of food? But also, babies and toddlers will cry when they're hungry. They'll cry when they're hungry, they'll let you know. They lose interest when they've had enough, and they seem to change their taste preferences daily. If you have kids, you will know this.

or, you know, if you've been around kids.

But as we get older, and we start to absorb the world around us, we take in lots of different messages. And that affects the way we eat. And the way we see our body. And this starts as young as four or five. Primary school children will actively be comparing themselves to others. [00:03:00] Considering what their body looks like.

Thinking about food and how it affects their body. And they will actually start to manipulate their food intake to be what they are now believing is the right amount of food or the right types of food. to achieve the way that they think that their body should look. 

To become an intuitive eater, we have to totally reject diet culture. If you still have the idea that you want to diet in the back of your head, you can't truly lean into intuitive eating and I'm not saying it's easy and you'll see through this episode that it's totally understandable to feel like you should lose weight but it's something to be aware of that to really become an intuitive eater you need to park that for now.

So let's look at what diet culture is. Diet culture is all those messages around that tell us we're not good enough as we are. [00:04:00] You might be surprised when you start to look into it, just how much of this stuff there is around. Just there, in the background, being soaked up by our subconscious. These messages tell us to lose weight, to change the way we look, to be smaller, to be thinner, and they're everywhere.

The messages are in magazines, they're in TV ads, they're in TV programs, they're on social media, they're even in conversations that you have with friends and family. And the world is not kind to people in bigger bodies, okay? So this adds to you feeling like you should conform to these dieting messages. 

Things like waiting rooms often have seats with arms. They are uncomfortable for fat people. Seat belts on planes are limited, so you have to ask for an extender. 

People have expectations of how you live your life. They assume that you are greedy or lazy, for [00:05:00] example. 

Healthcare is often not what you'd like it to be. There is a lack of suitable size equipment, lesser quality care from medical staff doctors, and the advice is often to go away and lose weight. 

And all these messages filter into your head and you start to believe them because you hear them so often. 

But to me, these messages are just a form of discrimination. Just as you wouldn't expect people to change their height, their hair color, their race, their disability, we shouldn't expect people to change their body shape or body size.

We feel the need to diet, right, in order to achieve those things. But we need to question that. We need to start questioning that. 

Diets sell us the dream life, but it doesn't really exist. Are you really better when you are thinner? [00:06:00] Are you actually happier when you are thinner? Are you actually fitter just because you are thinner?

And are you automatically healthier because you are thinner? No, most of those changes come from behaviours. 

Like the amount of movement you have in your life, the variety of food that you eat, not due to dieting. Because after all, if you remember, thinner people can have health and well being issues too, right?

So how many diets have you actually done? And what were the results of those diets? Did you achieve your dream lifestyle because of your diet? Many don't work or they work in the short term and then they slow down. And there's actually no research that shows that long term weight loss is maintained [00:07:00] past 2 to 5 years.

None. 

Diets are actually also very stressful. They make life tricky. They make you think about food all day. They make you track everything. They don't fit in with your family life. They don't fit in with social events. They can be expensive. 

I mean, think of all the meetings, the special foods you have to buy, the shakes if you do that kind of diet, magazines, promotional materials that you've bought. There's lots that you get to spend your money on when you do a diet. 

They often ruin your love of a certain food too. Do you now eat less bread or cheese, for example, because you now think of them as bad food. Do you eat less fruit and vegetables now, because you had to eat so many when you were on a diet and now you just can't face them.[00:08:00] 

All diets rely on restriction and unreasonable rules. They don't allow food groups or certain types of food, for example. Think of all the diets like carb free, keto, sugar free, fat free. And then there's the less obvious, like cutting out things you like, like bread or chocolate, things you're discouraged from eating anymore.

Maybe they encourage eating at a certain time of day only. Maybe eating, but only if you exercise. Or what about eating a set amount of food? And having limits on quantities of food in the form of, say, points or syns, that sort of thing. 

On your diet, can you really, truly eat [00:09:00] anything that you want when they say you can?

Is there a, you can, but? You can have chocolate, but you have to count it. There's always some kind of trade off for you being able to eat that food, isn't there? 

Diets do not take into account your genetics, your socioeconomic status, your health conditions, your disabilities, your metabolism, your history of weight stigma and weight cycling, because we know that makes a difference to how your body reacts to things, gender, your upbringing, your food preferences. 

Did you know there's actually over a hundred genes that control body shape and size before you're even born. 

So before you're even born, your body has this set body shape, body type, preferred body weight that it wants to be [00:10:00] at before you're even born. 

And dieting tries to fight all of that. It tries to fight your DNA, your genetics, mother nature. It's no wonder your body tries to rebel after a while and just stops losing weight.

You're familiar with the plateau if you've been on a diet for a while. That's why it's your body fighting back. 

If you remember, I said that at the end of each episode, I might give you a couple of questions to think about stuff you can journal on or talk about with people like in the Facebook group or just think about yourself.

So with all this new insight and information about diet mentality, and the need to reject that, here are some things you can think about today. 

How many sources of diet culture can you see around you?

Take some time while you're watching TV or pottering around just to make a list, even if it's a mental [00:11:00] list, of the ways that you are being swayed towards losing weight, or being made to feel like you should change your body somehow.

How many of those things on the list do you think affect you? Whether it's obviously or more subtly. Maybe they do, maybe they don't. There's no judgment. It's just about having observations here. 

Consider how many diets you've done. How many have worked? And if they did work for you, how many worked long term?

By long term, I mean, once you stopped doing that diet, after a few years, did they still, did they still hold that weight off? 

And how did those diets make you feel while you were doing them? Did they make you feel good? Did you feel a little bit deprived? Did you feel like you were missing out on something?

And what rules do you still have in your life around food that are still hanging on [00:12:00] from diets that you've done? 

Hands up if you are still only having bread once a day because the diet says bread once a day. How many of you go to the supermarket and buy a low fat yoghurt or a sugar free yoghurt instead of the really nice creamy Greek yoghurt that you really want?

How are these food rules still showing up even if you've quit a diet? 

And what would it feel like to not diet anymore? How would that feel? I know how it feels, I know how it feels to me, but how would that feel to you? 

So that's Principle 1 done. Come back tomorrow. There will be a new episode for Principle 2 and I will see you there.