114. Back To Basics - Principle 3, Make peace with food

Today in my back to basics series I’m talking about intuitive eating principle 3, make peace with food. 

Why is it that you feel like you have no control around food, and that you can’t have certain foods in the house because you feel like you’ll simply eat it all in one sitting?

How can pizza and cake be good for you, and have good things that the body can use?

This is what I’m talking about today. I’m going to help you regain that control and see that all food is good food.

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. 


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Hello, welcome back to my Intuitive Eating Back To Basics series. In each episode, I'm walking you through one of the 10 principles of intuitive eating. I'm going to help you to understand it a little bit. I'm going to give you a couple of thoughts that you can take away. Think about things so you can figure out how the principles apply to you.

This episode is part of a series, so if you've just found this episode, You're welcome to keep listening, obviously, but to get the most out of it, I'd suggest you go and you start at the beginning of the series. So today we're going to talk about principle three, make peace with food. Have you got what I call fear foods?

These are foods that you don't feel like you can have in the cupboard, maybe because you worry that you'll eat them all at once, or foods that you feel like you'll miss out on if you don't eat them when they're available to you. [00:01:00] Maybe it feels like you'll never have them ever again if you don't eat them now.

I'm thinking donuts in the office, buffet food, that kind of thing. You know, things I've got a bit of a one off appearance or are available very infrequently for you and you feel like you can't say no because. When will you ever eat it again? That sort of thing. And then you end up binging on them. Or maybe they're foods that you just don't let yourself have because you believe that they're not good for you.

They're bad for you. If you're a long term dieter, you probably do have foods like that. How do they make you feel? How do those thoughts make you feel? Guilty, shame, greedy. They're words that my clients will quite often use when we're talking about how food and eating those foods makes them feel. Bad body feelings.

Feeling like they need to make up for it [00:02:00] after they've eaten foods like that. It's completely normal if you've been dieting for such a long time to have those thoughts and feelings. Making peace with food means being at a point where you can eat without those negative feelings. 

You can eat with control. Control. Control isn't really control. It's just a word that people might understand in the context of eating and food. But basically it's eating without that lack of control that we often feel when we're in a binge. It's eating in a way that feels like you can't stop. 

You know, nothing hits the spot. Nothing satisfies you. That's that eating without control thing and making peace with food brings that back. 

Peace with food means just eating. No big deal. [00:03:00] Just eating. It's just food. It's also having unconditional permission to eat all foods. No rules around what you can and you can't eat, when you have to eat it, when you have to stop eating, how much you should eat, that sort of thing.

It is Having no fear around the types of food that you eat.

Quite often we are scared of the repercussions of eating, or rather the repercussions of eating what you really want. We're worried about what the repercussions of that might be, and so we try to overcompensate in other ways. But making peace with food means that there are no repercussions, there's no cutting back later, there's no exercising more, no being good, no only eating certain types of foods to make up for it, you know?

Obviously it goes without saying that you are going to still allow [00:04:00] for allergies and intolerances and medical conditions and things like that, but we're talking about this in general, everyday food context, right? 

The fear and the lack of control comes from restriction. Go back to the binge restrict pendulum, right? 

What do you find when you think about that binge restrict pendulum? When you restrict calories, which is essentially what all diets do, the pendulum swings back the other way to force you to eat more food that you have restricted. It's always the food that you have restricted that your body wants you to eat again.

And the longer you leave it, the bigger the restriction, the more extreme the results of that restriction. So go back to that episode if you haven't done so recently, and you don't know what I'm talking about at the moment. 

Wherever there are rules, there is restriction, okay? Diets encourage it. [00:05:00] Low carb, low fat, calorie counting.

Slimming World and other diets of that nature are effectively calorie reductions. Shakes diets like Cambridge are serious calorie restriction. There is nowhere in dieting where there is no restriction. 

Diets are sneaky, right? They say you can eat what you want. But quite honestly, you can't. They still make some foods good, they still make some foods bad.

And you get encouraged to swap things out. Swap chocolate for fruit. Swap chips for salad. Swap fry up breakfasts for oats and fruit. 

And you adapt to this. You end up putting the restricted food on a pedestal. You make it so special in your eyes, then to have it as [00:06:00] a treat. You ignore body cues like your hunger feelings.

You feel like you have ultimate control, but only when you're not having the food and ignoring the hunger, because after that, boom, there's the fallout. The body kicks back. 

You see, we are reliant on food like we rely on air and water. We need it to live but we don't fight air, we don't fight water, we don't try to restrict them, avoid them, ration them, do we? So why do we do this with food? 

Ultimately, you cannot quit food. Okay? You can't quit food. So, to live in harmony with them, you have to make peace with all food.

Give yourself permission, unconditional permission, to eat any food. Permission to eat what you want. Permission to [00:07:00] eat without rules.

There is no good or bad food. All food has something that it can contribute to your body and how your body functions. 

Pizza, for example, lovely range of carbs, fats. Protein. If you're loading the top up with veggies, then you've got vitamins, minerals there, that sort of thing. Even cake. Cake can contribute some really good stuff.

Carbs, fats, protein again. But also, it can be a really good source of quick energy if you need it. Hands up if you recognise the mid afternoon slump when a really nice bit of cake and a bit of an energy boost would be really helpful. 

See what I mean? It's got its place. Every food has its place. 

Make peace with eating at any time of day.

The time of day does not matter. If you are hungry, it means you need energy. [00:08:00] Give that to your body. It doesn't matter what the time is. Making peace with food means having no guilt, no shame for what you've chosen to eat. It is owning it. It is enjoying it. It is knowing that there's nothing to feel guilty about.

There are lots of ways that you can make peace with food. But start by making this food available, making it normal to have around. Become aware of when you're telling yourself that you've had enough and start asking yourself why. 

So, do you think you've had enough because you're full, because you're satisfied?

Or do you believe you've had enough because of old dieting messages telling you that now you should stop eating? See the difference? 

It's all about building up self trust. Just like with honouring your hunger, your body and your mind will come to [00:09:00] trust you around all foods, and you'll realise that they're not that big a deal after all, all right. 

They don't seem so exciting. They don't seem so important They're just normal. Everything's normal. Everything is just food. 

Cravings will reduce, the binges will reduce, the lack of control would disappear and you'll just just feel like eating. You'll just eat whatever you feel like eating.

Promise, promise. 

There is more to this than the brief introduction here. So if you would like me to help you with this, I'd really love to have a discovery call with you. It is a free 30 minute session where we can talk about how you feel around food. I can give you some tips to get you going straight away and we can look at some options that might help you going forward.

The link is in the show notes.

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