What are Your Attunement Disruptors?

People are often surprised that I don’t tell my clients what to eat, when to eat, or how much to eat. I don't because I don’t have a clue what their body needs and wants at any given time. They are the expert of their body, not me!

My role is to help my clients connect with their body’s innate wisdom and trust it to guide them to the most nourishing, satisfying and supportive choices for their unique being. Part of this process includes exploring their attunement disruptors.

Attunement Disruptors
Attunement disruptors are obstacles that interfere with your ability to clearly hear—and appropriately respond to—the messages your body is sending you, including its sensations of hunger, fullness and satisfaction.

Here are a few common attunement disruptors:

• Dieting: When you’re dieting—no matter what the plan or program is called—you prioritize a set of external rules over your internal cues.
  
  For example, ignoring your body’s hunger signals because you’ve reached your calorie, point or macro allotment for the day; disregarding your fullness cues and overeating because you aren’t allowing yourself to eat again for many hours; or avoiding a desired food because it’s off-limits.
  
  

• Food Rules: Even if you’re not on a diet, you may still have a diet mentality and be adhering to a set of food rules, such as no eating after 7 p.m., no snacking, no seconds or no carbs. Your food rules dictate your eating decisions instead of your body’s needs and desires.
  
  

• Distracted Dining: Eating while multitasking (e.g., TV watching, emailing, texting, gaming, driving, etc.) inhibits your ability to tune into your body’s fullness cues.
  
  Distracted eating can also leave you feeling unsatisfied when your food is gone. Even if you're full, you may find yourself understandably seeking more food in search of satisfaction as satisfaction is an essential component of the eating experience.
  
  

• Eating Habits: Ingrained habits, like distracted dining, breakfast skipping, inflexible meal times and a clean-your-plate mentality, can cause you to override your body’s cues.
  
  

• Chaotic Lifestyle: If your days are intense, chaotic or overscheduled, perhaps due to juggling constant work and/or caregiving demands, your busyness may prevent you from hearing and honoring your body’s needs.
  
  

• Performative Eating: You’re disconnected from your body when you change how you eat when eating with others, such as not eating what or how much you actually want.
  
  You might do this to meet social or cultural expectations, please other people, project a certain image, or avoid potential judgment or criticism, which is completely understandable if you’ve been food policed in the past.
  
  

• Inadequate Self-Care: Not prioritizing foundational self-care practices, such as restorative sleep, joyful movement, stress relief and screen-free time, makes it difficult to hear and respond to messages from your body.

Start Small, Be Flexible
Addressing your obstacles to body attunement can take time, especially if your inner wisdom is clouded by a dieting mentality, food rules, weight stigma, fatphobia and other deeply embedded beliefs and behaviors, such as always putting other people’s needs before your own.

I encourage you to take small steps and to focus on what would feel the most helpful and satisfying to you.

It’s also important to be flexible in your approach otherwise you may find yourself creating a set of rigid rules that make you feel bad and guilty when you break them, such as “I can only eat when I feel hungry” or “I’m not allowed to eat in front of a screen.”

Sometimes, your work schedule may require you to eat at a specific time or while catching up on email. Or, you may want to enjoy a pizza while watching a movie, which can be a really pleasurable experience!

Being mindful of your attunement disruptors most of the time will help you reconnect with your body and become more aware of and responsive to its messages, needs and desires. As a result, you will cultivate a more trusting, intuitive and peaceful relationship with food and your body.

Emily's Story: It's All Downhill from Here

From time to time, I like to share a client experience to illustrate how Intuitive Eating can help you have a more trusting, peaceful and relaxed relationship with food and your body.

Recently, I was catching up with my former client Emily and she shared how different this holiday season already feels for her. With her permission, I’m sharing her story with you.

Emily’s Story: It’s All Downhill from Here
I remember very clearly my thoughts and fears around food that always surfaced at this time of year and talking to you about them when we were working together.

My October birthday had always triggered the “downhill” part of my year.

Starting with my birthday and continuing through New Year’s Eve, I would be diet-free.  

This meant giving myself special permission to eat without any restrictions for three and a half months before beginning a new diet on January 1.

Since I knew deprivation was just around the corner, I experienced a lot of Last Supper bingeing episodes during this time.

This year, I already feel such a major difference.

It no longer feels like this special time of year where I finally have an excuse to eat cake or candy. These things are always available to me now since I’ve stopped dieting and started giving myself unconditional permission to eat no matter what time of year it is.

It is such a freeing experience.

Unlike Any Birthday Before
On my birthday this year, there wasn’t any part of the day or the following weekend that I felt the need to “go for it” with my eating.

In years past, I would always eat until I was uncomfortably full on my birthday and often for a few days after as I polished off the leftover cake and other “special, rare treats.”

This birthday felt like my first big “test” of the season.

Having this new experience under my belt is so rewarding and it’s a testament to the power of Intuitive Eating, especially when paired with your expertise and gentle guidance. 

Peace with All the Pumpkin Things
Also this month, my roommate and I went to Trader Joe’s and bought a bunch of the fall snacks, all the pumpkin things.

It felt like a fall-treat buffet for the first few days. I was having so much fun trying all the new foods that I ended up eating more sweets than I usually do and felt a little sick.

I certainly wasn’t mad at myself for it. Instead, I viewed it as an informative experience.

I realized eating that amount of sweets didn’t feel very satisfying in my body so I may not want to do it again. And, I understood that since they were all new foods, it was normal for me to eat a lot of them right away.

As the days have gone by, unlike past years, I don’t feel out of control with all the fall treats or preoccupied with them. In fact, I forget we have a lot of the snacks we do!

This feels so completely different than when I was stuck in my restrict-binge cycle and it’s a huge relief to know I will not be starting another diet come New Year’s Day.

Every day, there is something new to learn and observe, but there hasn’t been a time in my life that I felt more at peace and at ease with food and my body. 

This Ice Cream Left a Bad Taste in My Mouth

While recently perusing the ice-cream section at the grocery store, I discovered a brand I wasn’t familiar with.

After studying all their enticing flavors, I grabbed the one that really made my taste buds tingle and tossed it into my shopping basket.

Later that evening, when I peeled the lid off the pint, I was greeted with the following words:

CHEAT DAY APPROVED.

Although I was annoyed by the diet-culture messaging, I enjoyed the ice cream enough to buy another pint the next time I went shopping.

When I pulled the lid off the second container, I was hit in the face with more diet-culture B.S.:

YOU DESERVE THIS.

Seriously?

This left me feeling more than annoyed!

I just want to savor some yummy ice cream without being bombarded by diet-culture messaging that promotes food restriction, food moralism, and other disordered eating beliefs and behaviors.

Is this too much to ask for? Apparently so!

Cheat Days Not Approved
I’ve never liked the idea of a cheat day.

Not only does it imply you’re a morally good or bad person for eating a certain way, it’s based on a rigid approach to eating that includes deprivation and disregard of your body’s needs and desires.

And, despite granting you a free pass to eat whatever you want, cheat days can still leave you feeling guilty, ashamed and anxious.

As a result, you may feel you need to pay a penance for your day of “sinful” eating, often by pulling the reins in tighter with your eating and exercise—until your next cheat day, that is.

Ultimately, cheat days set you up for a vicious restrict-binge cycle and an overall dysfunctional relationship with food and your body.

Deserving the Right to Eat
I’ve written before about the ridiculous idea that you do or don’t deserve to eat something. It sounds like this:

• I deserve some ice cream because I exercised today, ate really clean this week, had a hard workday, etc.

• I don’t deserve any ice cream because I skipped my workout, ate too much today, didn’t get my project done, etc.

Despite what our toxic diet culture wants you to believe, your eating never has to be deserved, earned or compensated for. 

You have the right to consume whatever you want, whenever you want and however much you want. 

It’s your birthright!

Bad Taste in My Mouth
Despite liking the ice cream, I’m not sure if I will buy it again as I’m so turned off by the company’s diet-culture messaging.

It’s unclear what their intention is, perhaps to be funny or reassuring.

My guess is that they don’t mean any harm and don’t realize how their words can perpetuate an unhealthy relationship with food.

Of course, my experience with this brand is not unlike my experience with many other food and beverage companies that also promote the diet mentality on their packaging and in their advertising.

Sadly, once you start to look more closely, you see how insanely and annoyingly pervasive it is.

I don’t know about you, but it leaves a really bad taste in my mouth.