How Strong is Your Diet Mentality?

/

Did you know that the first principle of Intuitive Eating is “Reject the Diet Mentality”?

This step is critical because having a dieter’s mindset disconnects you from your body's wisdom, including your own internal cues that tell you what, when and how much to eat.

When you operate with a diet mentality, you eat according to external factors and rules (e.g., calories, points, macros, good/bad foods, fixed schedule, etc.) rather than honoring your body’s needs, desires and preferences.

Approaching food with a diet mentality can make eating a fraught, unsatisfying experience and lead to a disordered relationship with food.

Ultimately, having a diet mentality erodes your ability to trust yourself, your body and your instincts, and negatively impacts your physical and psychological wellbeing.

Diet vs. Non-Diet Mentality
Even if you aren’t on an official diet or have never dieted, you may still have a diet mentality due to our pervasive, insidious diet culture. It’s the voice in your head that sounds like this:

Diet Mentality

Non-Diet Mentality
In contrast, the non-diet mentality—that is, the Intuitive Eater voice—sounds like this:

  • Am I hungry?

  • I can have anything. What do I want?

  • What sounds yummy and nourishing?

  • Do I want this particular food?

  • Will I feel deprived if I don’t eat it?

  • Will this food satisfy and sustain me?

  • Is this tasty? Does it hit the spot?

  • I trust my body to tell me what it needs.

  • I honor my hunger and cravings.

  • I'm feeling full. I can have more later if I want.

  • I don't feel guilty, anxious or ashamed about my eating.

Where do you stand with the diet mentality?

This Feels Scary!
Rejecting the diet mentality can feel pretty scary, especially if you’ve been trapped in this mindset for a long time. You may fear that if you let it go, you’ll lose control, eat “badly,” never stop eating, and completely go to pot.

These fears are totally understandable.

In time, however, they will start to fade as you realize that it's the dieting mindset—the deprivation, restriction, micro-management, hyper-vigilance, moralism—that prevents you from having a peaceful, intuitive relationship with food and your body.

Your fears will further subside as you reconnect with your inner signals—your hunger, fullness, desires and satisfaction—and rediscover that your body is the only guide you need when it comes to nourishing yourself.

How Dieting Destroys Body Trust

/

Do you trust your body?

There are various reasons why you may not trust your body. Dieting could be one of them.

When you follow a diet (this includes any plan with food rules and restrictions, regardless of what it’s called), you’re letting someone else dictate what and how you eat.

The people behind all the diet programs rely on your reliance on them so they work really hard to convince you that you and your body can’t be trusted, that you need them because they know better than you what your body needs.

They teach you to prioritize their external rules over your inner cues.

They cause you to disconnect from your body and deny its needs and desires.

They destroy the trust you once had in your body, before you learned it was a problem to be solved. 

The thing is, no one knows your body better than you do.

No one knows better than you when you’re hungry, how much food you need, what kind of food you need, what foods satisfy you, and how different foods feel in your body.

Give Your Power and Freedom Away
The desire to diet is completely understandable given our weight-obsessed culture with its unrealistic body standards and tendency to equate thinness with health and moral virtue.

Given our confusing, constantly changing "eat this, don't eat that" food environment, it's also completely understandable to want someone else to just tell you what to eat.

It's important to understand, however, that although well-intentioned, when you hand your food decisions over to an external source, you give your power and freedom away.

As a result, you may eventually find yourself rebelling against the diet and its unsustainable requirements that disregard your body's wants and needs. 

When this happens, it's typical to view it as self-sabotage, a lack of willpower and self-discipline, and further proof that you and your body can't be trusted when it comes to food.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

By rebelling, you’re simply trying to regain a sense of autonomy and freedom—two of the many things dieting takes away from you.

You are the Expert
You are the expert of your own body.

Intuitive Eating helps you tap into this expertise and reconnect with your body.

It helps you rebuild the body trust you came into this world with.

It teaches you how to listen to and honor your body wisdom and how to use this innate knowledge to discern what way of eating works best for you.

Ultimately, it empowers you to take back your power and freedom—and to fully trust yourself and your body.

Why I Couldn't Stop Eating the Crappy Cake

/

Years ago, I was at a friend’s bridal shower. At the end of the party, the host was desperate for all the guests to take some of the leftover cake.

It was one of those super tall cakes—an impressive feat of multiple layers of dark chocolate cake sandwich between chocolate buttercream frosting and topped with giant shards of dark chocolate.

“Everyone, please, please take some cake,” the host begged. “I can’t be trusted to have all of this cake in my house. I'm afraid I’ll lose control and eat it all!”

I offered to take a few big slabs home to give to my boyfriend. Although, secretly, I was really looking forward to eating the cake myself.

You see, despite longing for the cake at the party, I didn’t eat any because I was being “good” and didn’t want to tarnish my “healthy eater” image.

Once I Started, I Couldn't Stop
I honestly don’t remember if my boyfriend ate any of the cake; if he did, it wasn’t much.

What I do remember, however, is standing alone at my kitchen counter in the dark later that night, my mouth salivating as I pulled the plastic wrap off the cake.

As I dug my fork into the cake, my body buzzed with excitement. Cake was a rarity in my "clean eating" days, so I was understandably very excited to eat it.

Sadly, it didn’t live up to my expectations. The frosting was overwhelmingly sweet and the cake was flavorless and dry.

Nonetheless, I continued to eat it all, my pace quickening as I did.

I thought, “What the hell, I might as well polish this off as I'm not going to let myself eat cake again for a very long time.”

After licking the last bit of frosting off my fork and the plastic wrap, I was angry with myself for eating so much cake, especially since it wasn’t very good. “What a waste of calories!” the Food Police voices yelled in my head.

I was mad that I didn’t have enough self-discipline to toss the cake after discovering it didn’t taste satisfying.

I couldn’t understand why I kept eating it and blamed it on my lack of self-control. I deeply regretted bringing the cake home.

Natural Response to Deprivation
Looking back now, I can so clearly understand why I kept eating that crappy cake.

When we let ourselves have what is typically forbidden and scarce, it’s only natural to eat a whole lot of it, to maybe even feel binge-y with it, even if it's not satisfying.

Understandably, my very wise brain believed, “I need to eat all of this cake now, no matter what, because I don’t know when I’m going to get cake again!”

Of course, this didn’t just happen this one time. It frequently happened with my other off-limits foods.

My all-or-nothing approach to eating made me feel out-of-control, guilty and ashamed. And, it provided false evidence that I couldn’t be trusted with food and needed to pull the reins in tighter.

Nothing could have been further from the truth. It was simply a very natural human response to deprivation and scarcity.

Crappy cake felt better than no cake at all.