Part 3 Dieting and Familiarity: Based on the book "Intuitive Eating Workbook"
In order to control their eating, chronic dieters abide by rigid rules that dictate what they can and cannot eat, with little regard to their experience of hunger, fullness, and satisfaction. Consequently, chronic dieters live in their heads and second-guess the needs of their bodies. After a while, interoceptive awareness (the ability to perceive physical sensations that arise from within the body) goes dormant. Dieters tend to evaluate their successes or failures of eating in terms of the current day. Success requires getting through the day with no violations of the diet. Even just thinking that you have blown your diet is enough to trigger the consumption of more food, regardless of hunger or fullness levels. Consequently, restrained eaters do not really end up eating less food overall. Researchers suggest that a high restraint eating score (meaning a high degree of restrained eating) seems to more accurately reflect eating-related guilt rather than actual food consumed. In the case of eating, habituation is the reason why leftovers become less appealing over time, even if it is your favorite food. The more you eat the same food, the less enticement it offers. It is just food. Sure, it still tastes good, but it becomes no big deal. Several studies have demonstrated the habituation effect with many different foods, including pizza, chocolate, and potato chips. The problem for chronic dieters is that forbidden-food rules prevent the habituation response. Instead, a vicious cycle ensues with each diet: the diet begins with food restriction, followed by broken restraint and the consumption of forbidden foods, which triggers feelings of guilt and a lack of control over eating those foods. That guilt and uncontrolled eating provide false evidence that more rules are needed to constrain the eating. There are many ways to make peace with food. But it goes more smoothly if we harness what we have learned from habituation research. For example, we know that novelty, variety, and distraction delay the habituation process. So it is helpful to eat without distraction and to choose the same food and same flavor before moving on to another food. For example, if you wanted to make peace with ice cream, it’s best to choose one flavor rather than buying a variety of flavors. Varying the flavor (or even the brand) extends the period of novelty—it’s almost like starting anew with each flavor, even though it’s the same kind of food. You will likely need to repeat this process several times—with the same food, as well as with different forbidden foods. Sometimes, of course, there are medical conditions that would cause some foods to be off-limits—such as a life threatening allergy to peanuts, or celiac disease, which is an autoimmune disorder that can only be treated by eating a gluten-free diet. Under these conditions, it is likely that you may feel a level of deprivation, as you are no longer free to eat certain foods without an adverse physical reaction. Remember, Intuitive Eating is about listening to all of the messages your body gives you and striving to feel good in your body as a result of your food choices. As you become an intuitive eater, your body will come to respond to foods that make it feel good, and so if you are in tune with your body, you will want those forbidden foods less. If you continue to have an emotional reaction, it is important to discuss this with your therapist and/or nutritionist. If you have less access to food as a result of financial limits, it is important to discuss your feelings, as well. We are all born into this world innocent, filled with instinct and emotions and the capacity to eventually form thoughts. In the realm of eating, this child lives in a nation—and, perhaps, a home—riddled with guilt about eating. Foods are often described in moralistic terms: decadent, sinful, tempting, or bad. This way of viewing food has become a false religion. Dieting has become the absolving ritual for removing the guilt of eating pleasurable foods. The key defense for challenging the food police is to first develop nonjudgmental awareness of your thoughts and then cultivate retorts to the food police’s judgments and demands. Learning to speak up is essential to your self-esteem. Beliefs are cultivated and influenced by many factors. For example, many people have a family history of living with a focus on weight and body size. A mother might comment on how her child looks and how the child’s clothing fits. A parent may use the scale daily and talk about dieting. A grandparent might make admonitions about how much food her grandchild is eating. There might be magazines in the home full of celebrity photographs that have been digitally altered to make their bodies look perfect. Your thoughts are formulated from the set of beliefs you hold about how the world around you works. The thoughts and rules spoken by the food police are usually cognitive distortions—very strong statements that are based on false beliefs. If not challenged, these negative thoughts can affect many of your behaviors, especially your eating. The first method is cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). CBT involves evaluating your thoughts and reframing them if they are faulty, which ultimately affects your behavior. The process begins with observing your thoughts and questioning whether a thought is reasonable. Is there any scientific evidence to support your thought? Or does it sound unjustifiable, unreasonable, and faulty? Once you have identified an unreasonable or illogical thought, challenge it by replacing it with a logical thought. Reflecting on your actual past experiences will help you evaluate whether your present thought has any truth or accuracy and whether it has actually resulted in any benefit to you. A second way you can challenge cognitive distortions or myths is by reframing them with facts. The second way to work with food police thoughts is a simple process of just observing your thoughts, without allowing them to occupy your mind and without passing any judgment on them. Simply observe them. This is a form of mindfulness called curious awareness. Our minds habitually take hold of a thought and build a narrative or story around it, which can create unnecessary suffering. A robust body of research shows that using curious awareness, through mindfulness-based meditation, can be incredibly beneficial to your mental health. There are many ways to practice doing this: Place your awareness on the present moment, rather than the thought. Pay attention to one of your senses, such as sight, touch, or sound. Simply label the thought as “thinking” or “mere thoughts, not facts.” Consider learning and developing a regular meditation practice. Just as beliefs inform your thoughts, your thoughts can have a powerful impact on your feelings. Let’s say that you realize that you’re feeling anxious. If you explore the thought that preceded that feeling, it might be, I ate too much today. By evaluating and challenging that thought, the ensuing feeling is likely to be more neutral or even positive. Here is a list of feelings that are often connected with eating and your body: anxiety, sadness, fear, disappointment, remorse, envy, anger, and shame. Don’t forget: beliefs create thoughts, which affect feelings and then behavior.
