Here is something that took me a long time to grasp, but the understanding has been extremely liberating, "emotional" eating IS normal, happy eating. You don't need to kill it with fire. It's no big deal. Maybe you'll be a little less hungry later. That's about it. Things don't get weird unless you forbid it or shame yourself for it. Then it becomes big and reactive. The idea that you need to eat perfectly or else you're "bad" and will gain weight is total diet nonsense. The fear is irrational. Your body is so much smarter than that. It will naturally adjust appetite and energy if we let it. That "uh-oh, I've blown it" sentiment is far more problematic than eating some crackers when you're stressed, or cookies when you're bored, and then just getting on with it. Another thing I've realized is that if I’ve been consistently well-fed for weeks and months, eating doesn't often occur to me as a thing to do when I'm bored, happy, or anxious. Restrict, or ignore hunger, and it zooms to the top of the list of coping mechanisms. I like this post from Caroline Dooner: https://thefuckitdiet.com/in-defense-of-emotional-eating/ She argues that eating is an inherently emotional activity, and that trying to make it one hundred percent logical and robotic is what causes food issues in the first place.
top of page
bottom of page
Exactly, trust is everything, and it's created through repeated action. Doing the new behaviors, facing the scary thoughts, and seeing that everything is still ok. You can't decide in your mind, "ok, I trust now, problem solved." Or, "I'm not going to take action until I trust." That means never taking the steps necessary to experience the positive mental shift. Each time you try something new and learn from it, your confidence grows. Then you trust. Then it's real and not hypothetical.
It's not, "If I don't trust, I can't do this." Nooooobody who has restricted for years trusts that not dieting is going to be ok. You've kept yourself in chains all this time by actively telling yourself the opposite. "If I eat this, terrible things will happen. If I don't do that, terrible things will happen." It's fear and negativity all day long. Even when we're doing restriction "right" there's always the fear that it can't last, and the horrible story about what will happen as a result.
See the problem there? So, when you eat what you actually want for dinner, and don't restrict the next morning, diet brain goes INSANE, but that's what you've programed it to do. Now, we're going to teach it a new way of being. The more you do the new behaviors that you want and react with kindness and curiosity instead of guilt and fear, the more your brain is going to dial down the panic alarm and begin to turn up the trust.
Thank you Skwigg... I think it's starting to sink in... I'm starting to get it. So much is about trust but that seems to come with repetition of the positive behaviours.
I have yet to meet a person in a larger body with no food issues. They must exist, even in this wackball diet culture. I'm sure they do, but generally the people who seem to be "happily" ignoring fullness, eating until they hurt, eating mostly fast food and junk food, are NOT actually happy about it, and are not AT ALL eating intuitively or in tune with what their body is trying to tell them. It doesn't feel good. It doesn't come from a place of kindness and trust. There's shame, guilt, denial, plans to do better, and that drives the urge to keep eating. It's a classic restrictive mindset with all the typical fallout. There's also the situation where a diet can be nutritionally deficient even in a surplus. If there's plenty of sugar, trans fats, and processed meat, but not enough vitamins, minerals, fiber, etc., the body can keep sending hunger signals in an attempt to get what it needs to function. Then there is insulin resistance, hormones and all that, where the cells feel like they're starving and request more food even when things are getting over capacity. All of those are addressable. Probably none of them apply to you.
Remember that your fear, your disorder, will give you all these GREAT sounding reasons to keep restricting. Be highly skeptical of those. You honestly can't go wrong by taking care of yourself, trusting your body, and treating it with kindness and respect.
Thanks both for the explanations. It makes sense but I guess it’s hard to trust that it will apply to ME. It’s like your fear makes you think you’ll be the exception where it wont work and your past experience proves it to you. But as you guys pointed out, I guess you can’t have one without the other. You don’t get the sanity around food unless you let go of all Restriction. One thing I still wonder about and I hope I’m not being offensive in trying to articulate this but what about very very large people who don’t restrict, eat the amount they need to satisfy and dont diet or have guilt or anything - they’re just eating what they want but it’s obviously in a surplus because they are carrying a lot of weight, what then? They’re doing it all right but the body must just want a surplus of food?
Self-control (aka, restriction, aka letting your fearful diet brain override your poor hungry body AGAIN) isn't necessary and never ends well anyway. @melissa.stokes explains it perfectly. The more you relax and feed yourself adequately, the sooner the "I could eat the whole world" feeling goes away completely. It's not even a thing. Why would I do that if I can have more in five minutes? If I can eat any quantity I want? If I'm not hungry? If it's no big deal?
We only do that when we're a) hungry or b) feeling guilt, shame, and trying to control.
At the start, you eat and eat and you feel so full you feel sick, but your brain still tells you chocolate is a fantastic idea. Your body is doing this because it wants to weight restore as quickly as possible and it is preparing for the next famine that’s probably coming because that’s what it’s known for years. You don’t need to exercise self-control with any emotional or boredom eating. Once your body and brain relax and believe that the famine really is over, you will eat and then you will just feel like you’ve had enough- not stuffed, not sick, just satisfied and one more bite of your favourite food is completely uninteresting. Skwigg is right, eat lots from boredom/emotions and you’ll naturally eat less later. No self-control needed. It took me 3 or 4 months to feel this.
I am similarly confused, @Jess
AH! This all relates to a post I just wrote in my journal. I find this whole thing very confusing. I understand that unconditional permission to eat involves eating when bored or as a result of emotions. But, surely one has to illicit some element of self-control too? Like knowing that you are full already and that eating any more food will make you feel like crap, and having the self-control to not do so, Vs eating the chocolate anyway because you are sad....?
I loved Tabitha Farrah’s takedown of emotional or habit eating. If you believe those are real and are a dangerous vice to be avoided, you will restrict your food and continue to suffer the fallout of restrictive eating. So in a way, emotional eating or boredom eating IS restrictive eating, because if you’re calling it that, you’re still restricting or thinking you should. Major flipping ah-ha!There’s no point at which restricting your food becomes helpful or harmless. She blasted the whole notion of “addictive” foods too. Same issue. If you believe there are dangerous foods that must be controlled or avoided, that’s restriction. It will only cause you to crave and overeat said foods, not because they’re addictive but because you’re restricting.