Why you must give yourself unconditional permission to eat
One of the first and most important parts of becoming an intuitive eater is giving yourself unconditional permission to eat. But what exactly does that mean?
When I’m working with clients and we discuss unconditional permission to eat, they often have a hesitant reaction to the idea that you can truly allow yourself to eat anything.
This reluctancy comes from years of diet culture messages telling us we can’t trust our own bodies to tell us what they need. In order to be healthy and take care of ourselves, we have to follow diet rules. And because we have spent so many years training ourselves to follow diet rules, the idea of eating without any rules can be scary.
This is why unconditional permission to eat is such an important part of helping you unlearn internalized rules on the intuitive eating journey. Giving yourself true unconditional permission to eat means you decide that NO FOODS are off limits, and you can eat them in WHATEVER QUANTITY you would like.
The problem I often find my clients running into is giving themselves only pseudo-permission to eat.
Meaning while they don’t think they demonize or restrict any foods, if they indulge themselves with an “off limits” food they are unlikely to let themselves eat as much as they would actually like to. Until later down the road, when this little restriction causes overeating or a binge.
You might be in this same situation.
Believe it or not, this is a sneaky form of restriction that perpetuates the cycle of dieting. By limiting how much of a food you are allowed to eat, you are effectively telling your body, “I still don’t trust you enough to make the right decision.”
That lack of trust in your body will cause you to continue to have guilt around foods, and in turn increase the likelihood that you stay in the dieting cycle. By not trusting yourself, you’re much more likely to find yourself trying to follow restrictive diet rules even if you aren’t necessarily on an obviously restrictive diet.
Diet culture messaging has taught us that we can’t be trusted and we should feel shame if we fall out of line, so it takes a big commitment to unconditional permission to eat to help you really trust yourself again.
Right now you’re probably thinking, “Maybe this works for other people, but If I give myself this crazy unconditional permission to eat, I will start eating and I won’t ever be able to stop.”
This is an extremely common and normal reaction. But thinking this way shows that you have internalized rules and diet culture beliefs to work through because you do not completely trust yourself around food.
Many of my clients have the same concerns when we talk through unconditional permission to eat. However, through certain strategies we work through their body distrust so that they can find more food freedom through unconditional permission to eat.
Here’s an example that I like to give my clients that might help you understand: if you were to have your favorite order of pizza for every meal for a week straight, do you think you’d really be excited about eating the same pizza again by the end of the week?
Probably not.
First, because you’re tired of eating the exact same thing over and over. But secondly, your body is no longer feeling like it is restricted or not allowed to eat your favorite pizza!
Mentally that takes a little bit of the excitement out of eating a “forbidden” food. Your body is starting to trust that if you crave pizza again, you’ll allow yourself to have it. This allows you to take a step back, pay attention to your internal cues, and realize, “Wow, eating a lot of this food kind of makes me feel bad physically.. what do i really want to eat that will make me feel good and energized right now?”
Your mentality around food and your ability to fully trust your body can really change the food you crave. Instead of craving things because you won’t let yourself ever have them, you start to crave foods that make your body feel great inside.
And since you trust yourself after giving yourself unconditional permission to eat, you eat your previously “forbidden” foods whenever you want in your more balanced diet. The best part is that now when you eat your “off limits” foods, you’ve given yourself true permission to eat without guilt so you can enjoy these foods even more than before!
But getting to this mindset takes practice, and it is not a magical solution.
You will have to challenge yourself and accept that there may be some things about your body that it is better to learn to love than constantly try to change. Weight, food, dieting… they just don’t matter as much as you’re made to believe they do. By working on re-evaluating your current idea of health, you can set new goals and find more freedom in your life.
If you’re interested in learning more, check out my free training and stick around until the end for five reflection questions to help you brainstorm your new definition of health!
— Lauren
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Such a good message and very well written!