My Eyes Were Glued to the Candy. Food Controlled Me.

When I worked in consumer marketing years ago, we conducted in-person focus groups to get people’s feedback on things like product names, logos, packaging, magazine ads and TV commercials.

The groups were held at a few different research facilities around the Bay Area. As a facilitator led a group, I sat with my teammates in a dimly lit client lounge and observed the participants from behind a one-way mirror.

While I found the feedback interesting and informative, attending the focus groups was pure agony.

You see, they involved a lot of food—food I had made off-limits.

Focused on the Wrong Thing
The client observation rooms were always filled with heaps of food, from pizza, chips, cheese and crackers to cookies, granola bars, candy and more candy.

I was so preoccupied with all the food surrounding me, I often found it challenging to concentrate on what the focus group participants were saying. 

At the time, I was deeply entrenched in diet culture and had a lot of food rules regarding what I could and couldn’t eat. Unless baby carrots were involved, most of the foods provided were on my forbidden foods list.

Internal Tug-of-War
While my teammates freely enjoyed the food, I struggled with a tug-of-war in my head.

On one end of the rope, my inner Diet Rebel voice was saying “Screw it! Just have a few handfuls! It’s no big deal! You can make up for it tomorrow.” 

Pulling with all its might in the other direction was my inner Food Police voice screaming “Stay away! It’s too many calories! Once you start eating, you won’t be able to stop!”

This internal battle happened not only at focus groups but at any situation involving food I considered bad, banned or risky. 

My food fixation was an all-consuming distraction, one that prevented me from being fully present and engaged with the world around me.

Eyes Glued
At one focus group in particular, I vividly remember eyeing a bowl brimming with M&M’s. My eyes were glued on that colorful candy all night long. I desperately wanted to toss a few handfuls into my mouth but doing so felt like a huge no-no.

Not only was candy frowned upon on my diet, I was also ashamed to be caught eating it in front of my co-workers, who had all at various times complimented me on my seemingly healthy habits, unwavering self-discipline and recent weight loss.

It wasn’t so much that I thought they would make negative comments. I was more worried about them teasing me, perhaps calling me out for cheating on my diet or jokingly saying something like “I can’t believe YOU are eating candy!”

Having what I perceived as an act of weakness witnessed and remarked on by others felt intolerable to me. 

However, once the focus group was over and everyone left the room, I hurriedly dumped a bunch of the M&M’s into my bag and ate them on my way home when no one could witness my transgression. 

I consumed the candy with such a sense of urgency that I hardly tasted it much less enjoyed it. Sneaking it felt more like satisfying an intense need to fill a hole, albeit temporarily, that years of deprivation had dug. 

Restriction Driving Fixation
Afterward, I felt pretty pathetic. Flooded with feelings of guilt and shame, I immediately made a plan to get back on track the next day.

What I didn’t understand at the time was that I didn’t mess up or do anything wrong. That I wasn’t weak or lacking willpower, discipline or self-control. 

I was human. And my behavior was a natural response to food deprivation and scarcity. 

My food restriction was driving my food fixation.

I would have been able to focus on the focus group if I wasn’t denying myself food. It would have been no big deal to eat the foods surrounding me if I wasn’t trying to adhere to a bunch of food rules that ignored my body's needs and desires. 

Control Backfires
Sadly, diet culture teaches us that if your eating feels out of control, you need to pull the reins in tighter and control it more. The opposite is actually true. 

The more you control your food, the more it controls you. 

The more you try to control your eating, the more likely you are to eat in ways that feel out of control and unsatisfying.  

When I ditched dieting and my food rules and started giving myself unconditional permission to eat whatever I wanted whenever I wanted, I stopped fixating on food.

I no longer feared being in situations where food was involved. Instead, I was able to be present, engaged and enjoy myself, my company—and the food.

I wish the same for you.

Do You Trust Your Body? The Diet Industry Doesn't Want You To.

Do you trust your body?

There are various reasons why you may not trust your body. Dieting could be one of them. It certainly was for me.

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

This is exactly what the multi-billion diet industry wants.

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. 

In a way, outsourcing your eating decisions might feel freeing, especially at first. Doing so may feel like a relief, especially if you frequently agonize over 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’re essentially giving away your power and freedom.

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.

When Did Food Become Complicated for You?

Recently, I was talking with some friends and family members about what our favorite meal was when we were kids.

Mine was spaghetti.

Specifically, spaghetti with only butter and Parmesan cheese.

I vividly recall eating this combo at one of our family’s favorite restaurants, Spaghetti Works, where it was called “Hot Naked.”

When ordering, I was too embarrassed to say “naked” so I would shyly point to it on the menu as my cheeks burned bright red. My mortification, however, did not stop me from ordering my beloved dish.

In addition to those buttery noodles, I loved many different foods, from pepperoni pizza and buttermilk pancakes to sloppy joes and peanut-butter-and-pickle sandwiches. And, of course, I relished anything sweet.

Food was easy back then.

I ate it and moved on.

After all, I had far more exciting things to focus on, like riding bikes and playing hide-and-seek with my neighborhood friends.

When Food Became Complicated
I sometimes reflect on when food started to become complicated for me.

While I can’t pinpoint an exact moment, I do recall starting to view food differently when I was around 11 or 12 years old and feeling terribly awkward in my rapidly changing pubescent body.

One memory is of my best friend and I making these giant chef salads loaded with iceberg lettuce, diced turkey, shredded cheddar, herb-seasoned croutons and low-cal ranch dressing. As we dug in, we’d pat ourselves on the back for making something healthy and hopefully slenderizing.

I remember another moment around this time when, as I reached for a chocolate-fudge brownie at a family reunion, an older boy shouted across the crowded kitchen, “Once on the lips, forever on the hips!”

With my shoulders slumped, head down and cheeks burning with shame and humiliation, I turned away without saying a word and headed to a quiet corner to eat my brownie alone because who would want to be watched doing something seemingly bad?

As I entered high school, I started getting more deeply entrenched in diet culture, from drinking diet soda and replacing meals with SlimFast shakes to burning calories in aerobics classes.

For a short while, I doubled down on these efforts believing that if I lost a lot of weight my ex-boyfriend would regret dumping me and beg me to take him back.

Even More Complicated
In my later teens, my dad was diagnosed with heart disease and our kitchen became fat-free practically overnight. At that time, even almonds and avocados were off-limits.

From Snackwell’s chocolate-chip cookies and non-fat lemon yogurt to blueberry bagels with fat-free cream cheese, I continued to eat fat-free throughout college because I was taught doing so was the ticket to good health and a thin body.

Shortly after moving from Omaha to San Francisco a few years after graduating, I started restricting my eating further.

My list of food rules grew longer and more complicated. Being hyper-vigilant with my eating gave me the illusion of control in an environment where I felt like a complete fish out of water.

Hitting Rock Bottom
My struggle with food and my weight went on for years until I finally hit rock bottom.

I didn’t like the person I had become (frankly, neither did the people closest to me). And I no longer wanted to waste my life trying to have a body I was never meant to have.

With the help of some very wise guides, I came to understand that I can trust my body to tell me what it needs and to weigh what it’s meant to weigh—just as I used to do long ago before diet culture eroded this trust.

I returned to making food decisions based on my body’s cues and satisfaction, including how foods tasted and felt in my body. No longer were my choices driven by food rules, good and bad lists, and how something might impact my weight.

I started regularly eating all my favorite foods again instead of restricting then bingeing on them as I did during my dieting days.

And I felt a sense of freedom with food that I hadn’t felt since I was a young girl.

What About You?
We come into this world knowing how to eat intuitively.

Sadly, for many reasons, we start to disconnect from our instincts and internal cues and instead start following external rules that, for many, result in a disordered relationship with food and their body.

When did food start becoming complicated for you?

Can you remember a time when food was not an issue? If so, how did it feel?

If you were to decide tomorrow that you’re finally done with being at war with food and your body, what steps would you take next?

It’s completely understandable if you feel some ambivalence about stopping dieting and being so tightly regimented with food and your body. Loosening the reins can feel both exciting and scary.

Perhaps a first step might just be imagining what would be possible for you and your life if food was no longer complicated.