This Ice Cream Left a Bad Taste in My Mouth

While recently perusing the ice-cream section at the grocery store, I discovered a brand I wasn’t familiar with.

After studying all their enticing flavors, I grabbed the one that really made my taste buds tingle and tossed it into my shopping basket.

Later that evening, when I peeled the lid off the pint, I was greeted with the following words:

CHEAT DAY APPROVED.

Although I was annoyed by the diet-culture messaging, I enjoyed the ice cream enough to buy another pint the next time I went shopping.

When I pulled the lid off the second container, I was hit in the face with more diet-culture B.S.:

YOU DESERVE THIS.

Seriously?

This left me feeling more than annoyed!

I just want to savor some yummy ice cream without being bombarded by diet-culture messaging that promotes food restriction, food moralism, and other disordered eating beliefs and behaviors.

Is this too much to ask for? Apparently so!

Cheat Days Not Approved
I’ve never liked the idea of a cheat day.

Not only does it imply you’re a morally good or bad person for eating a certain way, it’s based on a rigid approach to eating that includes deprivation and disregard of your body’s needs and desires.

And, despite granting you a free pass to eat whatever you want, cheat days can still leave you feeling guilty, ashamed and anxious.

As a result, you may feel you need to pay a penance for your day of “sinful” eating, often by pulling the reins in tighter with your eating and exercise—until your next cheat day, that is.

Ultimately, cheat days set you up for a vicious restrict-binge cycle and an overall dysfunctional relationship with food and your body.

Deserving the Right to Eat
I’ve written before about the ridiculous idea that you do or don’t deserve to eat something. It sounds like this:

• I deserve some ice cream because I exercised today, ate really clean this week, had a hard workday, etc.

• I don’t deserve any ice cream because I skipped my workout, ate too much today, didn’t get my project done, etc.

Despite what our toxic diet culture wants you to believe, your eating never has to be deserved, earned or compensated for. 

You have the right to consume whatever you want, whenever you want and however much you want. 

It’s your birthright!

Bad Taste in My Mouth
Despite liking the ice cream, I’m not sure if I will buy it again as I’m so turned off by the company’s diet-culture messaging.

It’s unclear what their intention is, perhaps to be funny or reassuring.

My guess is that they don’t mean any harm and don’t realize how their words can perpetuate an unhealthy relationship with food.

Of course, my experience with this brand is not unlike my experience with many other food and beverage companies that also promote the diet mentality on their packaging and in their advertising.

Sadly, once you start to look more closely, you see how insanely and annoyingly pervasive it is.

I don’t know about you, but it leaves a really bad taste in my mouth.

Are You a Pseudo-Dieter?

After years of jumping from one diet to the next and being a slave to the scale, Val hit rock-bottom.

Fed up with the weight-loss roller coaster and obsessing over every morsel she ate, she swore off dieting.

Yet, months after joining the anti-diet movement, she still shuns carbs, avoids snacking and seconds, never eats after 6:30 p.m., and runs an extra mile whenever she has dessert.

Val is a pseudo-dieter.

She genuinely believes she’s given up dieting, yet she continues to engage in dieting behaviors.

As a result, she still experiences many of the side effects of dieting, including thinking about food all the time, struggling with intense food cravings, feeling out of control with her “trigger foods” (ice cream and chips), and feeling guilt, shame and anger when she thinks she’s eaten badly.

Deeply Ingrained
As with Val, the diet mentality can be so deeply ingrained—or hidden under the guise of “health," "wellness” or "lifestyle change"—that you may not realize you're actually pseudo-dieting and that your restrictive eating behaviors are making you vulnerable to the physical and psychological damage dieting causes.

Falling into the pseudo-dieting trap is completely understandable given how ubiquitous and seductive our diet and wellness cultures are.

Here are some more examples of pseudo-dieting:

• Eating only “clean” or “whole” foods.

• Limiting carb or fat grams regardless of what you want or what your body needs.

• Determining what you deserve to eat based on what you ate earlier in the day or if you exercised, rather than your hunger level.

• Compensating for eating “bad” foods by doing extra exercise, skipping your next meal, eating less tomorrow, or going on a cleanse.

• Allowing yourself to only eat at certain times of the day despite your hunger level.

• Becoming vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, etc. for the sole purpose of losing weight.

Releasing the Diet Mentality
Just like an official diet program, pseudo-dieting disconnects you from your body inhibiting your ability to hear and honor the messages it’s sending you.

And, as I mentioned earlier, all restrictive eating, no matter how it’s labeled, leaves you vulnerable to the pitfalls of dieting, from binge eating and weight cycling to food preoccupation and social withdrawal.

Escaping the dieting roller coaster and experiencing true food freedom requires fully letting go of your diet mentality and relearning how to nourish your body based on its internal cues versus external rules—that is, eat intuitively.

As pseudo-dieting behaviors can be quite subtle and disentangling from our pervasive diet culture can be very difficult (but not impossible!), it can be helpful to receive support and guidance. I’m here for you if you need me.

How I Stopped Obsessing About Food

When I was in college, I participated in an aerobics class that was held in the basement of some random office building near campus.

I was able to attend for free in exchange for arriving early to set the room up for class, which meant pushing all the desks, chairs and trashcans out of the way so there was plenty of space for leg kicks and grapevines.

Right next to the building was a small cookie shop that baked the most delicious double-chocolate chip cookies. You could smell them a block away.

While sweating away under the fluorescent lights in that low-ceiling makeshift dance studio, I fantasized about sinking my teeth into one of those chewy, gooey delights—a big no-no on my fat-free diet.

Distracted by my food fantasies, I was often sidestepping to the right when everyone else was moving to the left. 

A Major Distraction
I can recall many times when my obsession with food, especially my forbidden foods, prevented me from being fully engaged in my life and present for those around me.

I remember being distracted at a bridal shower by the chocolate layer cake I so badly wanted but wouldn’t let myself have because it would have blown my calorie count for the day.

I spent numerous work meetings preoccupied with the bagels on the table that were off-limits because they didn’t fit into my idea of a healthy diet.

At parties, I barely recalled conversations with friends because my mind was on the pizza box, cheese platter, chip bowl or brownie plate—all “illegal” foods.

Constant State of Deprivation
I thought about food ALL THE TIME. It consumed my life.

Back then, I didn’t understand that the reason I spent so much time, energy and headspace thinking about food was because I was living in a constant state of deprivation.

As a result of all my food rules and restrictions, I incessantly thought about what I could eat, should eat, shouldn’t eat and really wanted to eat.

Unconditional Permission to Eat
When I finally stopped trying to micromanage my diet and force my body to be a size it was never meant to be, my preoccupation with food went away (along with many of the other harmful side effects of dieting).

By slowly learning how to eat intuitively, which includes unconditional permission to eat whatever I want whenever I want, food took a balanced place in my life.

When my deprivation ended, my obsession ended.

The intensity, anxiety, stress and shame I once experienced with food were replaced with a sense of ease, peace, expansiveness and freedom.

As a result, I have so much more space in my life for more important and meaningful things than obsessing about cookies. Now I just enjoy them and move on.