Emily's Story: It's All Downhill from Here

From time to time, I like to share a client experience to illustrate how Intuitive Eating can help you have a more trusting, peaceful and relaxed relationship with food and your body.

Recently, I was catching up with my former client Emily and she shared how different this holiday season already feels for her. With her permission, I’m sharing her story with you.

Emily’s Story: It’s All Downhill from Here
I remember very clearly my thoughts and fears around food that always surfaced at this time of year and talking to you about them when we were working together.

My October birthday had always triggered the “downhill” part of my year.

Starting with my birthday and continuing through New Year’s Eve, I would be diet-free.  

This meant giving myself special permission to eat without any restrictions for three and a half months before beginning a new diet on January 1.

Since I knew deprivation was just around the corner, I experienced a lot of Last Supper bingeing episodes during this time.

This year, I already feel such a major difference.

It no longer feels like this special time of year where I finally have an excuse to eat cake or candy. These things are always available to me now since I’ve stopped dieting and started giving myself unconditional permission to eat no matter what time of year it is.

It is such a freeing experience.

Unlike Any Birthday Before
On my birthday this year, there wasn’t any part of the day or the following weekend that I felt the need to “go for it” with my eating.

In years past, I would always eat until I was uncomfortably full on my birthday and often for a few days after as I polished off the leftover cake and other “special, rare treats.”

This birthday felt like my first big “test” of the season.

Having this new experience under my belt is so rewarding and it’s a testament to the power of Intuitive Eating, especially when paired with your expertise and gentle guidance. 

Peace with All the Pumpkin Things
Also this month, my roommate and I went to Trader Joe’s and bought a bunch of the fall snacks, all the pumpkin things.

It felt like a fall-treat buffet for the first few days. I was having so much fun trying all the new foods that I ended up eating more sweets than I usually do and felt a little sick.

I certainly wasn’t mad at myself for it. Instead, I viewed it as an informative experience.

I realized eating that amount of sweets didn’t feel very satisfying in my body so I may not want to do it again. And, I understood that since they were all new foods, it was normal for me to eat a lot of them right away.

As the days have gone by, unlike past years, I don’t feel out of control with all the fall treats or preoccupied with them. In fact, I forget we have a lot of the snacks we do!

This feels so completely different than when I was stuck in my restrict-binge cycle and it’s a huge relief to know I will not be starting another diet come New Year’s Day.

Every day, there is something new to learn and observe, but there hasn’t been a time in my life that I felt more at peace and at ease with food and my body. 

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.