I'm Being So Bad! I Shouldn't Be Eating This!

Some years ago, while dishing up a bowl of oatmeal in the buffet line at a retreat center, a guest next to me was adding fresh berries to her granola.

As she drizzled honey on top of the fruit, she turned to me and said, “I’m being so bad! I’m not supposed to be eating this!”

Her comment caught me off guard. 

Uncertain how to respond, I just smiled at her and went about my breakfast-gathering business.

Hoping to Hear
I’m not exactly sure what response the woman was looking for, but I have a few ideas.

It’s possible she was hoping for some reassurance that she and her actions were okay, that she wouldn’t get caught cheating on her diet or completely go to pot after eating an apparently forbidden food. 

Maybe she felt that by confessing her “food sin” she’d be absolved of the guilt she was feeling.

Perhaps she wanted me to give her some sort of permission, like, “Hey, you only live once—go for it!” or “Heck, you work hard, you deserve it!”

Or she might have been hoping for a bonding moment, a shared experience of being bad. Something along the lines of, “I hear ya. I’m going to pay for eating all these carbs!”

Lasting Impression
Although it lasted only a few seconds, the encounter left a lasting impression on me.

I was struck by her need to call attention to her food choice, especially to me, a complete stranger. It was as if she was trying to say, “I know better! I usually don’t eat like this so please don’t judge me based on this one food crime.”

Even though exchanges like these are quite common and normalized in our diet-obsessed culture, the entire episode left me feeling a little sad for her, for myself, for all of us. 

I actually could really relate to what the woman was experiencing because I saw myself in her. I likely would have said something similar when I was entrenched in diet culture, following a bunch of food rules and worried about what others might be thinking about my choices.

Toxic Diet Culture
This is what our toxic diet culture has done to us. 

It has convinced us that there are good and bad foods and that we’re either good or bad depending upon which list we choose from. 

It’s made us believe our food choices are a reflection of our character, value, worth, willpower and intelligence.

It has conditioned us to feel guilty and ashamed of our innate human desire to eat and enjoy pleasurable food. 

It’s trained us to think we need to apologize and atone for our so-called eating transgressions.

And, it’s caused us to waste a ton of time, energy and headspace thinking about what we should or shouldn’t eat.

Designed to Keep Us in Line
Food moralization is an oppressive belief system designed to keep us in line. In our attempt to conform, to be good, to obey the rules, many of us have developed a fraught relationship with food.

It doesn’t have to be this way. 

At any moment, you can decide to defy diet culture, cultivate a morally neutral relationship with food and ultimately reclaim your power.

Perhaps your first step is simply becoming more aware of when you judge your eating decisions—and thus yourself—as good or bad. Start to question whether this is really true and if such black-and-white labeling is helpful or harmful.

Stealing is Bad; Eating Food Isn’t
If I could go back in time to that buffet line, I would look at that woman with compassion and empathy and say something that may have helped her view the situation and her beliefs differently, something like: 

Are you stealing the food? No? Well, then there’s absolutely no reason to feel bad or guilty. Truly. Enjoy your breakfast. Lick the bowl clean. Don't look back.

I Can't Keep Chips in My House. I Always Lose Control.

Do you have any trigger foods?
 
Are you afraid to keep certain foods in your house because you feel like you lose control with them every time you eat them? 

There is a very valid reason why some foods feel triggering.

Restriction.

If you’re like most people, your trigger foods are triggering because you are restricting them.

This was certainly the case for me when I was restricting food and following a bunch of food rules.

Natural Scarcity Response 
Potato chips are a common trigger food, so let’s use them as an example.

Let’s say you love potato chips but you rarely let yourself eat them because you consider them to be a “bad” food and every time you do allow yourself to have them, you feel completely out of control with them.

When you do break down and buy a bag, you can’t stop thinking about them sitting in your cupboard and you keep returning to the kitchen all afternoon for more until the last salty crumbs are licked off your fingers. Once the bag is gone and you’re full of chips and guilt, you decide the safest thing to do is to not eat them at all. 

“I can’t be trusted to have potato chips in my house! I’m never eating them again!” you proclaim to your friends who can all totally relate because, thanks to diet culture, they have trigger foods too.

But here’s the thing: 

When you don’t let yourself eat potato chips on a regular basis, you create a sense of scarcity and deprivation with them. 

The natural human response to scarcity and deprivation is to consume as much as possible of your restricted food when you do allow yourself to eat it. 

Basically, your very wise brain is thinking “I never get potato chips therefore I must eat as much as I can right now because I don’t know if I’ll ever have access to them again.”

On top of this, if you’re telling yourself while you’re eating the chips that you shouldn’t be eating them and won’t let yourself eat them again, you are amplifying the threat of scarcity and deprivation, which will further drive you to eat as much as you can right away. 

Unconditional Permission to Eat
If you want to stop feeling out of control with potato chips, you need to give yourself unconditional permission to eat all the potato chips you want whenever you want. 

This means stocking your kitchen with potato chips and freely eating them with meals, between meals, at breakfast, for dessert, however you desire.

This continuous exposure to your trigger food leads to habituation. 

The more you eat potato chips, the more you habituate to them. 

In time, their reward value and power over you will diminish and they will become ordinary and neutral—basically, no big deal.

The goal of habituation isn’t to no longer want your trigger foods, but rather to create a trusting, satisfying and peaceful relationship with them, one that’s free of fear, guilt and shame. 

Understandably Feels Scary
Giving yourself unconditional permission to eat your trigger foods can, understandably, feel pretty scary. 

It’s so helpful to understand that it’s completely normal to eat a lot of your trigger foods in the beginning of the habituation process because your brain is still operating in scarcity mode. It will take time for it to calm down and trust that it will have regular access to previously restricted foods.

This phase of making peace with food freaks a lot of people out, which is why it can be so helpful to get support, whether it’s from an Intuitive Eating counselor, coach, therapist or online community.

When working with my clients, we talk about various strategies that can help them with the habituation process so it doesn’t feel so overwhelming and send them running back to the land of restriction.

Once my clients start habituating to their trigger foods, they start to see that, despite what diet culture wants them to believe, they can trust themselves with any food, regardless of their history with it. Feeling this sense of trust and freedom with food is profoundly liberating.

Here's what my client Jenny had to say about her experience: 

"One of my biggest wins has been being able to have all types of food in my house. Before, I couldn’t have any sweets or baked goods at home otherwise I would just eat them all in one sitting. Having that stuff in my house and not bingeing on it has been a huge positive change. The day I started forgetting it was there was a big day!"

While Everyone Was Dancing, I Was Sneaking Chocolate Truffles

While cleaning out a file drawer, I came across a document I created many years ago when I was dieting. It was a recording of my weight.

Seeing those numbers caused me to pause and reflect on the person I was when I was entrenched in diet culture.

It was not a pretty picture.

Although I couldn’t see it then, my obsession with dieting and weight loss turned me into someone I really didn't like.

My efforts to become more likable made me completely unlikeable.

At the time, however, I thought I was hot stuff. I walked around with an air of superiority because I believed I had cracked the code. I had finally achieved what so many others struggle to do: I lost weight.

But that wasn’t the only thing I lost.

I also lost touch with myself, my body, my values and what truly mattered.

Addicted to Weight Loss
When people complimented me on my smaller size, little did they know they were rewarding me for having a pretty disordered relationship with food, exercise and my body.

Unbeknownst to them, their praise encouraged me to pull the reins in tighter, to eat even less and exercise even more.

My original goal weight was no longer enough.

I had become addicted to losing weight and the admiration I was receiving. I didn’t want my high to end so I kept moving my target weight lower and lower.

Withdrew from the World
The more obsessed I became with micromanaging every morsel I ate and every mile I ran, the more I withdrew from the world.

I started stressing out about social events. My food and exercise rules made socializing, especially over food, very difficult.

Already a homebody, I found myself staying home even more. 

I avoided parties, happy hours and restaurant gatherings. I was scared to be around food that was off-limits and worried I’d lose control once I started eating, especially after a glass of wine. I fretted that if I stayed out too late it would hurt my running performance the next morning.

I also became anxious about traveling.

I feared going to places where I wouldn’t be able to control what food or running spots I’d have access to. I’d cram my carry-on bag with all my safe, allowable foods.

Sneaking and Bingeing
As my list of illegal foods grew, I began playing hide-and-eat.

I started sneaking my forbidden foods and eating them in secret—often at night while standing in the kitchen in the dark.

I was ashamed to be seen eating anything “bad,” especially the large quantities of it I craved. I worried about getting caught and tarnishing my super-disciplined, healthy eater image—an identity I took a lot of pride in.

Because I was depriving myself so much, my secret eating took on a binge-like, Last Supper quality.

I’d urgently stuff cookies into my mouth all while telling myself “What the hell, I might as well go for it because I’m never going to let myself do this again.”

Relationships Suffered
With most of my time, energy and headspace focused on controlling my weight, my relationships suffered.

When I hung out with friends, I was often preoccupied with thoughts about what I shouldn't eat, what I wanted to eat and how my body looked.

My rigid rules also started to drive my boyfriend away. Understandably, he grew increasingly frustrated with my resistance to eating certain foods, my insistence on exercising every day, my reluctance to socialize, my mood swings, and my need for complete control.

I was no longer the fun-loving, easygoing gal he once knew.

Completely Different Person
I was now a person who would contact a food manufacturer to express my outrage when they increased the calorie count on their soy crisps.

I was now someone who, while everyone else was dancing at my friend’s wedding, would sneak handfuls of chocolate truffles off the dessert table and hide them in my purse to eat alone later in my hotel room.

I was now someone who almost missed a morning flight because I just had to get a 5:00 a.m. run in before leaving for the airport.

I was now a hyper-vigilant dieter who spent more time tracking my calories, miles and weight than I did connecting with others, laughing and enjoying life.

I was so ensnared in diet culture and so desperate to conform to the thin ideal that I was oblivious to how dieting was damaging my physical, mental, emotional and social health.

Stopped Me from Going Back
Although I am appalled by and ashamed of my behavior, I feel compassion and sorrow for my younger self who bought into our culture’s very convincing, toxic narrative that thinness would bring me health and happiness and that the size of my body determined my value and worth.

I also feel gratitude for finally being able to see so clearly how my dieting and anti-fat bias were harming myself and others.

My cringe-worthy behavior ended up playing a key role in helping me escape diet culture, recover from chronic dieting, uproot my anti-fat bias, and heal my relationship with food, movement and my body.

Whenever I was tempted to start dieting again, I reflected on the person dieting turned me into and the incredible damage it did. 

Knowing that I never wanted to return to that person and place again motivated me to stay on my healing path.