My Favorite Thing About Valentine's Day Was the Day After

When I was in college, my favorite thing about Valentine’s Day was the day after. 

My roommate and I would go to multiple stores and scoop up all the marked-down bags of conversation hearts. 

For days, we’d eat handful after handful of those chalky, pastel hearts until there were no more to be found anywhere in town.

Fat-Free Food Rule
I ate the candy with gusto not only because I enjoyed its taste (unsurprisingly, my favorite childhood candy was Necco Wafers) but also because it was fat-free. 

This was the fat-free era and like many others who were also following this latest diet trend, I had a food rule that my diet should contain as little fat as possible. 

Practically everything I ate was low-fat or fat-free from yogurt, cream cheese and ice cream to salad dressing, rice cakes and cookies (hello, Snackwell's!).

Since the conversation hearts contained zero fat, I was able to enjoy them without my internal Food Police berating me and making me feel guilty like it did when I consumed so-called "bad" foods.

Scarcity Mindset
Looking back at my love affair with conversation hearts, I can now see that another factor was at play: scarcity. 

Because the Valentine’s Day candy was only available for a few weeks a year, it triggered a scarcity mindset. (Unlike today, you couldn’t buy conversation hearts year-round online—internet shopping wasn’t even a thing yet.)

When something we need or desire is scarce or under the threat of scarcity, it’s a natural human response to want to get as much of it as possible as fast as possible before it’s gone. 

We’re simply trying to ensure our needs are met. Doing so feels essential to our safety and survival, even with something as unessential as conversation hearts. 

Understandably, we saw the scarcity mindset big time with many different things during the pandemic, especially in the early days when folks panicked over items like toilet paper. Many of us who never worried much about having enough toilet paper were suddenly frantically buying a ton more than we ever had before.

Spotting Scarcity
It’s helpful to understand when scarcity is playing a role with something you’re eating. 

Otherwise, you may mistakenly believe that you’re out of control, that you lack willpower and self-discipline, that you can’t be trusted with the food and should never have it again. After all, this is what diet culture teaches us to believe. 

The scarcity you’re experiencing may be intentional, such as purposefully restricting certain foods, like bread or sweets. 

It could also be unintentional, such as only having access to a particular food for a limited time perhaps due to supply shortages, budget constraints or a holiday item that only comes around once a year. 

If I had access to conversation hearts year-round and ate them whenever I wanted, my desire to consume bagfuls of them come Valentine’s Day would have been much less. 

By enjoying them on a regular basis, I would have habituated to them. Their novelty would have worn off and they wouldn’t have been such a big deal. 

While I may have still sought out marked-down bags the day after the holiday because I loved a good deal (still do!) and the colorful candy with its cute sayings, I likely wouldn’t have felt the need to buy every last bag since scarcity was no longer a factor.

Permission to Be Human
I encourage you to reflect on the role scarcity plays in your relationship with food. 

Can you recall a time when you experienced a scarcity mindset with a particular food? What was that experience like for you? 

Did you find yourself consuming a lot of it due to a sense of deprivation or out of fear that it was going away soon? If so, how did you respond? Did you feel out of control, guilty, ashamed or compelled to make up for it?

Knowing what you know now—that it’s natural human behavior to desire and eat a lot of something that’s scarce—can you treat yourself with understanding, grace and compassion when you experience scarcity eating in the future? 

Above all, can you give yourself permission to be human?

My Front Tooth Broke Off. It Meant Restricting Food Again.

About a year ago, I broke my front tooth off—the entire thing!—when biting into the hard crust on a piece of toast. 

Naturally, I was quite alarmed when I felt a big gap in the front row of my teeth. Thankfully, it didn’t hurt, but it did really freak me out.

Turns out, a root canal I had decades earlier after a car accident had weakened my tooth. I had no idea it could potentially break off and didn’t have any indication that it was on the verge of doing so.

An emergency visit to my dentist resulted in a temporary tooth until I could have dental implant surgery. 

The fragility of the temporary tooth meant I had to limit what and how I ate to avoid breaking or pulling it off.

New Food Rules
For the first time since I gave up dieting, I had to restrict my eating.

After years spent overcoming all my food rules, I now had a new set of rules to follow.

Hard, tough, chewy, crunchy and sticky foods were pretty much off-limits. 

As I could no longer use my front teeth, biting into a sandwich, slice of pizza, bagel, apple and the like was a big no-no.

I had to cut my food into very small pieces which made eating a very slow and tedious process. 

Dental surgery, which happened about a month later, hurt like heck and cost a gazillion dollars, also came with another set of food rules. While recovering, I was instructed to only eat soft, cold, mild foods for a few weeks.

And, since I once again had a temporary tooth until the dental implant was ready for the final tooth, I also had to continue the initial eating restrictions for about another four months.

Restriction Resistance
If you’ve ever had dental surgery, you know all too well how painful it can be.

And, if you’ve reclaimed your ability to eat intuitively after a history of dieting and disordered eating, being told you need to restrict your eating again can bring up all sorts of complicated feelings and challenges.

For some, it can be a slippery slope back into past disordered eating behaviors; this was something I was conscientious of and careful about.

For many, like me, it can trigger a lot of resistance, frustration and anger.

Once you’ve had a taste of food freedom, it’s really hard to put limits on your eating again.

Even though I knew the restrictions were necessary and temporary, I was not a happy camper. 

It was the cold, rainy season when I had my dental surgery and I longed for a forbidden cup of hot tea and a bowl of warm soup. Cold food did not sound appealing at all.

Not being able to eat what I wanted made me feel deprived, unsatisfied and cranky.

Freedom and Ease
Throughout the entire ordeal, my eating was riddled with anxiety. 

While I once felt anxious about how every bite would impact my weight, I now felt anxious about how every bite might impact my tooth.

Just like when I was dieting, eating decisions felt complicated and stressful. There were times I didn’t even want to deal with food as it just felt too hard. 

Thankfully, I made it through that distressing period and was eventually able to resume my usual eating with one minor exception. To be on the safe side, my dentist advised me to avoid biting into anything hard with my front teeth going forward.

While there are times I long for the satisfaction of biting into a crisp apple rather than cutting it into small pieces, I’m totally on board with this minor limitation as I absolutely don’t want to repeat that painful, stressful and costly nightmare.

The entire experience reminded me of why I gave up dieting, and it gave me an even greater appreciation for the ability to eat with freedom and ease. 

When Lunch is a Bag of Chips. The Power of Zooming Out.

Well, it happened again!

The other day, I once again didn’t have time to eat lunch. When I did, I grabbed a bag of chips.

They were fast, easy and tasty. 

It wasn't a big deal. I just ate them and moved on.

When I was entrenched in diet and wellness cultures, my internal Food Police would have been screaming at me.

It would have been shouting things like, “What’s wrong with you? I can’t believe you ate such a bad lunch! You’re so unhealthy. You really need to get it together! And you better make up for it!”

My chip lunch would have been a BIG DEAL, one loaded with guilt, shame, punitive thoughts and compensatory behaviors.

Different Perspective
Thankfully, after years of challenging my inner Food Police voice and all the rules it tries to enforce, it’s much quieter these days and rarely pipes up. 

Plus, I’ve learned to take a different perspective.

Both diet and wellness culture condition us to hyper-focus on every single morsel we eat. 

They make us feel like one episode of eating will make or break our health, heal us or kill us, turn a “good” eating day into a “bad” one. 

They cause us to fear “messing up” and convince us we have to eat perfectly to be a healthy, in control, good person.

This rigid, black-and-white, perfectionistic approach is unrealistic and harmful. 

It causes a lot of unnecessary guilt, stress and anxiety and can drive a disordered relationship with food.

Zooming Out
One of the most helpful practices I’ve learned is to change my perspective by zooming out. 

Zooming out means widening your lens and viewing your eating patterns over time instead of hyper-focusing on one bite, snack, meal, day or week of eating. 

Unless you have a health condition that requires full adherence to a specific way of eating, what you eat over a longer period of time matters much more than what you eat for an afternoon snack or weeknight dinner, at a business lunch or birthday party, or on a weekend getaway, weeklong work trip or two-week vacation. 

Most and Sometimes
It’s also helpful to think in terms of “most of the time” and “sometimes.”

Take my chip lunch, for example:

Most of the time, I eat a balanced, substantial and satiating lunch. Sometimes, I just eat a bag of chips. 

(If you have kiddos in your life, this is an incredibly useful way to navigate their eating, too.)

Please note, I’m not demonizing chips! If most of the time your lunch consists of just chips and they satisfy your needs, this is totally okay. Intuitive Eating is all about doing what works best for you.

Flexible and Peaceful
I encourage you to cling less tightly to diet and wellness cultures’ narrow ideas about the right way to eat and to instead practice widening your lens.

Zooming out enables you to take a much more flexible, gentle, satisfying and sustainable approach to your eating. 

And, it makes for a much more peaceful and pleasurable relationship with food