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

I Now Eat Xmas Cookies Guilt-Free. And Stopped Researching Diets.

What’s your relationship like with holiday eating?

Do you love all the holiday fare yet feel overwhelmed by anxiety, stress, guilt or shame for eating in ways you typically don’t? 

At night, do you lie in bed resolving to start a new diet and exercise program in January?

Do you wish you could enjoy the holiday season without being distracted by all the food noise in your head? 

If so, you’re not alone—and it doesn’t have to be this way.

My clients have discovered that after working for a while on divesting from diet culture and eating more intuitively, their experience with holiday eating is much different than years prior. 

Over the years, their comments have sounded like this...

Zero Strings Attached
“I used to give myself a free pass to eat anything I wanted during the holidays. It wasn’t really free, however, as I believed I had to pay the price come January 1 by going on another diet and working out more. It’s so liberating to be able to enjoy all my holiday favorites with zero strings attached.”

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Stopped Stuffing Myself
“Since I’m no longer planning to cut out carbs in January, I no longer feel the need to stuff myself with sweets before they are off-limits.”

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No Looming Threat
“From Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day, I felt like I was engaging in one long Last Supper before my next diet started. The physical discomfort I felt from eating every meal as if it was going to be my last one convinced me all the more that I needed to get back on track in the new year. 

Thank goodness I now know it was the looming threat of another diet that was causing my scarcity-driven Last Supper eating. Without another diet around the corner, I'm now able to eat in a much more satisfying way.

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More Present and Engaged
“Once I started giving myself unconditional permission to eat whatever I want any day of the year, I stopped feeling obsessed with all the holiday food. I still love making it and eating it but I no longer think about it all the time. I'm now much more present for my loved ones and more engaged in other aspects of the season.” 

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Feel a Sense of Ease
“I used to go into the holiday season feeling deprived from my latest diet. As a result, I felt out of control with all that good food. It was like I had found water after being lost in the desert for months. I couldn’t get enough of it. Once I understood it was the dieting, not a lack of self-control, that caused me to eat in a binge-y way, I stopped restricting and eventually started feeling a sense of ease and peace with food."

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No Longer Feel Bad
“I still sometimes eat until I’m super full because the food is so delicious! The big difference is that I don’t feel bad about it anymore and I don’t feel like I have to make up for it.”

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Relief to Stop Researching
“In years past, I always spent New Year’s Day researching detox and diet plans. It’s a relief to know that this year I won’t be wasting my money on an expensive cleanse package or my time trying to learn the rules of a new diet program.”

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There's No Guilt
“My holiday eating is so much more enjoyable now that I no longer feel guilty for eating a bunch of Christmas cookies.”

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A Priceless Gift
Of course, the shift to more peaceful, pleasurable holiday eating doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time to move away from diet culture toward a more intuitive relationship with food and your body.

Most people, including me, have found that with patience, practice and perseverance, the food stuff gets a little easier with each passing year.

To be able to eat with ease and gusto during the holiday season, and all year round, is a priceless gift—but even more so, it’s an inherent human right—that everyone deserves, including you.