Reject The Diet Mentality
Intuative Eating - Principle 1 - Reject The 'Diet' Mentality.
I want to take you through the Intuative Eating process, as mentioned in my Happy New Year post, dieting can lead to lots of different negative health consequences and in general is ineffective.
A lot of these 'diets' that pop up here, there and everywhere usually require a huge amount of discipline, restriction, restraint, time, rigidity, social exclusion and when they inevitably fail, place blame upon the individual and their lack of 'will power', however ultimately their difficulty in sustainability is due to these reasons.
So is the solution to all of this Intuative Eating? A way of eating that doesn't focus on weight, an individual learns to eat in accordance to their innate physiological hunger and satiety cues and from new areas of research show to have helped address some potential problematic eating behaviours.
So what does 'Reject the diet mentality' mean?
This is an approach that requires putting health on the back burner (bare with - it's not forever), but if we solely focus on health, were unable to make choices on food based on preference, taste, social occasions and satisfaction rather than what we *think* we should be eating. Focusing too much on Nutrition undermines the IE process.
We live in a 'diet' based society - it's everywhere, magazines, adverts, social media, conversations even.. we have almost normalised disordered eating. This first principle is about tuning out all those messages, deconstructing food rules and removing the false hope that losing weight happens quickly, easily and permanently.
These messages can be sneaky, even terms like 'fat loss foods' sends us messages that we're all in pursuit of the 'thin idea' and our purpose in life is solely to be of a 'thin' body shape. OR messages that call food 'clean' 'good' or 'super' sends us messages that other foods are therefore 'dirty' or 'bad' and therefore attach levels of guilt and shame when we eat these foods. The language attached to food can significantly impair our relationship with it and emphasises the idea that we must be thin/have no fat to be happy. And this idea is ultimately what were trying to remove at the start of this process.
So how to start 'rejecting the diet mentality', here are a couple of things to do/reflect on to help make a start on this process:
-Go through your social media - are the majority of people you follow food/exercise related? Does this represent that % of time you spend eating/exercising? We don't eat/exercise 80% of the day, so why is your feed? + in your other interests, more of your friends, positive quotes.. etc. Think about how you want to feel when you scroll through. -Is your social media diverse? Do you have a diverse range of body types/shapes/disabilities? Think about the norm you're creating without diversity. -Explore your own dieting history - did those diets work? What was your expectation Vs what was the reality? -Consider what has dieting cost you? Social life/mood/money/time/preoccupation with food? -Think about if you've ever used dieting as a coping strategy when things have been difficult - what other coping strategies do you have? -Make a note of what food rules/behaviours you currently do and have a think about why they're important to you? -Explore how you make food choices... what would you eat if all food was 'equal'?
.. These are a couple of things to just start becoming aware of. I'll move onto explain principle number 2 next week..!
