I continue to be struck by how the language of the diet mentality permeates the way my clients talk about their progress with attuned/intuitive eating. When I ask, “How was your week with food?” I’ll often get responses like, “It was a good week,” or “My eating was really bad yesterday.” Using the words “good” and “bad” in that way – as an evaluation of your relationship with food – replays diet mentality thinking, such as that eating is a moral issue or that your worth is based on how you eat.
Instead, I encourage my clients to talk about [private_membership circle]what feels good and what feels bad, which is much more empowering. Consider the difference between the statement, “I was bad yesterday,” and “I felt bad when I ate more lasagna than my body needed.” The first comment plays into that “all” or “nothing” thinking, leaving you with the feeling that you did something wrong – shame on you! The latter statement allows you to stay in charge of your eating and recognize that during that particular eating experience, you ate more than you needed, which didn’t feel good in your body. Rather than beating yourself up, you can now practice some self-compassion by acknowledging that it didn’t feel good when you ate past fullness. Next, you can get curious by wondering what got in the way of stopping sooner. Finally, do can do your best to use that information as you consider how much you want to eat in the next time you are physically hungry.
Along the same lines, clients jump to tell me what went wrong in their eating, but often forget to include the eating experiences that felt good! I frequently ask that they start with eating experiences that went well, and often I will hear that they didn’t remember that anything went well with their attuned eating, until I asked the question. As they give me examples of experiences where they ate when hungry, made good matches, and stopped when full, they often report being surprised at how much of their eating actually felt good.
Why do people emphasize the negative experiences and forget about the positive ones? Brain science tells us we’re wired through evolution to have a negativity bias. This inclination is reinforced by the diet mentality where any transgression means that all is ruined. You can counteract this tendency by reminding yourself to really take in the attuned eating experiences that felt good to you – whether it was just one time or numerous times. Play them up to yourself as they occur: My dinner tasted delicious and felt great in my body,” or “That was exactly what I wanted. I did a great job of listening to my body.”
Remember that being good and being bad are very different than feeling good and feeling bad!
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Eat well! Live well! Be well! Judith Matz and Ellen Frankel, are co-authors of The Diet Survivor’s Handbook, Beyond a Shadow of a Diet www.dietsurvivors.com Chicago Center for Overcoming Overeating: 847.267.1200
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