Rephrasing negative food talk #2

I wrote a piece about rewriting food rules, but I didn’t give it much explanation. Today I’m going to dive a little deeper and explain why some of these negative phrases aren’t true or helpful.

“I can’t eat X” –> “I am giving myself permission to eat all foods.”

Giving yourself permission to eat all foods is one of the first steps I’d encourage someone sick of dieting and obsessing about food to do. Of course, every person’s history with food is different and nuanced, but this idea of “food freedom” is pretty important. Why should we do this? Well, a lot of research shows that diets don’t lead to long-term weight loss, weight cycling is related to adverse health effects and weight loss is not the end-all-be-all of good health. Plus, until you give yourself permission to eat all foods, you’re still going to be hung up on whether or not the food you’re thinking about eating is acceptable. That’s going to increase your thoughts about food in general and, if you’re still restricting, sets you up to overeat and/or binge. Learning to give yourself permission to eat all foods is hard in a culture that’s constantly praising the latest diet, but it’s really, really worth it.

“I have to go on a diet” –> “I’m learning to listen to my body.”

This rephrase is talking specifically about honoring our hunger, which is another principle of intuitive eating. I should emphasize that learning to “listen to your body” is a learning process. People who have been restricting for a long time actually lose the ability to adequately assess their hunger cues. After so much restriction, our hunger cues can subside, which often reinforces this idea of “No, I’m honestly not hungry” — a phrase that many of us have said when we wanted to justify eating less than others. If you’re in this phase, definitely work with a non-diet RD to help you create a temporary meal plan (this is a loose concept!) until you feel like you can feel your hunger cues.

“I have to earn my food.” –> “I need food everyday, regardless of movement.”

There’s this idea that we have to “earn” our food intake based on our movement for the day. This is false. This rephrase takes time to learn and trust because it can feel incredulous that our bodies need an adequate amount of food even when our movement varies. Our bodies are pretty incredible and adaptable, and they won’t change as quickly or drastically as we believe they will. Remember the idea of set point? Set point theory is the idea that our bodies have a natural weight range where they feel comfortable. Extreme dieting and weight regain can make that range go up, but if we’re eating intuitively and adequately each day — regardless of movement — our bodies will be pretty good at staying in that range. Not sure what your set point is? Here’s a great post by Robyn Nohling, NP, RD of @thereallife_rd where she talks about how to know if you’re there.

Have questions about these rephrases? Share in the comments or on my instagram @gratefully_nourished. Stay tuned for part two where I talk about the rephrases in this instagram post!