Permission to Eat All Foods
Have you ever thought intuitive eating sounded nice but it would never work because your intuition would tell you to eat ALL the cake, cookies, or pizza? I get it. I thought that, too.
The nutty (and counterintuitive) thing is, by giving yourself full permission to eat whatever you want, whenever you want, (and not just “in moderation”) you can end the madness. That’s what happened to one of my clients recently.
What If You Feel Like You Can't Stop Eating Your Favorite Foods?
In a coaching session, Jane (not their actual name) told me that no matter what she did, she absolutely could not stop eating animal crackers dipped in cream cheese. (Not the actual food, however, it is a favorite snack of mine; please don't knock it till you try it! )
She was eating this snack multiple times a day and she wasn't happy about it. She knew it wasn’t particularly healthy and she wasn’t a fan of feeling powerless to her cravings — but she couldn’t figure out how to stop. Less than two weeks later, after doing the “homework” I’d suggested, she told me she could take her cream cheese animal cracker snack or leave it.
How to Stop Feeling So Crazy Around Food
Here was the assignment: I told her to keep eating the snack whenever she wanted and in whatever quantity she felt like. Here was the catch; instead of eating it while standing, reading, scrolling, or watching tv, she was to put it in a bowl or on a plate, sit down, and enjoy it without any distractions.
That meant no texting, TikTok, or Friendster. In other words, I wanted her to try eating the snack without anything that would take her focus away from the experience of tasting, chewing, and swallowing her snack.
That was all.
No special mindfulness exercises, no requirement that she pause and go through the HALT (hungry, angry, lonely, tired) checklist to see if what she really needed was something other than food (although that’s a great tool), no requirement that she abstain completely from these processed, potentially biologically addictive snack foods (that’s a conversation for another day), no journaling, and no requirement that she decide whether she was actually thirsty or hungry enough to eat an apple (don’t get me started).
The strategy was simple: Just. Be. Present. And. Enjoy. The. Food.
Are you looking for support on your intuitive eating journey? I can help.