New Year, New Food Goals with Intuitive Eating

What if this new year we made food-related goals around satisfaction, pleasure or enjoying food?

For some reason in our society, these things are almost villainized. People say “ohh, I wish I didn’t love food” or “I wish that didn’t taste so good”.

Food is meant to be bring joy! It brings people together. It symbolizes culture. It’s a way people practice creativity. The way we celebrate. It holds memories, feelings, and traditions. 

What is an example of a time you ate a meal or a particular food and it served a different role than fuel?

Who was there? What did it feel like? What do you remember?

Many times, my clients will share these beautiful experiences around food and how they were overshadowed by feelings of guilt and shame about eating the certain food. 

They went to a girl’s night and had brownies and wine, then spent the rest of the next day drowning in guilt & shame.

How do you think that impacts our relationship with these foods? It influences our neural

networks around these foods. They feel forbidden, off limits, so now whenever we’re around them it would be more likely to experience a feeling of loss of control, overeating or like you broke a rule by having them. For some this leads to an all or nothing thinking, "well I already had 1 brownie, might as well have the rest of the pan." 

We lose our ability to remain mindful around these foods and our rebel self kicks in. 

What if allowing yourself to experience joy in food, giving yourself permission to have all foods, without guilt & shame in the passenger seat, gave you the ability to truly experience the food, noticing when you’re satisfied and moving on without it taking up unnecessary real estate in your brain, without the food noise.

The feelings that are there trying to protect you from these foods, are actually a part of what makes you be caught in this cycle of avoidance, indulgence, loss of control, guilt, shame repeat.

If we teach our brain these foods are just foods (because they are!), we can treat them more neutrally and experience a healthy relationship with food both physically and emotionally.