Eat the damn chocolate!

Eat the damn chocolate

Intuitive Eating can be a difficult concept to grasp at first, especially the principle of giving yourself permission to eat all foods, and having no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ foods. A common misconception is that intuitive eaters go to town on ‘unhealthy’ foods such as chocolate, biscuits, and chippies all the time. Some may think- how can this approach to eating be healthy?

When we restrict certain foods it actually leads to more intense food cravings. It’s like the forbidden fruit on the tree. Let’s use an example: you tell yourself you’re not going to eat chocolate because you are trying to lose weight or be ‘really good’ this year. At the start it’s quite easy, you don’t bring chocolate into the house and don’t really miss it. But then you go to a potluck dinner, and afterward dinner everyone is handing around a block of chocolate and you reaaaallly feel like it, but you politely decline. The next night, all you feel like is chocolate after dinner, and can’t stop thinking about it. Your partner comes home and just your luck they bring home a block of chocolate. You start eating it really fast because it just tastes so good and it’s been so long. All rules go out the window and you start to feel out of control.. You feel guilty because your’e already two rows down, but think ‘what the hell, I’ll start being good again tomorrow’, and eat that chocolate like its your last supper. You lay in bed that night and all you can think about is how much chocolate you ate and how sluggish and guilty you feel. ‘Tomorrow I will be better and I’m not having chocolate again’. And then the cycle repeats.

The reality is when you allow yourself unconditional permission to eat (i.e. you can eat whatever you want, whenever you want), food holds less intensity and power, and you actually end up having less ‘out of control’ eating episodes. It can be really natural to go a little overboard at first, so don’t be afraid if for a couple of weeks you’re diving head first into an ice-cream tub, or smashing back whole blocks of chocolate in one sitting. Thats because you haven’t allowed yourself those food for so long so of your you will feel a little out of control. But eventually your body and mindset adjusts as it learns these foods are always going to be there whenever you feel like them. Letting go of good and bad food labels and food rules is a little like this analogy:

Picture a cow in a field. Its locked inside a small 5 x 5m pen and all it has to graze on is shitty quality grass. However out from his pen he can see all this luscious, amazing green grass, and for years he dreams of eating this grass. One day a farmer comes along and lets him out of his pen into the luscious grass. The cow gorges like crazy, he has been dreaming of this day for years! He eats until he feels sick, because he’s worried the farmer is going to put him back into the pen. He does this for a few weeks but then eventually realises the farmer isn’t coming back, and the luscious grass is always going to be there for him to eat whenever he wants. He starts to eat the grass when he feels hungry and stops when he has had enough, because he feels better when he eats this way.

If you find yourself not allowing yourself to eat certain foods, why not let yourself out of that pen and slowly start allowing yourself to have these foods whenever you feel like it, and see what happens?

If you would like support going through this process, please reach out to us, we are here to help you eat that damn chocolate and feel good about it xx