Fears That Hold Us Back from Intuitive Eating #2- "I've Tried Permission. I Failed."
Photo by Rod Long (@rodlong) via Unsplash
“I knew it. I knew I couldn’t eat donuts. I allowed myself to buy a box and I ate six of them. Six! At one time! I threw the rest away. I clearly can’t keep sweets in the house.”
The “I tried permission. I failed” fear is a common one that holds us back from intuitive eating. This fear is a combination of two factors. The first is pseudo-permission (or false permission) meaning that we allowed ourselves to have the food, but didn’t really have unconditional permission to eat the food. The second is self-fulfilling prophecy, or holding a strong conviction that access to a certain food will undoubtedly cause us to overeat it. Let’s talk about both of these unhelpful obstacles and how to overcome them.
Pseudo-Permission
Unconditional permission to eat any food you like, in any quantity you like, any time you like is a really challenging part of becoming an intuitive eater. No one has a plethora of food rules one day and is an intuitive eater the next day. There are many “bus stops” on the road between rigid food rules and intuitive eating. One of the stops, for most people, is pseudo-permission. We get excited about living a life with the freedom to eat what we love; yet we have trouble letting go of rigid rules that have helped us feel safe in the past.
Pseudo-permission is a common (and I say expected) part of the food peace journey. If we’ve restricted a certain food (say, donuts) it takes a while for us to “re-program” our brains to challenge diet culture beliefs about the donuts (the calories! the sugar! the carbs! they’re bad for me!) even as we start to reintroduce them as part of what we eat. Our behaviors often change before our thoughts do. How this generally plays out is that we allow ourselves to buy and eat a formerly forbidden food; however, in our minds we are still saying, “I can have these donuts now, but come tomorrow no more donuts.” This keeps us in a state of pseudo-permission- we can have the food but we’ve still implied limits to how much or how often we can enjoy them. Although you’re physically allowing yourself to eat the formerly forbidden food, you’re emotionally depriving yourself of the food in the future.
I would absolutely expect this to happen many times in your food peace journey. Sometimes my clients feel discouraged when this happens. I hear that and I like to challenge my clients to focus on what they’ve accomplished (they ate a feared food, YAY!). If you’re in the pseudo-permission stage, I invite you to bring awareness to any thoughts that arise about the food itself or any limits that you’re placing on how much and how often you can enjoy these foods. Continue to challenge these thoughts as they arise and keep practicing permission without conditions. Eventually your thoughts will change along with your behaviors. Don’t forget to celebrate the small steps you’re taking on the way to food peace!
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Our minds are very powerful. Sometimes even the thought that you might overeat is enough to actually make your overeat. If you have a strongly held belief that you have a “uncontrollable sweet tooth” and that even one bite of a cookie or brownie will send you into a sugar binge, this will likely happen the next time you encounter a sweet food. If you “know” you have an “uncontrollable sweet tooth” and “know” that you would likely binge on desserts you probably will- this is the self-fulfilling prophecy.
The deprivation mindset keeps us stuck in loops where we feel out-of-control around foods. If you’ve already described yourself as having an “uncontrollable sweet tooth” you’re in a deprivation mindset (“If I can’t control myself around it, I can’t have it at all.”). Once you experience a craving for a sweet food these deprivation thoughts, along with feelings like guilt, will likely cause you to binge on sweet foods. The most likely result of this are more negative feelings (discouragement, guilt) along with thoughts like “I knew I couldn’t control myself” and the cycle continues back to deprivation.
If this is where you are, it’s okay AND it takes a while to truly be able to permit yourself to have certain foods without bingeing on them. The key to overcoming this obstacle is to create many, many experiences with feared foods over time. Using the donut example, your first step might be to have a donut or two with a friend or loved one at a donut shop. You may need to repeat this a few times with different loved ones, by yourself, or at a different shop. Once you feel comfortable, bring a small box of donuts home to enjoy. Repeat as needed. Expect that each donut experience will be different. You will likely eat past fullness at times while you’re doing this. That’s normal. This process takes a long time for most people. Eventually you’ll find that with permission and practice, it will get easier for you and you won’t experience the self-fulfilling prophecy as often or at all.
If you’ve found this post helpful, leave me a comment or send me an email: nmareno@nurtureconsultingllc.com. I’d love to hear from you!!