Unconditional Permission to Eat

Do you eat intuitively? Or is there a whole lot of external ‘noise’ when making food decisions?

If you relate to the latter, you’re not alone. Eating feels overwhelming, frustrating and stressful for so many.

Diet culture plays a large role in the confusion around eating; the labelling of foods as ‘good’ and ‘bad’, fad diets and ‘food rules’. Christy Harrison (MPD, RD, CEDRD) defines diet culture as a system of beliefs that:

• Worships thinness and equates it to health and moral virtue

• Promotes weight loss as a means of attaining higher status

• Demonises certain ways of eating while elevating others

• Oppresses people who don't match up with its supposed picture of “health”

We live in a society where there’s so much pressure to be ‘thin’, to be valued, to be worthy and to be ‘healthy’. Yet there’s research now to show health markers such as blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugars, can all be improved with changes to eating behaviours and movement, irrespective of any change in weight. There’s also research to show long term weight loss is unsustainable, and the negative impact yoyo dieting has to our health.

So, how do we move away from these thoughts, feelings and belief systems and towards a space of unconditional permission to eat, and trust in our own bodies?

We step away from diet culture, and move towards Health At Every Size® (HAES®); a weight inclusive paradigm that respects diversity of body shapes and size. HAES® promotes flexibility in eating. Acknowledges our biases and works to end weight discrimination. There is a large focus on self compassion, kindness and care and joyful movement rather than rigid exercise. There are five principles to HAES®: weight inclusivity, health enhancement, eating for well being, respectful care, and life enhancing movement.

Intuitive Eating is a nutrition counselling tools that fits under the HAES® paradigm. To become an intuitive eater, we need to hold space for uncertainty. We need to be open to ‘trial and error’ as we move forward, letting go of food rules and learning to trust our bodies hunger cues. Brené Brown talks about intuition as ‘not a single way of knowing, but our ability to hold space for uncertainty and our willingness to trust’. This fits so well with HAES®.

There’s a lot of nuance. HAES® and Intuitive Eating aren’t ‘black and white’. But the end goal, stepping away from diet culture and towards food and body freedom, is worth it.

Imagine, instead of asking ‘can I eat that?’ we consider ‘do I feel like that?’ And the decision to eat it or not, is free of guilt, shame and judgement.

As Dr Rick Kausman says ‘I can have it if I want it, but do I really feel like it?’

That’s unconditional permission to eat.

References:

J. W. Anderson, E. C. Konz, R. C. Frederich, and C. L. Wood, “Long-term weight-loss maintenance: a meta-analysis of US studies,” The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, vol. 74, no. 5, pp. 579–584, 2001.

L. Bacon and L. Aphramor, “Weight science: evaluating the evidence for a paradigm shift,” Nutrition Journal, vol. 10, no. 1, article 9, 2011.

Tracy L. Tylka et al. "The Weight-Inclusive versus Weight-Normative Approach to Health: Evaluating the Evidence for Prioritizing Well-Being over Weight Loss", Journal of Obesity, vol. 2014, Article ID 983495, 18 pages, 2014.