Challenging My Food Fears

Photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash

My intuitive/mindful eating journey has been full of ups and downs. Some days I feel like I did fantastically, and I don't feel hungry all the time, and when I do feel hungry I eat, and I eat foods I like and foods that make me feel good.

I have gotten to a point where I can get a medium custard concrete from Sonic, and not feel the overwhelming need to finish all of it, because who knows when I will have it again? Now, I can eat as much or as little as I need at that point, and for the past 3 Sonic trips, I have been able to put leftovers in the freezer for later. This is a huge point for me. I haven't been able to do that in probably...like 15 years at least.

But lately, I have been hungry all the time, and it doesn't seem to matter what I eat, I always feel a little ache of hunger. And nothing has sounded good enough to eat. A few things have stayed my hunger for a bit, like Taco Bell, or some gouda cheese. But I have been feeling hungry a lot more than often.  So I decided to explore where this is coming from and why.

Well, one of the things that pop up into my mind when I am hungry is "man, I wish I had some peanut butter". Peanut butter has been a "forbidden food" for me for about two years now. Because whenever I did buy peanut butter, I would inevitably eat the whole jar in maybe three days. Sometimes less, sometimes more, and I would feel so fucking awful. It tasted SO good, and I just couldn't feel like I could stop. Even if my stomach hurt, or if afterward I just felt like a greasy balloon floating around my apartment, I would keep going until the jar was empty.  The fact that I treated it as a "forbidden" food is probably a HUGE reason why I would eat it in this manner. Because in my mind I didn't know when I would ever be "allowed" to have this again. I even remember thinking to myself that I would probably have to give up peanut butter forever if I didn't want to gain weight as I got older. So of course if I had it, I would have to eat all of it and enjoy it all NOW because I never would again.


I've been thinking about peanut butter lately. It's creamy goodness, and how I could just really go for a tortilla with peanut butter right about now. And I decided that it is time to push myself out of my comfort zone and to move forward with my intuitive eating journey.  I decided that I was gonna go out and buy myself a jar of peanut butter. Preferably the really fancy one at Albertsons that was on clearance.

Just even considering this thought would cause my anxiety to spike. I keep going back to all those times where I would polish off half a jar of peanut butter in a sitting. How awful I would feel, and I would think of all the times that I told myself that I just couldn't be trusted around peanut butter. I had no willpower when it came to it, that it was just too good. How it would make me gain weight, and my pants are already feeling awfully snug.  How I would "have" to start going back to the gym again to burn off those calories. How I wouldn't be able to stop thinking about the jar of peanut butter in the house until it was gone.

But, I remembered that the first step in returning back to our innate intuitive eating skills is to give yourself permission to eat anything, whenever you want it. If I am hungry and I want peanut butter, then I have permission to eat peanut butter. Just the concept of giving myself permission to eat something whenever I want helps to quell my anxiety (just a little bit) because it takes away the power of the "I will never have it again!" panic that my taste buds and mind have gone through before.

I can actually enjoy the peanut butter. I don't have to scarf it all down because I will never have it again. I can enjoy as much as I want, and then if I am full, I can put it up. Because the minute I want more I can totally have it.

This helps to repair the trust between myself and my body.  After so many years of dieting (and the inevitable failure due to the fact that diets don't work) I didn't trust my body anymore (but still trusted diets) and didn't trust in it's cues to me about what to feed it. Thus these "forbidden" foods were placed on a pedestal of sorts. Something that I couldn't eat, because I was too lowly to control myself around it. By taking away the pedestal and giving my body permission to eat what it wants when it wants I start to rebuild the trust in my body, and my body starts to rebuild it's trust in me. If your body knows that you will feed it when it needs it, suddenly the intense feelings of being out of control and overeating dissipate. Because your body knows that if it needs it later, you will provide it.

Even if I get this jar of peanut butter and finish it, if I want more later, I can totally have more later. This does a few things for me:

It takes away the shame and stigma that I put on myself for enjoying peanut butter (a typically high fat, high sugar food!). So I'm not driven by shame to overeat the peanut butter, or to eat it out of defiance for whatever diet I plan on starting after this jar.

Instead of using this food to mark a black mark on my diet journey, I return it to its rightful place.  It is a food.  I have a right to desire, consume and ENJOY food.  No matter if it is peanut butter, apples, cake, icing, celery sticks, or steak. I have a right to honor my body when it wants these foods, to consume these foods, and to enjoy the sensations of these foods.

If you would like to start challenging a food fear for yourself, then start with this simple, yet powerful step. 

 Give yourself permission to eat whatever you want. Whenever you want.


What food do you consider "forbidden" to yourself? How do you plan on challenging yourself with it? Let me know in the comments below!

Comments

Popular Posts