How to Talk Back to the Food Police

It’s Valentine’s Day which typically means a night out with the person that you love. While the only thing that should be on your mind is the person sitting across from you, you can’t help but have running thoughts on all the calories you’re eating.

Perhaps you knew that a big dinner was on the menu so you “prepared” by doing one of the following: Skipping lunch so you can save calories or points for dinner. You didn’t eat any carbs during the day, so you can eat from the breadbasket at the restaurant. Or you negotiate with yourself and you “allow” a big meal binge knowing tomorrow you will only choose “healthier” foods.

All these ideas are the food police speaking, screaming unreasonable rules at you. And in each of these cases, what do you think happens? You arrive at the restaurant and sit down to dinner in a ravenous state and more than likely, you end up eating to an overfull state. Then you feel physically uncomfortable, emotionally miserable (guilty, shame), and you follow that with food restriction!

Restriction, cutting back on your food intake or choosing only “healthy” foods if the scale is higher the next day, is dieting. It’s the opposite of being intuitive.

The food police, however, would like to have you think it IS the reason, and therefore it is shouting rules at you to eat less today, to avoid carbs, and to only choose “healthy” foods.

Shout back at the food police by doing these 3 things:

1. Identify the distorted irrational dieting thought and disarm it.

It is not always easy to recognize when you are having these dieting thoughts. When you start using words like calorie or scale, take a step back. Acknowledge that these words are likely linked to a dieting mindset.

2. Recognize that a higher weight this morning may be due to some other reason.

Your body weight fluctuates day-to-day based on many factors. Weight is a measure of the weight of your tissues, which includes your bones, organs, muscle and fat tissue AND the substances that pass through such as water, food, and waste. If you weigh more this morning than you did yesterday, it doesn’t mean that you have more fatty tissue today because you ate the chicken parmesan at last night’s dinner.

3. Don’t weigh yourself.

Throw away the scale and begin to cultivate the trust in your body to make food and nutrition choices that are right for you.

Enjoy your meal without the guilt, you deserve it.