Trust Your Gut - Eat for Satisfaction Challenging the Food Police
So, who is the food police?
Quick Disclaimer: This series explores Intuitive Eating from a chef’s perspective. This is not meant to provide specific medical advice. If these topics interest you, please consult a registered dietitian and/or healthcare provider for personalized guidance and education.
The Food Police is the collective of external messages we’ve heard throughout our lives that attempts to establish food rules around what we eat. These external messages have been so loud for so long, that over time we’ve actually internalized them to create our own Food Police. Intuitive Eating tells us to focus on our body’s internal cues, not any external cues from pop culture or diet culture. The trickiest thing about the Food Police is that this external messaging has moved internally and can be more challenging to identify. The Food Police in our own head is still a representation of diet culture and fat phobia. But, we can choose to challenge our own Food Police. Health is extremely personal and is unique to each person. The exciting part of challenging the Food Police is that we have the opportunity to inspire a positive change within ourselves.
Here are 10 questions you can ask yourself to identify if a ‘food rule’ is limiting your culinary joy.
Do I associate my morality with the food I’m eating?
Do I restrict foods that I have labeled as ‘bad’?
Am I making my food choices based on what I want instead of what external messages are saying?
Which food is accessible to me right now?
Would I be eating something different if I was alone (or surrounded by different people)?
Am I ‘should-ing’ all over myself?
Do I search for ‘healthy alternatives’ for my cultural foods instead of knowing my cultural foods are still nourishing?
When I think about nutrition is there a negative, neutral, or positive feeling attached?
What flavors and textures will satisfy my flavor preferences?
Do I only allow myself to eat within a strict time structure?
Time to challenge the Food Police
Once we realize which food rules we have internalized, then we can start reframing them. Take each harmful food rule one by one and think about:
When or where did I first hear this?
Why did I begin to believe it?
In which ways is it harmful?
What do I believe about food instead?
We can take our time to work through each food rule to really understand it’s genesis. I bet that many of our food rules can be traced back to a marketing message that was attempting to sell us something that we never needed. When we can identify and reframe these negative internalized messages, then we have challenged the Food Police and achieved a citizen’s arrest! Our mindset and joy around food can blossom to a healthier, more nourishing level!
