Tired of Feeling Like a Criminal?

I’ve been listening to the Eating Psychology Global Teleconference this week, and I’ll tell you – it is a literal FEAST of insight and game-changers when it comes to our relationship with food.

One of the things that has really popped for me is an awareness of how much GUILT surrounds our eating. There are so many rules about what we are allowed or not allowed to eat that it’s easy to feel like an outright criminal!

We even engage in criminal-type eating behaviors, like:

• Sneaking food when nobody is looking (“hide and go eat”)
• Having a “cheat” day – just the concept alone implies you are doing something bad
• Judging and labeling yourself as “good” or “bad” depending on what you’ve eaten (a virtual prison jumpsuit!)
• Punishing yourself with vigorous exercise or calorie restriction to pay for the crime of eating.

See, we’ve been trained to believe that we have to follow a strict set of rules in order to feel OK as an eater, or even as a person! There are laws for what is acceptable or not acceptable to eat, when it’s OK to eat, how much it’s OK to eat, how your body is supposed to look, how many times a week you need to exercise and in what ways.

There are literally thousands of experts, diets, books, programs that mandate what is up to code when it comes to your diet.

Gluten? Banned!

Dairy? Outlawed!

Eating after 7pm? Illegal!

Sugar? Major felony and there’s a freakin’ warrant for your arrest.

(By the way, have you ever noticed this is constantly changing and flip-flopping? “Fat is bad… no wait, fat is good!”)

First of all, it’s literally impossible to adhere to all these rules. Our physiology is wise, our bodies are wise, they crave nourishment and will do what they need to do in order to get it, even if it means overriding your mind and all of your best intentions. Deprivation never works. Ever.

It ain’t about willpower – it’s about survival, rules be damned.

And when we buy into the rules, even the slightest infraction can trigger guilt, shame, self-judgement, and self-imposed punishment and retribution. You ate an ice cream cone last night? Uh oh. You are hereby sentenced to 30 extra minutes on the elliptical.

Or maybe the rules themselves bring out your inner rebel and send you on a crime spree that involves eating an entire cheesecake.

Either way you lose. These rules actually disconnect us from our bodies. If you are really in tune with your body, I promise you – you do not WANT an entire cheesecake. You only want the PERMISSION to eat cheesecake!

The rules themselves are the prison.

So here’s what I invite you to consider instead:

It is not a crime to eat.

You deserve nourishment and pleasure from food and from life, no penance attached.

You get to be your own authority when it comes to when, what, and how much you eat.

Let’s make that our new constitution.