How To Know When You’re Eating For Pleasure Or Self Sabotaging With Food

When I was younger I had no concept of eating certain things and not eating other things to manipulate my body in to a certain size, or labeling myself as having a good day/bad day with food depending on what I ate. I was an intuitive eater through and through and never knew the meaning of destroying myself with food until diets entered my world.

One of the reasons that dieting is not safe for human beings is, it starts to get you in a damn weird mindset when you’re relating to food.

You can have very black and white thinking, or an all or nothing approach to eating and on some level I truly believe that if you’re on a diet this is the way your brain is protecting you. The thing is, our brains and bodies are not wired to be restricted around food and when we are, our rational brain that knows that food is and will always be around, starts to go. For example; you might have a thought like, I need to finish this entire tub of ice cream because tomorrow I’m starting my diet and I’m never gonna have this again, so you finish it and then you feel like crap! The thing is your brain doesn’t like that it can’t have what it wants, when it wants, and neither does your body so it packs in all the ice cream because it doesn’t know when it’s gonna have it again even though in reality, if you look at your history with food, you probably finished another tub not that long ago, truth? THIS though, is how restriction can really mess with you and I see this time and time again with the women I work with. So basically, if you’re restricting the ‘self sabotaging’ that you experience near food is your body’s way of protecting itself by eating a lot at once. You get what I’m saying, right?? 

Now what if you are not on a diet and you’ve actually been practicing Intuitive Eating for a while and you still find that you are self sabotaging with food, what do you do now?? Well, you should know this mindset carries over with us from dieting even though we are well past restrictive behaviors with food. First off take note, when you eat from a place of pleasure it will always feel good in your body. When you eat from a place of a negative or checked out mindset it doesn’t matter what you’re eating it’s NEVER GOING TO FEEL GOOD and you’ll know, because your body will give you feedback right away. Belly aches, indigestion, too full, and maybe even bingey. 

Signs that you’re in a pleasurable mindset:

You give yourself full permission to eat and say the mantra, guilt you are not welcome here. 

You have fulled owned and listened to your exact craving even if it’s cookies at 10:30am.

You are in your body, not in your mind. 

You are sitting down when you’re eating.

You make sounds like ohhhhh, ahhhhhh, mmmmmmm.

You are listening for the subtle cue when your body tells you it’s had enough.

You trust that you can always have more tomorrow. 

Signs that you’re trapped in a self sabotage mindset:

Fuck it I’m stressed I deserve this.

I haven’t lost any weight so let me me just stuff my body with sugar because I suck anyways. 

I don’t even like the taste of this but who cares. 

If I eat half of my kids cupcake while standing over the counter it doesn’t really count.

Let me finish all the cookies and sugar in the house and then I’ll start over tomorrow morning. 

This cake that I just baked is so good that I’m going to keep eating it because it’s delicious even though my body is sending me a clear signal to stop.

You have a million things on your mind except what you’re eating. 

So, before you put food in to your mouth slow yourself down and check in. Try to get in to the the right mindset (pleasurable) and get curious about how much you need for it to hit your sweet spot. The feeling between pleasure and pain is just a few bites away from each other! 

X,

Soshy