How to Make Peace with Food

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Somewhere between a recipe, a step-by-step plan, and a map here are 10 ingredients I believe add up to making peace with food:

Learn to manage anxiety and feel feelings

I believe that most chaotic, restrictive, or overconsumptive eating is driven by anxiety. Manage the anxiety and you’re a giant step closer to finding ease at the table. Whether through pharmaceuticals, meditation, or therapy, anxiety management is key in walking this path.

Stop blaming yourself and embrace your humanness

As a human being you are wired to respond to threats of famine (real or perceived) with a compulsion to overeat. You can’t override your wiring. Diets are inherently designed to set you to feel a threat of famine and thus set up to fail. You do not need more willpower. You need to ditch a system that is structured to cause you suffering and will always fail to deliver on it’s promises in the long run. Not your fault. Never has been. Never will be.

Learn the science of Health at Every Size

We take for granted the notion that fat people are inherently unhealthy because of their size. This belief is so common it’s not questioned—even though science does not back it up. Once we bust through this myth we take away an important part of the ammunition for restrictive eating.

Find a body role-model

Just because mainstream media presents a homogenous, mythic ideal of the human body that does not mean we can’t expand our own view. The real world is full humans in every shape and size. It is not, nor has it ever been, true that you have to look a certain way to be these things. Look beyond the magazines and find people who can serve as role models (or proof) of what is possible. Start a Pinterest board. Make your Instagram feed affirming. Embrace that beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder. Celebrate what makes you unique.

Commit to giving up dieting

To make peace with food you must first commit fiercely to giving up dieting. Peace with food isn’t something we find when part of us is still plotting and pining for a new eating plan or program. We can’t truly trust what our body is telling us when we’re also trying to count points or avoid carbs. Say goodbye to this toxic relationship that never treated you with respect or kindness.

Trade the scale for body-trust

Stop weighing yourself. Dump the scale in the trash, literally. Peace with food depends on letting your body determine the best weight range based on your new, peaceful behaviors with food. When “control weight” isn’t on your to-do list anymore, peace with food is exponentially easier to find.

Play the long-game

Peace with food isn’t something you find overnight or even in a year. It’s a slow-process of reconditioning. If you’ve been indoctrinated from birth with the hungry woman paradigm and dieted for decades, you can’t expect to find peace instantly. But play the long-game compassionate and you’ll get there.

Treat it like learning a new language or instrument: practice

Finding peace with food is anything by a linear path. You will practice, play a wrong note, practice more, fall down, practice more, get better at it, practice more, get lost less frequently, practice more, and so on. This is about hitting the reset button over and over and over again, without judgement, as you imperfectly find your way.

Understand what it means to be a ‘normal’ eater and pursue that

While dieting or bingeing are typical or average eating behaviors in today's world, they aren't normal. Normal eating, as well defined by Dr. Ellyn Satter is: "

Normal eating is going to the table hungry and eating until you are satisfied. It is being able to choose food you like and eat it and truly get enough of it -not just stop eating because you think you should. Normal eating is being able to give some thought to your food selection so you get nutritious food, but not being so wary and restrictive that you miss out on enjoyable food. Normal eating is giving yourself permission to eat sometimes because you are happy, sad or bored, or just because it feels good. Normal eating is mostly three meals a day, or four or five, or it can be choosing to munch along the way. It is leaving some cookies on the plate because you know you can have some again tomorrow, or it is eating more now because they taste so wonderful. Normal eating is overeating at times, feeling stuffed and uncomfortable. And it can be undereating at times and wishing you had more. Normal eating is trusting your body to make up for your mistakes in eating. Normal eating takes up some of your time and attention, but keeps its place as only one important area of your life. In short, normal eating is flexible. It varies in response to your hunger, your schedule, your proximity to food and your feelings.

Find a mentor and community to join you in the trenches

When the dominant paradigm is one of disorder and/or many of your friends are still pursuing diets and weight-loss it’s essential that you have a support system. Integrating an entirely new way of relating to food, your body and self is no small order and a mentor can be a priceless anchor. Whether a coach or therapist find someone who knows the lay of the land and can provide you with essential tools and encouragement.

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A World Gone Mad

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The Illusion of the Bottomless Pit