This blog post is all about the fourth principle of Intuitive Eating: Challenging The Food Police.
If you’re new to the idea of Intuitive Eating, I invite you to read my introduction on Intuitive Eating.
I’ve also written about the previous three principles of Intuitive Eating which are Rejecting The Diet Mentality, Honoring Your Hunger, and Making Peace With Food.
Who Are The Food Police?
In order to start challenging the food police, we first need to start off with who the food police are.
A food police is someone who monitors the rules that diet culture has created.
The food police are just like regular police in that they watch what you eat and reprimand you if you do something “bad”.
Physical Food Police
Sometimes, the food police can be a physical person. Dietitians are often seen as the food police because there is a perception that our profession exists solely to critique your diet.
Personal trainers can also take the form of a food police if they are prescribing clients with strict meal plans.
Friends, family, classmates, healthcare professionals, and the media all have the ability to morph into the food police because they normalize judgmental diet culture thinking.
Mental Food Police
However, more times than not, the food police you will have to be most familiar with challenging is the one in your own mind.
Through your years of dieting, you may have built up quite a bit of food rules that you will need to deconstruct and dismantle if you want to become an Intuitive Eater.
Some of the most popular food rules are:
- Not eating past a certain time
- Not eating a specific food group
- Completely eliminating foods of a specific color
- Only eating foods with an ingredient list you can pronounce
- No snacking in between meals
Food Rules Are a Source of Unhappiness
Food rules come from a result of diet culture and can be both intentional and unintentional.
While there isn’t anything wrong with having preferences, there is a point where those preferences become rigid stances you take.
What would happen if you break one of your food rules?
For many, this would cause anxiety. They may start to feel guilty or shameful for the food decisions they’ve made.
Ultimately, this ends up taking up space in your brain and interferes with your quality of life.
Food Choices Should Not Be Tied To Our Self Esteem
Because diet culture is so persistent in everyday culture, food often comes with a pretty big moral load.
If you think about it, it’s almost like food is a weird religion where if you follow the rules, you’re doing good. If you break a rule, you’ve committed a sin.
But here’s the hard truth-food is not inherently good or bad. Thus, eating a particular food does not make you a good person or a bad person.
Negative Food Voices
There are three main negative food voices, which are the food police, the nutrition informant and the diet rebel.
The food police is your inner voice that tells you whether you are doing something good or bad.
The nutrition informant is someone who backs up their claims with a false basis of evidence. Oftentimes, this voice can be difficult to challenge because what they’re saying may sound accurate, but in reality they just cherry picked evidence to fit their narrative.
The nutrition informant and the food police often work hand in hand where the food police sets the law and the nutrition informant keeps tabs on you to make sure you’re following it.
It is important to note that the nutrition informant CAN be a positive food voice, but it highly depends on the circumstance. For example, the nutrition informant can help you decide between products based on health.
The diet rebel is the complete opposite of the food police. If the food police says “you can’t eat cake it’s bad for you” the diet rebel will say “watch me!” and eat the entire cake when no one is looking.
Positive Food Voices
There are three positive food voices, which are the nurturer, the anthropologist, and the nutrition ally.
The nurturer is your “mom voice” that reassures you and lets you know that all is well. It may say “you can eat dessert. You feel your best when you don’t deprive yourself”.
The anthropologist is a neutral food voice that seeks to make observations. They’re inquisitive, but in a nonjudgmental way.
The intuitive eater in you is a combination of the food anthropologist and the nurturer.
The nutrition ally is the diet rebel transformed. They are polite, but firm and protect you against the food police. Using the chocolate cake example, the nutrition ally may say “i will eat a piece of cake and there is nothing wrong with doing so”.
Practice At Home
Here is an exercise I invite you to try.
Whenever you have a moment to yourself, sit in a quiet space. Think of all of the food rules you’ve been told or that you’re currently following.
If you enjoy writing, you can feel free to jot them down. Take time to notice who said that rule to you or made up that rule. Ask yourself where it comes from and if it is credible or not.
If you have been practicing Intuitive Eating for a while, it may be more helpful to explore guilt around a food choice.
Instead of shying away from the feeling, own your guilt and question it!
Own the guilt and question it. Ask “what is going on with me right now that I am experiencing this?”
Alternative Exercise To Try
Another exercise you can do is to try to identify the voices that may be happening around you.
For example, you may notice that the nutrition informant is very loud when you are eating dinner with your friends.
Maybe the diet rebel voice is strong at 10PM when everyone is asleep.
Figuring out when the food voices come out will give you the ability to evaluate what they’re saying because you know they’re coming. Know thy enemy, right?
Conclusion
There should be no morality to our eating. Unfortunately diet culture is strong and has the ability to tie your food choices to your self worth.
But now that you know about the different food voices you might come across, you may find it easier to identify them and combat them.
NOW I’D LIKE TO HEAR FROM YOU!
What food voice do you find the loudest?
When does that voice come out? Do you have a way of challenging the food police?
I’d love to hear your thoughts down below!
