Our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors guide our food choices. Core beliefs often go way beyond the biological need for nutrition. Sometimes the mind is the body’s worst enemy whenever those beliefs are manipulated by misinformation.
To eat less and move more is such an archaic idea. The appetite is complicated and some folks don’t feel hunger in the traditional ways we’ve come to know. Yet the same advice gets doled out to the masses and continues in practice while no one thinks much about it. It makes perfect sense until it doesn’t. Dieting is a common form of disordered eating.
Rigid thinking stirs up negative emotions about ourselves
Any attempt to set a parameter around the foods you eat automatically comes with a set of rules. They start with what you can eat and what you can’t eat. But once you commit to depriving yourself there’s little doubt you’ll eventually break the rules. It’s human nature. Any diet that makes you feel like a failure when you don’t stick to it means the diet is a failure, not you.
When eating dessert breaks the cardinal rule of dieting
Worrying about body weight puts up many roadblocks in the social world. Dieting says, “You’re not allowed to eat that,” because it’s on the naughty list. In the disordered eating realm, it’s more than just denying oneself the occasional dessert, this behavior can become very isolating especially when someone doesn’t feel like they can trust themselves around food.
Deprivation doesn’t equal health
It only proliferates negative emotions leading to restrictive behaviors that can harm health significantly more than food choices. Diet misinformation often validates two emotions, guilt and shame. Deprivation starves the brain and increases anxiety which therefore affects mental health.
Merriam-Webster dictionary defines GUILT as:
- The fact of having committed a specified or implied offense or crime
- Feelings of deserving blame, especially for imagined offenses or from a sense of inadequacy
- A feeling of deserving blame for offenses
It defines SHAME as:
- A painful emotion caused by consciousness of guilt, shortcoming, or impropriety
- A condition of humiliating disgrace or disrepute
- Something that brings censure or reproach
- Something to be regretted
Guilt and shame have no place at the table.
My Story as a Registered Dietitian
Eight years ago, I accepted the role of treating patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder and disordered eating. My job is to provide medical nutrition therapy to maintain proper nutrition for recovery. Sometimes a patient needs weight restoration to a healthier range. Patients experiencing severe anxiety often put their nutrition at the bottom of the list. Other times I coach folks to take the focus off controlling their weight so they can nourish themselves more.
As a new dietitian, my reality shifted BIG TIME as I discovered controlling weight was less about food and more about rigid beliefs that do more to harm health than it does to preserve it. Instead of coaching patients to avoid certain foods under the guise of health, I motivate them to accept all foods including fast food and desserts. As part of a mental health treatment team, my core treatment is the neutralization of all foods while advocating for patients to challenge their negative self-talk. You’d be surprised how healthy someone can be if they’re allowed to have a hamburger, fries, and a shake once in a while.
Disordered eating is so complex and everyone’s journey is different. My hope is that others will begin to see why nutrition advice around eating less and moving more is, at the very least, short-sighted. It doesn’t meet folks where they are. It doesn’t consider each individual’s uniqueness. It forces people to believe they can be in complete control of a number on a scale. Body weight is wrongly focused on in terms of self-worth.
The longer I’m a dietitian the more I want to help others discover an individualized diet that will not only fuel and nourish their bodies but also feed their souls. To encourage others to feel better about themselves and worry less about what other people think about how they look or what they eat.
Cindy Dexter, RD, CD
Green Apple Dietitian 