Do you feel overwhelmed trying to decide which foods you *should* be eating? 😫

Maybe you feel debilitating guilt for eating certain foods you consider bad or off-limits. If you eat a forbidden food, you might vow to “make up for it” by exercising more tomorrow, eating less the next day, or “getting back on track” with whatever diet or plan you’re aiming to follow.

What if there was a better, healthier way of relating to food? One that left you feeling confident in your eating decisions and satisfied by your food choices? 💫

When we make peace with food in Intuitive Eating, we are able to incorporate a wide variety of foods without feeling guilty about it. We don’t label ourselves a good or bad person based on our food choices.

What’s more, when we embrace a more balanced way of eating, we are more likely to be healthy physically and to maintain whatever our body’s healthy weight range is for each of us.

Before we dive into 5 of my best tips for making peace with food, let’s chat a bit about what (from my perspective) making peace with food actually means.

What does / doesn’t it mean to make peace with food?

• Making peace with food means that we are able to eat all types of food without feeling bad or guilty about it. We don’t consider ourselves to be a good or bad person based off of our food choices.
• This doesn’t mean we have to incorporate all types of food at the same frequency. Whether or not one person chooses to include more or less nutrient-dense foods than the next person has to do with a number of factors, including each person’s value and preference for focusing on nutrition. Even if I value eating a nutrient-dense diet, making peace with food still means that I can enjoy things like cupcakes and ice cream in some frequency without feeling bad or like I’m doing something wrong when I do.
• You can still experience the same amount of peace with food even if you have to avoid certain foods for medical or religious reasons. Your “range” of foods in which you are able to engage with / make peace with will simply be slightly smaller than someone without these constraints.

5 tips for making peace with food in Intuitive Eating 

Make a list of all the foods that you consider off-limits 

As you seek to make peace with food, I’d encourage you to write out a list of all the foods that you consider off-limits, or that you feel bad about if you eat them. Take your time, be thorough, and really try to get honest with yourself! 📝

For most people this might look like high-fat, high-carbohydrate, or high-sugar foods.

Again, making peace with food doesn’t mean you need to eat certain less nutritious foods all the time. But are you able to peacefully enjoy them when you truly would like to? Or is your way of going about eating overly fear-based and rigid?

Enjoyment and pleasure are key parts of having a healthy relationship with food!

Get curious about where your guilt may be coming from

As you reflect on your list, seek to get curious about why you feel guilty when you eat these foods. What thoughts, fears, and beliefs are behind your feelings of guilt?

Maybe you grew up in a family where your parents shamed you for eating certain foods, or where you had relatives constantly talking about how “bad” they are for eating XYZ. Without conscious effort to change our thoughts, much of what we think about food is likely to be absorbed from the thoughts and beliefs of those around us.

Maybe your thoughts about a certain food or food group are based on what you’ve read on social media or heard from a podcast. Without more detail, I’m not saying your thoughts about the food are or aren’t true, but a goal in Intuitive Eating might be to still enjoy certain foods from time to time without feeling like you’ve crossed a line or done something wrong.

For example, it’s generally true that high-sugar foods aren’t good for us (from a purely nutrition facts standpoint). BUT, as part of a well-rounded approach to health and nutrition, I’d argue that it’s still healthy to include higher-sugar treats from time to time (without guilt!).

What this looks like in terms of frequency and quantity will look different for each of us depending on what intuitively feels best and how we prefer to about our eating.

Question and challenge your thoughts about these foods 

As we work towards making peace with food, it’s also important to examine your thoughts about your off-limits or “bad” foods to see if they are even based in truth. 🤔

Two questions I often consider with clients are:

• Is this thought true?

and

• Is this thought helpful?

Some thoughts about food that are driving our labeling them as “off-limits” are simply not even true. For example, we might (falsely) fear eating foods that are high in healthy fat (such as avocados and grass-fed beef) because of what we think it is going to do to our weight or heart health.

Some thoughts are or may be true, such as our sugar example above. BUT, is obsessively fearing high-sugar foods at all costs helpful? For instance, if I overly shame myself for eating one brownie, I might end up eating the whole pan after I’ve crossed the line once and “might as well keep going and eat the rest of them now that I’ve totally messed up and will start fresh tomorrow.” 🤦‍♀️

Not necessarily a helpful thought. Feeling neutral about eating a couple of brownies and moving on with life is likely the healthier approach!

Experiment with making peace with food 

As you examine your thoughts and beliefs about your off-limits foods, I’d encourage you to gently start to experiment with incorporating these foods and see what happens. Is your hyper-vigilance regarding them warranted?

Just like with any sort of exposure therapy, you might still feel some anxiety and guilt with eating an off-limits food. When these fear-based thoughts and feelings come up, continue to question and challenge these internal responses.

We want to question, challenge, experiment, and allow ourselves to move forward in a values-aligned way, even when there is initial discomfort.

Examples might look like:

• Enjoying your favorite creamer in your coffee instead of drinking it black like you normally make yourself
• Having a slice of birthday cake at your niece’s birthday party instead of passing because you’re “too full” — despite secretly wanting a slice
• Drizzling your steamed veggies in olive oil instead of having them plain because you tell yourself “fat is bad”

🌟 What could be your next step in experimenting with making peace with food? 🌟

Embrace a well-rounded approach to health

I’m all about nutrition and physical health. It’s my firm belief that when we adopt a well-rounded approach to both nutrition and health, we are more likely to be physically healthy.

When we make peace with food, we can…

• Enjoy an ice cream cone without mentally obsessing about it the rest of the night
• Create an *actually satisfying* salad for lunch that both meets our nutrition needs and keeps us from snacking in the pantry the rest of the afternoon
• Enjoy a variety of nutritious foods (such as those higher in healthy fats) instead of operating out of misguided beliefs about how they are *bad* for us

It’s important to make food choices that honor our physical health needs. This could look like choosing high-quality proteins, fats, and produce most of the time.

At the same time, when we overly avoid certain foods and feel guilty for eating them, this is likely to backfire into chaos with food and a way of thinking / feeling about food that is harming us more than helping.

✨ What might you need to let go of in order to move toward greater peace with food?

✨ What are you afraid might happen if you embrace greater peace with food? 

• Is this fear grounded in reality?
• What are the pros / cons to making a change?

✨ Looking for more support in making peace with food?

–> Drop your question here for next month’s Libby’s Listening! Here for you to answer all your Intuitive Eating and recovery questions.
–> Book your free consultation call here to decide if working together one-on-one is your next best step.

Explore More

What is Intuitive Eating? Exploring Different “Types of Hunger” Intuitive Eating — 10 Principles in Action Reasons to Eat Even When You’re Not Hungry