In 2011 I began writing about intuitive eating. I wrote to process and to heal after living with disordered eating for nearly ten years. In many ways, intuitive eating saved me from myself. Most importantly, intuitive eating taught me to listen to myself and to acknowledge a quiet voice that whispered, “You are enough.” I wrote these essays for myself, but knowing how deeply rooted issues of weight are with feelings of identity and belonging, I decided to publish them here in hopes of helping others navigate the road back to oneself. (Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3)
Fall 2011
I woke up this morning and remembered my commitment to intuitive eating. I said to myself: Today you can eat anything you want.
Then I began planning out my day, and like many recovering from an eating disorder, found myself thinking about what I would eat today. What might I pack for lunch? What would I eat for dinner? How many calories would I have? Would I be good or bad today?
And then I remembered: Today you can eat anything you want.
No dieting, no meticulously planning out calories, no feeling bad. Just me, relying on the steady and simple voice inside telling me how I feel and informing me whether or not I’m hungry.
What a change it has made in my life, to reject the diet mentality. To start fresh each day, not because it’s a new chance to be better, to be good, not in the way that I used to start fresh after a night of last supper eating. I’m starting fresh today in that today is a new day to experience food and life and all of the feelings that go along with it. Today is a new day to give myself the grace I deserve, to honor my hunger and fullness, to shut out the mental food police who challenge my security.
I had a work meeting at a coffee house this morning and decided that a hot chai latte sounded perfect for the crisp fall day. I enjoyed my chai without thought to calories or what it meant to be drinking it.
At the coffee house, we began discussing a special event I’m planning for New Year’s. The theme is 100, since my town was recently named one of the 100 Best Communities for Young People. Without thinking I said, “What if we did the snacks around 100 calorie options? We could teach the kids what 100 calories looks like and what healthy foods really are.”
Oops. There I went again. My dieting mentality crept back into my brain and spilled out of my mouth in an instant, without my even thinking about the consequences of my words. My coworker gushed about the idea while I quickly tried to backtrack.
It’s not that teaching kids what 100 calories looks like is bad, per se. But in the world of intuitive eating, the world that kids naturally inhabit without much thought, calories don’t exist.
Case in point: have you even seen a 3-year-old eating a cookie? She’ll lick it and bite into it little by little and crumble it and experience its true texture and taste. The way kids eat is just one of the things that makes them sort of magical. They don’t yet know the facts and data society shoves down our throats. They have the unique ability to eat food without guilt or shame, in part because they don’t know–and rightfully don’t care about–the numbers surrounding the eating experience.
When my intuitive eating mind came back to me I desperately wanted to forget all about calories and numbers. Why not just provide the kids with a “healthy” snack and let them tell themselves how much of it they want to eat?
I could go on and on about the calorie conundrum, but for now I will only say this: Calories teach us how much of something we “should” or “shouldn’t” eat. It doesn’t help us to feel our hunger or to feed ourselves until we are just full enough.
Have you ever eaten what I’ll call here a packaged diet meal? If you have, you’ll know that they are somewhere in the 200-400 calorie range. I for one have never left any packaged diet meal unfinished, because I’ve always wanted to know EXACTLY how many calories I’d eaten. It didn’t matter if I was full or if I actually didn’t like the rubbery artificial taste of those darn meals. Calories taught me to finish what was on my plate, because if I didn’t then there’d be no way to track what I’d actually eaten.
The truth is, I don’t want to teach kids that. I don’t want to tell them about calories. I want to put my hands over their ears and encourage them to eat whatever they want. I want to tell them they are beautiful at any size and encourage them to choose foods that make them feel good. I want to encourage them to be active, to find hobbies that don’t revolve around counting calories. I want them to hold on to the magical quality of self-awareness that they may lose as they age, when they let the diet mentality in.
I may not be able to influence every child out there, but what I can do is continue to say to myself each and every day: Today you can eat anything you want. I can remind myself of the freedom that intuitive eating grants me, a feeling like it’s Christmas morning, like being young and being told you can be anything you want to be. That’s what intuitive eating feels like to me.
So today I say to you: Today you can eat anything you want. And tomorrow you can too. And the day after that too. Enjoy.