If I could just get control over my food....

The diet industry wants you to believe that if you just rewire your brain to stop desiring food, then food will never be a source of stress. Sounds simple enough: “Ditch your desires and you’ll never want to eat chocolate or ice cream again!”

Nice try, but that’s just about as flawed as telling a smoker who is trying to quit smoking, “Just make your brain not want cigarettes anymore and you’ll be set!”.

Yes, urges and desires around food come from our brain, but those urges and desires stem from a very complicated network that is really, really, REALLY hard to override. This network is comprised of our genetics, our environment, our hormones, and so much more. Most importantly, this innate, complex system is controlled largely by biology -  and not our thoughts.  As much we may *think* we can control our food with our mind, our biologically driven needs and wants will win every time. 

The diet industry also wants you to believe that if you give into the voice in your head telling you to eat the foods you actually want to eat, you’ll end up sitting on your couch for days on end eating bon-bons. You’ll become a hedon! Might as well kiss your rank in society goodbye!

You wanna know the real “dirty” truth? Your food should be pleasurable, joyful and interesting!  The more you deny yourself, the more out of control you feel and the more you will find yourself eating more than usual.  

You’re encouraged to give up on deriving any interest or pleasure from food, and in return you’re  promised that your life will be interesting. WRONG. Your life and your food should be pleasurable, joyful and interesting. They are not mutually exclusive.

What’s more, diet culture has found a way for us to demonize something we need to survive. Food is perhaps our most primal need. When you restrict your intake of food in any way - even by a “small” deliberate reduction - you are denying your body what it needs to survive and thrive.  Any attempts at restriction will inevitably result in a swing the opposite direction.  The bow always snaps back. 

Another frequent message we hear from diet culture is that we should process our emotions instead of using food as a buffer from feeling them. The idea is that through processing the emotions you'll somehow also magically eliminate your desires for food. Buffering emotions is weak, and you really just need to spend more time feeling your feelings. 

The reality is that you can honor your hunger, soothe yourself with food if
you want to, AND still process your emotions. It’s not an either-or
proposition like the diet industry makes it out to be. You can self-soothe,
which may involve eating, and you can process your emotions, as
well. This is self-care. Self-care is not restricting yourself, sitting
on your hands, and forcing yourself to say "no" to food when you really want
to say "yes".

The fastest way to get control over your desires and decisions around food is to let go of all of your rules. Let go of planning your day ahead. Let go of deciding what you’ll eat at the restaurant before you get there. Let go of counting anything -  calories, macros, or carbs.  

Remember that deep, innate biological system that I was telling you about? It is there to do an important job. So let it do that job, rather than trying to tell it what to do by rewiring the thoughts in your brain.

Trust that your body knows best.