What Happens When There Are No Rules?

Is it just me, or have some of the rules at your house gone out the window during the pandemic? 
No screen time during the week has now become hours of screen time daily!
No pajamas to school unless it's pajama day is now wear your pajamas all day, every day!
Some of the rule breaking has been more welcome than others. 

What happens when you don't have rules around food? Spoiler alert: no rules around food is a good thing. 

One of the tenets of Intuitive Eating is to give yourself unconditional permission to eat. This means throwing out all rules and restrictions around food, and tuning into what your body desires. This can seem scary for a lot of people, and you may be wondering what happens when there are no rules around food.

Deb Burgard, strong supporter of the Health at Every Size movement, and an advocate for Intuitive Eating, has a great line that explains the process you may experience when  learning to eat intuitively. Deb says:

“We go from donuts to discernment.”

When we let go of all the rules we’ve had in place around food for most of our life (yessss!), we are going to  test the waters of freedom (permission granted). We are going to eat the foods that we’ve deemed “forbidden” for so long. And we are going to experience different emotions and physical sensations while doing that - the key is to be aware of and feel them all. Eventually, we  come to a place where we are aware  of what actually feels good to our bodies and minds.  

When there are no more rules, start by asking yourself some basic questions:

• What do I want? 
• What is my  body telling me  it needs? 
• What do I  know to be true for myself outside of diet culture rules and regulations?  

It might sound simple, but this is a great starting point on your journey of self discovery. You are with your body 100% of the time and you can take care of it, however you choose. 

Remember, change happens over time and through a  process of trial and error. You can expect many errors along the way. Inside those errors are valuable information about what does and doesn’t work for your body.

• “Oops, my stomach didn’t feel very good after I ate that much. “
• “I really didn’t like how that food tastes.”
• “Dang, I didn’t order enough to feel satisfied after that meal.”

It’s important that the lessons you learn from these errors don’t become a new set of rules or a new diet. It’s more of a “huh, isn’t that interesting”.

Cultivating self-love will be an important tool to support how you handle and navigate the errors and “failures” around food. However, even the best self care  does not make us immortal. We are all humans that will experience aging, illness, and eventually death. We will all likely have health problems at some point along the way if we are lucky to live a long life. This simply means we will need to continually make adjustments throughout life - this is a process of learning and relearning. What’s  important is that we figure out what is best for ourselves along the way - a diet prescribed by anyone else is just a form of oppression with no long term benefits.

Maybe it’s donuts that your body wants, and maybe it’s broccoli. Either one is absolutely fine in a diet free world. Have confidence that your innate wisdom will guide the way. You just have to be open and willing to listen and regain trust with your body.  She’s always been there for you and she always will be.

Might as well make things easier and more enjoyable by listening to what she has to say. No permission slip required. Go ahead, break all the rules.