How to stop your restriction and feel good around food

I was at my Grans for Mothers Day and, like a lot of Grans, mine likes to make sure her family is fed.

No one leaves the McMaster house with an empty stomach, and most of the time you leave with leftovers too.

But what does this mean for your waistline?

When I was younger I was always on a diet. Even if it wasn’t a planned diet, I was somewhere in a restrict/binge cycle and any social gathering involving food would cause me anxiety.

I hated eating in front of other people and I hated the willpower I needed to stay away from the tasty food on a weekend when the family came over.

I would tell myself that when I was thin it would be OK to eat anything but until then I had to be careful.

Because fat makes you fat.
Sugar makes you fat.
Food makes you fat.

Inevitably however I would indulge and eat all of the things and then feel terrible and the cycle would begin again.

Food = anxiety = overeating for comfort = anxiety around food

Repeat.

Taking myself out of this situation when I moved out certainly helped, but what to do when I went back home again? Accept my inability to ‘control’ myself?

More stress didn’t work.

More restriction didn’t work.

Every time I went home I overate and felt out of control.

In the past year I have started to take a long hard look at how I treat food, how I react around it and what this all means for me.

Instead of beating myself up, I gave myself a break.

and I gave myself permission to feel good around food.

Instead of being faced with tasty food and thinking ‘I’m too fat to eat this’ I look at it and think

“this is really good food, prepared with love that I have the right to enjoy. If I overreat then I overeat.”

Simply giving myself this ‘permission’ takes away the stress that I thought was essential to success (stress that never gave me any success).

Using this approach helped me to realise that food isn’t inherently good or bad.
It won’t necessarily make me fat or thin.
There are foods that make me feel great and others that make me feel a bit sluggish, but I give myself permission to eat them both if and when I choose.

This takes all the power away from food.

If I am choosing what to eat and when, it’s not controlling me.

I am in control.

I am responsible, I am capable enough to make good choices.

And so are you.

We are faced with the belief that we must control ourselves, we must restrict, we must have these rules because overweight people lack discipline.

I’d argue that anyone who is or has been overweight has more discipline than anyone else can know.

What if more discipline is not the answer?

This approach might not work for everyone, maybe you’re not ready to try and that’s ok. As with everything we need to be ready before we can make the choice to change something so deep in our behaviour.

But if your restriction isn’t working.

if you’re tired of trying.

maybe it’s time to give yourself permission?

Sometimes when we give up the control we realise we never needed it in the first place.

Ainzlie xx

p.s I am not qualified in eating disorders, my experiences and techniques are things that have worked for me. If you are in treatment for an eating disorder, or think you maybe have one, it is best to seek out a qualified professional who can give you individual support.