The freedom intuitive eating brings to an ex-dieter is unmatched. You can finally enjoy a simple Sunday ice cream cone with your nephew and take a photo to capture the memory without picking it apart. You can enjoy every bite, tasting the cold swirl of chocolate and vanilla. while also feeling it melt down the side of the cone onto your fingers. You end up swapping flavors with your nephew for a minute because you haven’t tried strawberry flavor since you were a kid. Everything feels so simple and uncomplicated until…
“Oh my god, I could never eat that much sugar!”
You hear a sentence like that. Your sister joins you at the ice cream parlor but because of her own diet problems she projects the food police onto you. The lightness of food freedom suddenly feels heavy as you’re faced with a confrontation, not only with your sister but with old diet demons rising from the dead in your mind’s cemetery of broken promises (get it? — cause diets are all just a bunch of broken promises!).
When you’ve worked so hard to reject the diet mentality, others’ diet comments around you can feel so frustrating and defeating. It’s pretty impossible to avoid diet culture, so what can you do
Set Boundaries
If you’ve always welcomed diet-talk or even engaged in the conversations, nobody is going to know you don’t tolerate it anymore if you don’t tell them. Setting boundaries is a clear way to get across your message that you don’t feel supported by those comments anymore, especially if they’re directed toward you. Having those conversations may feel uncomfortable, but a few tough conversations may prevent a lifetime of gluing yourself back together after every time your friend tells you they read that tomatoes actually cause cancer… (and if it’s not apparent here, that is the most bogus statement I’ve ever heard yet totally something I’ve been told before!).
Trust Yourself
The only person who knows you better than you is the person who created the Enneagram. Lol just kidding. YOU know yourself better than anyone! Those thoughts and feelings inside of you are YOU, and nobody can invalidate them because the intricacies of your experiences cannot be taught to someone who hasn’t lived it. Trust that no matter what anyone around you says, you ultimately have the answer to your best health and happiness, and if intuitive eating feels right for you, that’s the only justification you need to stick with it! At the beginning of your intuitive eating journey, it helps to hold onto an affirmation in your mind if your diet brain gets activated by the world around you. An affirmation like “I trust my body” can ground you to your own intuition.
Don’t Explain —or do
Everyone has their own path, and while someone close to you may choose dieting, you have full permission to choose intuitive eating without explaining yourself or justifying your decision. When setting a boundary, or simply not engaging in their requests to join them, you may feel like you have to explain yourself. And while you have full autonomy to do so, you absolutely do not have to. A simple statement will show you’re confident in your decision and you’re not looking for input. And if you do decide to explain yourself, don’t expect them to understand.
Plant a Seed
If the person making a comment is someone you feel would be receptive to anti-diet ideologies, plant a seed. Meaning, maybe don’t dump the history of systemic fatphobia in their lap, or dissect how diet culture is upholding white supremacy by only valuing thin whiteness (I mean—you can! I probably needed that slap in the face). A more inviting approach to the conversation would be “I’ve realized dieting is more harmful for me and many, and I feel better listening to my body” and see if they engage. If they do without putting up a defense, they may be open to learning and it could be a liberating conversation to share. Maybe, together, you can water the seed and they can blossom into another anti-diet intuitive eater 🙂
Reviewed and Edited by Kaitlyn Allen MS, MEd, MS, RD
