Experience in life and in medical practice has taught me that most women struggle with food, self-image, and unhappiness with body weight at some point in our lives, or for most of our lives. This often leads to disordered eating which stems from negative thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors about food and about our bodies. To understand disordered eating, however, we should first know what diet culture is.  

According to an article on The Emily Program’s website (The Emily Program is an eating disorder treatment center in St. Paul, MN), diet culture is what we are surrounded by and living in day to day, just by living in a first-world country. Diet culture “equates thinness and particular body shapes with ‘health’ and morality…” and, “promotes weight loss as the only way to attain health and gain social status.” Also, “diet culture can make people fearful of food and anxious about losing control, disconnecting them from their most basic autonomy and agency around food.”  We live in a diet culture with a food industry that sets us up to feel guilty, unhappy, unsatisfied, and having poor health.

What is disordered eating?

Disordered eating habits encompass our thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors about food. Most often, behaviors include food rules such as not eating after 6pm, limiting when you can eat certain “bad” or unhealthy foods, never drinking your calories, always or never eating breakfast, never eating fast food, etc. Also, this can be undereating despite still being hungry, or purposely not eating to “make up for” eating something “bad,” or always being on or off a diet. Thoughts often revolve around guilt or shame with eating or feeling controlled by food. This can be labeling foods as only “good” or “bad.”  Often times, diets and goals are focused on numbers, calorie counting, weights and measures. Disordered thoughts can also include equating happiness with body weight. When I lose 20 pounds, then I’ll be happy, content, satisfied, etc. Or my marriage will be better, my job will be easier, I will have more friends, etc.  Disordered eating patterns include periods of restriction (avoiding desserts, chips, fast food, etc) but then feeling so hungry or deprived that you end up overeating. Exercise is only for calorie burning, “I exercise so that I can eat…” Behaviors could also be planning to go on a diet tomorrow, so you have a “last supper” binge tonight. Diet culture often encourages weight loss pills, shakes, and detoxes or cleanses for the sole purpose of weight loss. Diet culture states that weight loss will give you health, confidence, a robust social life, and beauty. These empty promises can cause a food obsession with depressed and anxious thoughts. These thoughts misplace our self-worth from who our Creator made us to be and brings it down to only based on outward appearances and willpower of self.

Disordered eating steals our joy

Having disordered thoughts, attitudes and behaviors about your body and food is exhausting and takes the joy away from eating. Combining my work at The Emily Program with my research on Intuitive Eating and the Ellyn Satter Eating Competence model, I believe that we can restore our body’s ability to eat with joy and for good health, and when we do this, accept the body that God has given us. The concepts provided here are summaries, and more detailed info can be found in the resources provided. Keep in mind that there are exceptions for people that need to make drastic dietary changes based on health conditions that require immediate changes or restrictions. This may include poorly controlled diabetes with severe complications or severe allergies, painful inflammation, or cancer. Even extreme sugar sensitivity resembling addiction may require professional help. However, most people can learn and apply these concepts for healing their disordered eating.

From Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch, the ten principles of Intuitive Eating include:

1. Reject the diet mentality: no more quick fix diets for the sole purpose of weight loss.
2. Honor your hunger: re-build trust in yourself with food, feed yourself adequately.
3. Make peace with food: stop fighting with food, give yourself permission to eat any food.
4. Challenge the food police: stop food rules that only cause guilt and shame.
5. Respect your fullness: listen to your body’s signals and stay aware.
6. Discover the satisfaction factor: find pleasure in eating, including food and the environment.
7. Cope with your emotions with kindness: honor and feel your feelings without using food. 
8. Respect your body: accept who you are and the genetics you’ve been made from.
9. Movement- feel the difference: find enjoyable movement and set non-calorie goals.
10. Honor your health with gentle nutrition: eating doesn’t have to be perfect, overall long-term consistency is the goal.

From the Satter Eating Competence model (sEC):

1. Feed yourself faithfully. This involves structure, with routine for meals and snacks, taking time to eat, including foods you enjoy, and making eating time pleasant.
2. Give yourself permission to eat. This means that you can eat foods you enjoy and eat as much as you want. However, this also means that you pay attention when you eat, taste your food, enjoy your food, and listen to your body.  
3. Notice as you learn and grow. The main concepts are “structure” and “permission”, learning the process, being reliable to feed yourself well and enjoy eating, including “forbidden” foods, but also listening to your body and trusting that your body will tell you when to stop.

This may sound unrealistic or even scary. How can I trust myself with food? You can learn, and food doesn’t have to be a battle. Food is necessary to sustain life, it is a gift that God has given us to enjoy and use wisely. We can be thankful, eat with joy, and respect the body we’ve been given. 

Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.

Romans 6:13-14

For more help

If you are concerned that your food battle may be more than you can manage on your own, please check into scheduling an intake assessment with Water’s Edge Counseling and Healing or The Emily Program for more help.

RESOURCES:

Nutritional Weight & Wellness | Nutrition Classes & Counseling (weightandwellness.com)

Water's Edge Counseling and Healing Center

The Emily Program

The Ellyn Satter Institute

Intuitive Eating