Homemade Neighbor Caramels and Those Damn Food Police

 Well, I’m sitting in my kitchen feeling like a bloated piece of crap.  According to Intuitive Eating, the first stage of overcoming ED’s (eating disorders), including my particular favorite, binge eating, is to completely reject the diet mentality.  In order to do this, we should mentally make a list of the foods we consider “bad”.  You know, the foods that make us feel guilty after we eat them.  In my case it’s foods like cookies, ice cream, Hersey Bars, brownies, strawberry pop tarts, brown sugar pop tarts, blueberry pop tarts… basically any kind of pop tart or any food with sugar or white flour.  (Also included on my list are foods with oil and butter.)  After we acknowledge the absurdness in labeling a food as “bad” or “good”, we begin to make a conscience effort to eat all of these foods without limits.  This part of the process has no time restraints.  And there is purpose in this madness.  Supposedly the binges are the result of two types of thinking; 1) the thought of future denial.  Why wouldn’t we stuff our faces with as many Pop Tarts as possible if we thought it would be the last time we were to ever have that tasty goodness?  That’s the “last supper” mentality.  Eat as much as possible today for tomorrow we diet.  2) Then there’s the what-the-hell mentality.  This is the reason for the after diet binge.  For me, I’m usually really “good” for 3 or 4 days.  But then the allure of a “bad” food comes a callin’.   All it takes is one bite… and BAM! The what-the-hell thoughts take over.  Before I know it, I’ve consumed all the Pop-Tarts I denied myself during those 3 or 4 days of torture and then a bunch more in preparation for the diet that will eventually tell me that I can never eat a Pop Tart again. 

According to Evelyn Tribble and Elyse Resch (Intuitive Eating authors) the purpose of this phase is to become re-acquainted with food as well as to begin to tune into our internal ques.  It’s during this phase that we are supposed to turn off the “Food Police” in our heads.  The Food Police are those thoughts that tell us that we are bad when we eat anything yummy.  They tell us that we are going to get fat because we eat some of our son’s birthday cake or because we want to stop at the Dairy Queen and have an ice cream cone, or because we LOVE the homemade caramels from our neighbor at Christmas time.  Speaking of homemade caramels.  I have to admit it’s a nice time of year to be in the “reject the diet mentality” part of this book.  Homemade neighbor caramels are definitely on my list of “bad” foods so I’ve made a point to eat as many as I possibly could.  (I think my husband is wishing I would listen just a little bit to my food police… at least just enough to save him at least one of the homemade neighbor caramels.) 

Anyway, this phase of the process has been tough on my self-esteem.  They say in the book that we might not feel great during this time.  We may gain some weight and just not feel up to par.  I can testify to this statement.  I’ve put on a few, and I just feel yucky lots of the time.  But I’m jumping in with faith – faith that I’ll win the battle with the Food Police bullies who still nag at me every day.  Faith that I’ve dieted my very last diet.  Faith that eventually the Pop Tarts and homemade neighbor caramels will not be quite so appealing.  And faith

that I will eventually get to the healthy eating part of the process.  Evelyn and Elynse say that nutrition part of the book is coming.  They say it comes at the end because we aren’t ready for it yet.  Apparently nutrition cannot be the driving force at this point in the game because if it were, it would only “perpetuate [our] restrictive thoughts”.  They say that if we think about eating a hot chocolate sundae at every meal, eventually we’ll crave something healthy.  I believe that.  And that helps give me the courage to eat those homemade neighbor Christmas caramels. 

And so my beautiful Chix, I AM doing it.  I want to say I’m doing it for you, so I can show you that diets don’t work and that this intuitive eating is really the way to go.  But honestly, I’m doing it mostly for me.  I just couldn’t live with the obsessions and the denial and the obsessions anymore.  AND I’m doing it for you.  Because if this works, and we can all come together in this meeting of the no-diets mind, we can change the world – at least the small worlds we’re living in, right?  Right.