Overeating Recovery Part 3 - Make an Eating Plan
Overeating Recovery Part 3 - Make an eating plan
So many of my favorite thought leaders are proponents of Intuitive Eating to overcome binge eating, overeating, and food obsession. I embrace many of its tenants. Release dieting brain – yes. Get in touch with what feels good in your body – yes. Reject the failure, shame, and frustration that are an inevitable response to a profitable diet industry that is invested in one-size-fits-all modes – yes.
My approach to overeating recovery, however, does include food and meal planning.
How do I reconcile planning – which seems like the “rules and regulations” approach that intuitive eating rejects – with food freedom?
Gentle rules are necessary for any area in our life that we wish to change, grow, or evolve. We certainly have (very definite) boundaries and guidelines around drinking and using, that benefit us greatly. We have them around our work, relationships, etc. and they set our minds free from constant spontaneous decision-making (which keeps us stuck in what we’ve got).
However - when we are exclusively following someone else’s script for what those guidelines should look like, we are removed from our relationship with ourselves. We are asked to disconnect from our wants and needs to accommodate someone else’s idea of what we should be and do. This is exactly what happens with dieting. It feels artificial.
When does planning work best? When the rules are determined by you for you from a place of confidence, curiosity, and peace.
So, when you think about what you want – to move from out-of-control overeating to healthy eating with choice – what kind of plan would you need to create?
This requires some real thought and maybe experimentation. What foods taste good to you? What foods feel good in your body? What foods give you the results you want?
When creating my own plan, I challenged myself to think through these questions every time I ate. And I discovered some interesting information about myself: Brussel sprouts seemed good for me, but they made me burpy. They did not feel good in my body. When I eat a serving of rice, I feel good and I stay at my happy weight; when I eat oats, I tend to crave sweets more. Onions hurt. Garlic doesn’t. I thought I hated salads and now I eat them exclusively for lunch because they give me the light energy I want. And so on.
When we use a diet to determine what is right for us, it is very easy to reject it when it becomes hard to follow. “It didn’t work for me” – which very well may be true.