Making peace with food – well, that’s easy!  I love food.  Love is peace, right?

Ah, but not so fast!  How healthy is your relationship with food, really? 

Do you still find yourself labeling food as “good food” or “bad food” or, for example, whispering to a coworker, “I was so bad last night, I had TWO pieces of chocolate cake?”

Have you seen the latest Weight Watchers advertisement with the little monster representing hunger? The entire ad insists that hunger is not welcome in our lives. What!? How can hunger not be welcome. Hunger is what lets us know that our bodies need things that are important to their survival.

If this attitude - or anything like it - sounds familiar, you may want to continue on your journey of making peace with food.  The first step to this process is breaking free of diet mentality.

Diet Mentality

Diet mentality is the misguided idea that there are good foods – and, therefore, bad foods.  When you are stuck in diet mentality, you focus on the perceived moral value of the food and not on your experience of eating it.  You may end up feeling guilty when you make ‘less than healthy’ choices.  And I am here to tell you, guilt and shame do nothing to improve your health. 

It is a challenge to break free from diet mentality.  It is all around us.  The dieting industry bombards us with messages that prey on our anxieties about food, and it profits from selling us their products and convincing us that we need more and more of them.  You can, however, begin the journey of redefining your relationship with food.

Moving Beyond Diet Mentality

In my Health @ Every Size classes, letting go of diet mentality proves to be the biggest challenge individuals face.  We live in a dieting world!  Consider trying the following ideas to get you started in extricating yourself from the diet mentality:

•  Listen.  Pay attention to your self-talk when it comes to food.  Awareness is the key to making peace with food.
•  Experiment.  Try eating your ‘forbidden foods’ as often as they appeal to you - and eat as much as you want, until you feel satisfied.  If you do this, make the exercise more effective by really focusing on your food – its appearance, taste, texture, temperature – and your experience eating it.
•  Support.  Don’t go it alone!  Get support from other like-minded individuals.  It only takes one well-intentioned, but insensitive, comment to throw you back into diet mentality in the early weeks. Find a partner and support each other.

Try these simple ideas for yourself this week and break free from diet mentality for good!  Learn to eat more intuitively and relish your food.  I would love to hear your experiences with these tips and where you are on your journey to make peace with food.  Let me know in the comments!

Want to learn more about spotting diet mentality in daily talk? Then check out Melissa’s post on The Hidden Diet.

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Sara Armstrong is the owner of Zoi Wellness Consulting. In addition to wellness coaching, Sara specializes in health education seminars, diabetes prevention and management, Health for EVERY Body, and worksite wellness design. You can email Sara for a free wellness consultation at sara@zoiconsulting.com.