As I pull myself back on track, I think now is a good time to visit the Intuitive Eating Principles, the principles I strive to live by. Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch wrote their book Intuitive Eating, based on these 10 principles. It is basically eating when you are hungry and stopping when you are full. Saying it simply makes it sound easy, but to someone with an eating disorder this is often the most challenging thing I do in and out of every day. I highly recommend visiting their website, http://www.intuitiveeating.org/content/10-principles-intuitive-eating, to see how Tribole and Resch outline the 10 principles. Below I will outline what each principle means to me and my history.
1. Reject the Diet Mentality
Our society is addicted to dieting. What would you say if you had cancer and the doctor told you the treatment he had in mind had something like a 95% failure rate? You wouldn't try that treatment, right? Dieting has something like 95% failure rate, yet people continue to bounce around from diet to diet thinking that each new diet is the cure for their body hatred. "This is the diet, this one will work." I did. I dieted most of my childhood. It did nothing but mess up my hunger signals, trick me into hating my body, and make me feel guilty if I was ever eating, if I was ever not on a diet.
The Diet Mentality is a form of restriction. It is a form of control. To me, it is a mentality that says that I am better because I am dieting. It keeps me trapped thinking that I will find the perfect me eventually, it is a cycle that never allows me to just be, but keeps me striving for something I will never achieve because I can always be dieting. Rejecting this mentality to me means not counting, not weighing, not looking at labels, not restricting from certain food groups, and saying "no!" to that voice in my head that needs control and controls by controlling food.
2. Honor Your Hunger
I need to listen to my body and accept that I feel hunger. I do not need to control my hunger. I do not need to control my needs. Hunger does not mean that I am fat or lazy, hunger means I am human. Once I accept this, I need to honor my hunger by eating. If my hunger goes ignored, for too long, it triggers my urge to binge. Or, if I restrict for too long, it triggers my urge to keep restricting. When I do not honor my hunger it triggers my eating disorder urges. Honoring my hunger means, first acknowledging that I am hungry. Once I acknowledge I am hungry, I decide how hungry I am, then I eat an appropriate amount to honor my hunger.
3. Make Peace with Food
I have been at war with food most of my life. For the last few years, the times when I am strongest in my recovery is when I am not thinking of food as the enemy but as my ally. Food makes me strong, food gives me energy to live my life to the fullest. Food helps me think clearly. Food is fuel and nourishment. When I am nourished and healthy, I think clearly, I have energy, I am happy, I am excited. I give myself unconditional permission to eat. What used to lead to binges was the thought that I'd never get to eat again. I used to think that my eating disorder was never going to let me eat again, so I had to eat all I could while I was allowed, and that led to binges. But when I have unconditional permission to eat, the urge to binge dissipates.
4. Challenge the Food Police
The Food Police are those voices in your head that create abstract, unreasonable rules regarding food. Or say you are good or bad for eating or not eating certain foods. Some of the rules the Food Police create are just plain weird. I liken the food police to my Ed, my eating disorder. I have full on conversations with them. They tell me not to eat something or congratulate me for a successful restriction. I argue with them, using my Wise Mind, saying that I need to eat to have energy and health. That restricting is not recovery oriented and I no longer classify myself as good or bad based on food choices, but based on who I am as a person.
5. Respect Your Fullness
This to me is huge because I have to stay balanced between too full and too empty. In my first couple years of recovery I had to stay extremely mindful all the time because if I got too full, it triggered my urge to purge. If I got to hungry it triggered my urge to restrict. I have a hunger scale I refer to. A 10 is totally stuffed, a 1 is starving. I have to keep myself between a 4-7 on the scale so I don't trigger my urge to purge and I don't trigger my urge to restrict. Respecting my fullness to me, means staying mindful. Being respectful of my body means I don't need to be uncomfortably full, or empty, anymore.
6. Discover the Satisfaction Factor
Satiation is knowing when you've had enough. It is not when you are full, but when you are satisfied. This continues to be hard for me because I don't necessarily enjoy eating yet. I still think of it as a task. I enjoy grilling with friends, I enjoy going out on dates, but a simple meal by myself I put no effort into. I am working on this because I understand I deserve to be satisfied and I am working on the notion that satisfaction can come from food. For example, I can make myself a nice dinner even if there is no one there to enjoy it with. I can make it and enjoy it because I deserve it. I can eat to the point of satisfaction, taste it, enjoy it, and stop when I am satiated. I can do this just because I am me and I deserve it.
7. Honor Your Feelings Without Using Food
Crying, laughing, screaming, talking, and standing up for myself are all ways I've discovered are effective ways to cope with emotions without using food. I do not need to calm myself by controlling what I eat. Lately, writing has been a really great way for me to process my emotions and my life. When I first started treatment I had to acknowledge I was feeling emotions. Once I know I'm feeling the emotion I can process through it instead of numbing it with the eating disorder.
8. Respect Your Body
This is really hard. Sometimes I feel like I'm trapped in my body, and I wish I could have another one. But then I'll go do something incredible, like climb Mt Shasta or run through Desolation Wilderness or ride a great bike ride and I'm reminded how much my body does for me and I am extremely grateful for it. I have to remind myself not to manipulate my body size. Just like I can't manipulate my height or my shoe size, I cannot manipulate my weight. I am working on accepting my natural body weight. I try to focus more on what my body does for me than what I want to change about it. I am grateful for my creative arms and hands, I am grateful for my brain, I am grateful for my powerful legs, and nurturing smile.
9. Exercise--Feel the Difference
The key word here is feel. Listen to your body. Feel your body move through space. Feel how your energy manifests itself in the world. Stop forcing yourself to exercise to lose weight. Forget about calories. Stop thinking and start feeling.
10 Honor Your Health
To me this means honoring my physical, my spiritual, and my mental health. Honoring my physical health means I pay attention to my self-care, I take my meds, I get my playtime in when I have energy, I eat enough to fuel my activities. Honoring my mental health means maintaining my relationships, vocalizing my opinions, emoting when I need to, and processing emotions when they arise, not stuffing them away for later. Honoring my spiritual health means spending alone time to think and meditate. It means taking quiet time away from stress to decompress and realign myself. In this quiet time I am able to reaffirm my self-worth. Honoring my health is honoring myself, taking time to take care of me and give myself what I deserve.
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