Episode 20: Unconditional Permission to Eat?

What would happen if you gave yourself unconditional permission to eat? It might sound scary but research indicates this can actually be a helpful approach to more mindful eating. Find out why in this week’s episode.

Episode Transcript:

The one we're looking at unconditional permission. What it really does is open the door to more mindful eating.

INTRO MUSIC: Welcome to The Compassionate Wellness Podcast. I'm Alex Treanor. I'm a Nationally Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach, and I am so excited you're here. The wellness industry is full of do's and do not's, should's and should not's. But I like to take a different approach. I'll be sharing all things health and wellness from a joyful, real-life compassionate perspective. If you're ready to drop the cookie-cutter approach and create a life you truly love, while eating a cookie or two along the way, let's dive in.

Hey, Friends! Welcome to this week's episode. Today, we are talking about what happens when you give yourself unconditional permission to eat.

When I say this phrase with clients, I typically get a little bit of hesitancy, maybe feeling a little bit scared or nervous about what that might mean. I want to talk a little bit today about what it does means to give yourself unconditional permission to eat, where this concept comes from, how it might be helpful, and just give you a little bit more information on it.

The concept of unconditional permission comes from Intuitive Eating, which if you aren't familiar with Intuitive Eating, it's essentially a framework for people who are looking to stop dieting, who recognize a diet mentality in themselves, and want to find ways to overcome that and have a more peaceful, healthy relationship with food.

If you're not sure what I mean by diet mentality, we did talk about diet mentality back in episode four, so check that out, you can get caught up and come back if that doesn't make sense. Intuitive Eating was designed and created by two registered dietitians, Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. They came up with 10 principles to help people overcome dieting, they call it an anti diet approach. All 10 of these principles work together to help you think about food in a different way.

When we think about dieting, and think back to our experiences with dieting, it messes with our mind, right? There's this lasting impact because we're so used to thinking about food being good or bad or having rules or feeling like we need to restrict something or something should look differently. When we are constantly thinking about that, it changes how we think about food, even if we're not dieting, we have this leftover foundation of how we think about food. And when dieting has been your reality for any amount of time, it leaves a scar a little bit, right? It's hard to change that when that's been your reality. To figure out 'how do I think about this differently, in a way that serves me better', that's tough to do. And that's where intuitive eating can be very helpful.

I want to be clear, Intuitive Eating is not...there's a lot of people who swear by Intuitive Eating. Some people, it's right for, some people, it's not. I'm not saying it's the only approach out there, just telling you a little bit of where this concept comes from. It's not meant for everybody. It is specifically designed for people who are wanting to change their relationship with food, who are really taking a weight-neutral approach, that is for making that peace with food. And unconditional permission to eat is part of how we make that peace.

The definition of unconditional permission is exactly what it sounds like. It's giving yourself permission to eat any food in any amount, any time of day, complete freedom with your food. It's removing the entire concept of foods being good or bad. And that can feel really scary. I want to acknowledge that, especially when we're used to dieting when we're used to structure, and to rules, and to guidelines. It's hard to think of what that could look like if we completely wiped out all the guidelines, all the rules, all the structure. It really does require you to listen to yourself to start recognizing your own body cues and to be intuitive, thus intuitive eating, right?

To demonstrate how this works, the example I want to give you is a pendulum. What we're going to do is imagine a pendulum and on one side, let's say the right side, I want you to imagine that that represents the restricted, the controlled, the very rigid, almost hyperawareness of the foods that we're eating. That's going to be our right side of the pendulum. The other side, on the left side, that's where we have the complete lack of control, unconscious eating, maybe binge eating, emotional eating, feeling like it's a complete free for all. That's the other side. That's our left side.

Here's the typical scenario. You start trying to improve your eating habits, so you say I better go on a diet. So we raise that pendulum all the way up to the right. We are restricting. We're dieting. We're limiting something. We're abiding the food rules, or the meal plan, or whatever it is that you've been given. And you're doing good with that for few days, you're feeling motivated. At some point, for some reason, we can't maintain it anymore. Whether it's just the rigidity is too much, maybe it's a really high stress day, or a high emotion day, maybe it's a celebratory experience, right? Something that's joyful, maybe a positive thing. Maybe it's boredom with the foods that you're eating, you just want something with flavor.

For whatever the reason that pendulum drops. And it swings completely over to the other side, so we're on the left side now. That complete free for all experience, because that's what happens when a pendulum drops, it swings. So we go over to the left side. And there's a lot of shame, a lot of guilt that comes from this. It feels like a failure for that pendulum to drop. So when it swings, it catches on that other side and we sit in that out of control space for a little bit, right?

"I blew it. I might as well just stay here a while I'm going to eat whatever I want."

And we'll stay there until we feel ready for that pendulum to swing back to their side, probably on a Monday, right? At some future Monday, that pendulum is gonna swing back over to the diet side. And that cycle just repeats itself; we restrict, we binge, we restrict, we binge.

What I hear from a lot of my clients, we've talked about this, a few episodes ago, I think it was episode 15, where we talked about balance. But I hear this desire to find balance, we want that pendulum to stop in the middle, we want it to live in the in between space. We don't want to feel too restricted, but we don't want to feel out of control either. We just want it to sit in the middle and stay steady.

I want you to imagine this pendulum, and I'm going to ask you, how you get a pendulum to stop swinging, to stop that back and forth and to lie and come to a neutral place in the middle? And if you're imagining it, what you're probably seeing is that you're going to have to let that pendulum swing a few times. And each swing is going to get a little bit smaller and a little bit smaller. And eventually, it comes down to that neutral point and stay steady.

And as we talked about in episode 15, balance is not always static. So that pendulum, when we're talking about nutrition, we can't ever guarantee it's going to be completely steady. But we can definitely bring those swings down so that they're very manageable. Rather than these huge swings back and forth between the diet and the restrict, we can make it a little bit more functional for ourselves.

But when we're looking at the pendulum, the pendulum isn't going to come to rest in that neutral space without letting it swing.

We can't expect to drop it from as the high point on the right side and want it to come down, but just stop in the middle without doing anything, right? Just find the balance. It's just not how physics (is that physics? I'm guessing.) it's just not how it works, right? It has to swing and shake itself out a bit and then you come to neutral. And that's what unconditional permission is. It's giving yourself the room to let that swing happen, so it can get smaller and smaller and smaller and eventually find that peace when it comes to food.

The phrase that I hear so often in regards to this is: "If I give myself unconditional permission to eat, I will eat everything."

And I just would say to that...yeah. You might. That's part of the process and it's part of the experience. When you are eating everything, that's when you can start to get in tune with what your body is telling you. You have to learn how to recognize and interpret those body's signals and be in tune with your emotions and be in tune with your needs. The only way to do that is to jump in and experience the swing.

So when we're looking at unconditional permission, what it really does is open the door to more mindful eating. It gives you the freedom to actually choose your choices. To actually listen to your body cues and to learn from your experiences what is going to be most helpful for you and what your body needs and wants.

To show you a real life example of this. I'm just going to tell you a little bit of my personal experience. Back in college, I was always doing some kind of diet plan. I feel like there was always something new I was trying, a new eating style, something I was restricting, it was always on my mind. And, you know I love a good chocolate chip cookie, you know I do. And at the time, so I had just met my now husband. He makes the world's best chocolate chip cookie. If you've met him, if you've had his cookies, you know, they are the best. And so in college, he, my roommates, and I would eat 10+ cookies, several nights a week. I'm gonna say 10+, but I can tell you, it's probably closer to 15-20. Because we did count them. We kept little tally marks. We had contests, it was like our little game to see like, who could eat the most cookies. I would eat them because I thought, "oh, tomorrow, what if we don't make cookies? I better eat all these now while they're fresh". That was the mindset, right? I would eat til I was sick. You don't feel good eating 20 cookies, but you do it because you might not get them tomorrow. And that shows the diet mentality, right? I knew I might not get these tomorrow, I have to eat them while they're fresh. So I'm going to swing over. And I'm going to eat as many as I can right now.

Now, let's fast forward. Now I've incorporated unconditional permission to eat into my routine. I can eat a cookie at 8am on a Thursday. I can have a cookie at 10pm, Saturday night. Anytime, any amount, whatever I want, that's fine. Having that perspective, I can tell you in my experience, that now, I definitely still eat cookies. I would say I eat cookies at least maybe three, four nights a week. But now I eat one to two cookies. Because I know I can have one again in an hour if I want another one. I can have one tomorrow if I want one. It doesn't matter. I don't have to eat them all. Now there's not that scarcity mindset around it.

The other thing is if I am out and about and I buy a cookie because it sounds good, and then I eat it and it might think "this cookie is terrible". I don't feel like I need to eat that whole cookie. I have no problem saying no thank you. I can take a bite and leave it because why would I eat that cookie that mediocre cookie (Chips Ahoy...I'm looking at you) Why am I going to eat that Chips Ahoy when I know I can have a fresh cookie at home if I want later? It's a completely different way to think about food.

And here's what typically happens when we incorporate unconditional permission. If you can eat...we'll use a different example, other than cookies, you're probably sick of hearing about cookies...let's say you can eat unlimited ice cream anytime of day, any amount, you do you it's all yours. And you choose to do that. You eat all the ice cream, every meal, it's always ice cream as much as you want till you feel completely sick.

At some point, you're gonna get tired of ice cream. At some point, you're gonna say, "I don't want ice cream again today. I've had ice cream every meal for the last week, I don't feel like it anymore". And that is when we're starting to get to that other side. But to get to that other side, you're gonna have to eat some ice cream,. You have to allow yourself to eat ice cream to get to the point where you're like, "you know what, I don't want ice cream anymore". A better relationship with food ,more balanced, flexible control, all of that is on the other side of that experience of letting yourself swing through. But we have to let go of that rigidity of that control in order to find this sustainable balance. We have to let it swing.

As with everything, it's a process. This isn't something where you can say, "Oh, I'll give myself unconditional permission to eat today. And then maybe not tomorrow". Because that negates the whole purpose. That's not unconditional permission. So you have to trust the process. It's going to take time, it's going to take patience, and it's going to take some self-compassion as well. I would say a lot of self compassion, to give yourself that grace.

I do also want to recognize that what we're talking about here is disordered eating tendencies, emotional eating, occasional binge eating, feeling like you don't have control around some of your favorite foods. But some of these things can cross over into eating disorders. Binge eating disorder is a diagnosable condition. So if you're feeling like it's that serious for you, that's where you may also need additional support. So maybe a dietitian, maybe a therapist, getting a hold of those additional resources is important.

This exercise, really the point is to produce that mindset shift. Because once you have a better relationship with food, once you can recognize and honor your hunger, your fullness, your satisfaction cues, and you can feel peace around food, that's when we can add the nutritional component. That's when you can maximize your nutrient intake in a productive and a sustainable way. But we have to have that healthy foundation of how we think about food first, and that's where unconditional permission comes in.

So, this is one perspective, right? It's absolutely not for everyone, I am not telling everyone that you need to go out and just binge everything. There's a purpose for this. And ultimately, you are the expert on you. And you know, if this sounds like something that may be helpful for you or not. What I would encourage you to think about this week is what might happen for you if you did let go of food rules, of the restriction and the control, and to imagine what could possibly be waiting for you on the other side. What that might look like for you?

That is what I have for you today. I hope you have a wonderful week. Thank you for joining me today and I look forward to talking with you again next week.

OUTRO MUSIC: Thanks for joining me on this episode of the compassionate wellness podcast. If this message resonated with you, please share it with someone you care about. I'd love to connect with you as well follow me on Instagram @alextreanor.coaching, or visit my website alextreanorcoaching.com. And as a reminder, Treanor spelled kind of goofy, it's T-R-E-A-N-O-R. For any references mentioned in this episode, be sure to check out the show notes. I hope you have a wonderful day and don't forget to make time for something you enjoy.

References:

Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Anti-Diet Approach by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch