The You vs. Food Battle

People frequently share the sentiment with me that they ‘feel so out of control around food.’

That food, an inanimate, non-intelligent, non-sentient item, has control over them. I can’t keep chips in the house, they say, I’ll eat the whole bag in one sitting. As though chocolate bars now have the capacity to whisper to you from way across the house, and their dying wish is to be consumed, and as soon as possible too, please. 

These same individuals believe that the only way for them to win the war against the evil chocolate bar is to have more control than the inanimate bar itself; a battle of the wills. They can willpower their way through eating. Cue dieting, the mother of control. I am allowed to eat this, I must not touch that, I can have 4 ounces of this, but only between 4 and 6 P.M. I follow these rules and control myself, I win. I break a rule, food wins. 

Control is intoxicating. Those first few days of dieting can increase one’s self esteem and give one’s self a false sense of empowerment. Which is why people are so quick to turn to dieting when they’re feeling low, when they’re feeling out of control in other areas of their life. 

But in the end, there is no winner. Because as long as this is a battle in the first place, as long as it’s You vs. Food, as long as you're your own body’s enemy, there is no winning. As long as your relationship with food is one where a power dynamic is playing out, there is no winning. 

Intuitive Eating comes and proclaims: Stop Dieting. Relinquish your food control.

I can feel the skipped heartbeat of horror at the very idea of giving up control with food. Will I consume everything I see? Will I clean out my pantries in one sitting? Will I gain 30 pounds in 30 days and eat myself into utter oblivion? Surely the Intuitive Eating people know that it’s good to control food intake! Surely they know that I have to set limits on my intake for the sake of my health, my weight, my wellbeing!

And here is the crucial point: Intuitive Eating is not a matter of giving up. We’re not telling you to say- ‘The heck with it! I’m done trying, peace out, hello Ben, hello Jerry, I give my control over to you, I hope you enjoy.’ We’re not having you surrender to mindlessness, to an unconscious way of relating to food, to an abyss of nothingness. 

Intuitive Eating is telling you to give in. Underneath the diet chatter, underneath the voices of control, there is a wise body that really knows what it wants, when it wants it, and when it’s had enough.

Intuitive Eating gets you to re-meet that wise body that’s been here all this time, so that when you choose to relinquish your food control and enter food freedom, you’re not jumping off the deep end into a dark abyss of self-destruction. You’re jumping into a nurturing body that has more wisdom and information than you’ve ever dreamed imaginable.  It’s just a matter of learning how to hear that wisdom, learning the language of your body.  

And that, that is a win.