This weeks' topic: Challenge the Food Police. It is about challenging unhelpful, undermining, negative self-talk we learned during years of dieting. Food choices are not moral choices, and we need to learn not to treat them this way. Marking a day good or bad depending on how many diet rules we broke or obeyed is not helpful. 

Thoughts lie at the source of our feelings, and eventually, our behaviour. This model is a basis of CBT - Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, a popular psychotherapeutic approach. We form thinking patterns and habits based on beliefs and values we have adopted. Diet mentality implies certain beliefs, and the resulting rules, and thoughts. These thoughts trigger certain feelings, and eventually behaviours.

We engage in self-talk all the time. E.g. I might believe that brownies are bad for me, that they make me fat (the belief). If I eat brownies or think about eating them (a trigger), all sorts of thoughts may start rushing through my mind. I may think "look at you, eating those brownies, this will make you fat", "this should be your last brownie", "you are going on a diet right away"... You can imagine all sorts of similar thoughts in line with the diet mentality. As a result of thinking these thoughts, I will probably start feeling anxiety, or even guilt. The resulting behaviour often is over-eating. This enforces some of the original beliefs and thoughts. I'm stuck in the middle of a vicious circle. As long as these underlying beliefs and thinking habits are there, I will stay stuck.

The Intuitive Eating book calls thesw inner voices: the Food Police. Join me this week in trying to learn how to recognize, challenge, refute, and eventually kick the Food Police out of our heads.