Chapter 8 - Challenge the Food Police

A couple of days ago I reread one of the longest chapters in the Intuitive Eating Book. I was long overdue to read this chapter. This chapter outlines the various voices that tell us about how we should eat and feel about food. Some of these voices come from people in our lives and some come from the world around us. The most important voices are the ones in our heads. These voices include:

• Food Police - dieting and food rules
• Nutrition Informant - provides nutrition evidence to keep you in line with dieting
• Diet Rebel - screw you, I'll eat what I want
• Food Anthropologist - neutral observer w/no judgment
• Nutrition Ally - helps you make healthy choices without an agenda (no deprivation or dieting)
• Rebel Ally - help protect your boundaries in a direct and polite manner - "use your mouth for words instead of food"
• Nurturer - soft, gentle, soothing, friend, not critical or judgmental
• Intuitive Eater - speaks your gut reactions, combines Food Anthropologist, Nurturer, Nutrition Ally, and Rebel Ally
• knows how to argue the negative voices out of your head

I think for me the diet rebel has been a big voice in my head since I was young. I'm just now learning how to access the rebel ally voice instead. Its amazing how much better I feel when I can do that. The food police is a hard one to get rid of - that is why it is important to constantly challenge this voice and replace it with another more helpful voice.

One of my favorite sections of this chapter is on page 119 about linear thinking.
"The cure for linear thinking is process thinking, which focuses on continual change and learning rather than just the end result. If you start thinking in terms of what you can learn along the way, and accept that there will be many ups and downs, you will go forward."

I like that section because although I know this, I seem to forget it all too often.