This post is part of my “Know Better, Do Better” series, in which I revisit an old blog post that makes me cringe because my thinking has evolved substantially since I wrote it. The text of the original post is in italics, with my somewhat snarky current notes in plain text.
Note: I wrote the original post in April 2012, when I was in grad school to study nutritional sciences and become a dietitian. At this point, I had been exposed to the book “Intuitive Eating” and the concept of Health at Every Size, and was moving in that direction, but I was clearly still straddling the line between the weight-centric and weight inclusive worlds. I can see I had started to break free from the idea that weight = health, but wasn’t quite there yet. I also clearly had a healthist (pursuing health is our obligation) worldview, and one that was a bit elitist in that I thought if I could do it, everyone else could, too.
What is this “utopia” of which I speak?
In my Utopian nutritional universe, each of us would enjoy healthful, tasty, calorically appropriate meals as a regular part of our daily lives, with occasional splurges on delicious but less-healthful foods. Our overall eating pattern would be healthful, and we would feel nourished, energized and never deprived.
Who am I…the Supreme Ruler of the Universe? I’ve updated my Utopia to encompass a world in which …
- No one has had their inner intuitive eater stripped out of them by famine or food insecurity, The Clean Plate Club, rigid school lunchtimes, restrictive childhood rules about between-meal snacks, diet and wellness gurus, doctors who prescribe weight loss for strep throat, body comments, and so on, so…
- Everyone can rely on their internal body cues to decide when and how much to eat, and on their sensory food preferences to choose what foods will satisfy them, and…
- Everyone has the access and means necessary to procure their chosen foods.
Unfortunately, few people eat this way effortlessly.
True. And some people who do eat this way expend such a tremendous amount of effort that it becomes a second job and gets in the way of social interactions.
Wow, I really had a limited understanding of other people’s experiences
We don’t eat for physical nourishment most of the time and celebration or indulgence a fraction of the time. That’s because we eat for so many reasons that shouldn’t even be food-related: Stress, emotions, boredom…you know the drill.
While I don’t 100% disagree with what I wrote, looking at it now, I’m cringing over the lack of nuance. This was a veiled endorsement of 80-20 or even 90-10 eating “rules,” but I rip off the veil towards the end of the post.
And while I sort of agree that stress, emotions and boredom shouldn’t be food-related (again, in Utopia), that’s only because I wish that we were all raised to be more in tune with and accepting of the full range of emotions and that we had support in developing a robust set of tools for dealing with stress, boredom and emotions that feel “too big” to just let taper off on their own. But given the reality we live in, I know that sometimes food is the best or only coping tool someone has available to them at the time they very much need a coping tool. I would never deign to take someone’s security blanket away from them unless we had collaborated on alternative coping tools that served them as well, or better.
Or, we don’t have the time or skills to prepare a meal (although, sometimes we just think we don’t have those things), so we start relying on less-healthful fast food and other prepared convenience foods.
I do agree that some people have more time or skill than they think, often because they have a perfectionistic view of what “cooking” or “preparing a meal” looks like. However, I now fully understand that some people find meal prep hard because they truly have almost no time once you subtract work and commute and sleep and basic hygiene and other essential tasks of daily living. Or they are struggling with depression or extreme fatigue. Or they have mobility challenges that make doing anything in the kitchen hard. Or they are neurodivergent in a way that makes meal prep quite stressful and exhausting.
On guilt and self-flagellation
On top of all that, we often know that we are not eating in a way that is supporting our health, so we start to feel guilty when we eat chips instead of an apple, or a burger instead of salmon and veggies. If we know we could benefit from losing weight, the bad feelings often intensify when we eat bad food.
Other than the “If we know we could benefit from losing weight…” (which implies that dieting works?) this is still true. There’s a lot of guilt around the perceptions that we’re not eating the way we “should” be eating.
“Wait,” you say. “I thought there were no ‘good foods’ and ‘bad foods.”
This was something I touched on a few weeks ago in my Seattle Times column.* The whole “good food, bad food” concept is a good idea that’s been gradually twisted into something it shouldn’t be. My feeling is that the concept began because people were beating themselves up about their food choices. No one should beat themselves up over food. If you know you could be making better choices, then put your mental energy into figuring out what you need to do to make healthier choices. Don’t waste that mental energy on self-flagellation. You’re a human being, and human beings are not perfect creatures…nor should they be defined by what they eat.
*I should really do a new version of that topic for my column based on my updated understanding and perspective. I can just see the emails now: “Well, based on my experience as an engineer, I think you’re wrong…” (I literally get emails that start out that way. Almost always from men. Because when talking about food in general terms, their engineering experience is clearly more valid than my graduate degree and professional experience in nutrition science.)
I agree with calling a détente on self-flagellation, and am putting that notion into practice right now by not beating myself up over my “just do it” attitude. Now that I’ve been counseling a diverse array of actual humans for more than a decade, I know that sometimes there is no extra mental energy…or there is, but it sets people spinning because they know how they’re feeding themselves doesn’t feel good physically, and they know something needs to change, but can’t figure out where to start, so they’re stuck. And of course I still agree that humans aren’t perfect and that we shouldn’t be defined by what we eat!
And now, allow me to really step in it
Ideally, no food should make you feel good about yourself or bad about yourself, in a mental/emotional/psychological sense. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t label foods as “good” or “bad” in terms of whether they are “good for your health” or “bad for your health.” Let’s face it…a leafy green salad does more for your body than a bowl of ice cream does. But even that notion has a qualifier: Amounts. “Bad” foods don’t really become bad for your health unless you eat too many of them. It comes back to our overall eating pattern. If you eat healthy food most of the time, and have an occasional pastry or cupcake, you still have a healthy, balanced diet. If you eat a lot of leafy greens, you can have an occasional order of French fries and feel free to really enjoy them, instead of thinking “I shouldn’t be eating this” with every bite.
Ewww. I tried to step away from the idea of “good foods/bad foods” but in the process stepped right back in. I was clearly in the “non-diet diet” phase of my life. Aka, “All foods are OK…but just don’t eat too many of THOSE foods!” This is the type of thing that doesn’t really work when it’s rules based. I compare this to when, maybe five years after writing this, I decided that while fried chicken is delicious, I also never feel physically good after eating it. I was attuned to what my body was telling me. So I thought about how to have it both ways. I decided that I would thoroughly enjoy the best fried chicken in Seattle (that would be Ezell’s) twice a year. That worked beautifully for a few years, then I totally forgot about having fried chicken at all. I apparently no longer wanted it.
You may have come across references to the “90-10” or “80-20” rule. The idea is that if 80-90 percent of your diet is made up of healthful foods that are rich in nutrients without being too high in calories, that you can do whatever the heck you want with the other 10-20 percent. If you are already in good health and aren’t trying to lose weight, then 80-20 is probably good. If you are trying to improve your health through diet, or are trying to shed some excess weight, then 90-10 might help you meet your goals. To quote [redacted] “You can have it all. Just not all at once.”
Whoomp! There it is. Ladies and gentlemen, the non-diet diet. As if. And there’s that weird “I was straddling the fence” gentle endorsement of intentional weight loss being a OK and not harmful thing to do. I redacted the person responsible for that quote because I will say Voldemort’s name before I say hers. Oh, look, I just did!
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Hi, I’m Carrie Dennett, MPH, RDN, a weight-inclusive registered dietitian, nutrition therapist and body image counselor. I help adults of all ages, shapes, sizes and genders who want to break free from eating disorders, disordered eating or chronic dieting. If you need to learn how to manage IBS symptoms with food, or improve your nutrition and lifestyle habits to help manage a current health concern or simply support your overall health and well-being, I help people with that, too.
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