BREAKING THE CYCLE OF RESTRICTION: HOW TO CREATE A BETTER RELATIONSHIP WITH FOOD AND YOUR NUTRITION
Let me set a scene for you:
You have dieted on and off your whole life.
Maybe that has looked like following specific named diets, or sticking to certain food rules. Whatever it looks like for you, you've never felt like you can just eat whatever you want without a little bit of guilt, fear, or shame creeping in.
And there are certain foods, for you, let's say potato chips, that you avoid like the plague. When you get your hands on some salt and vinegar chips, you feel out of control. You have no chill. You can eat past the point of fullness, you eat until the bag is empty, you eat until you’re sick and still you want more.
You think it's clearly potato chips that are the problem, so you avoid them as much as you can.
You don't buy chips. You don't allow them in your house. If you have them, it's because someone else is serving them or they’re a snack at a kids party. Chips are not allowed in the home because you will lose it.
But what happens is that… you love potato chips! Naturally, you start feeling restricted and deprived, and then… they're all you can think about. You really want some chips. You're craving them. You're thinking about them non-stop, but you know that the only solution is to just white knuckle your way through it. You try to power through, relying on willpower alone because you're convinced that's the only solution.
Chips = bad, you think . You can't eat them, and you must not think about them.
Eventually, potato chips are going to show up somewhere. Whether it's because your partner brought them, or they were brought to the house by some friends when you hosted a barbecue, or you're encountering them somewhere outside of the home, typically what is going to happen is you're going to have exercised your willpower muscle as much as you could, you're going to give up, and you're going to eat those chips.
They're a forbidden food, and you cannot get enough of them. You eat until you feel out of control. You eat past the point of comfort, and then you want more. The damage is done, and now it's confirmed, you are certain that chips are the problem. So you start back at square one, saying no potato chips in the home, and the cycle begins again.
This is a cycle of perpetual restriction.
This cycle of perpetual restriction can look like throwing away the cookies your friend just brought over because you know that if you have just one, you'll spiral into eating every sweet treat in the pantry.
It can look like not even keeping those “scary” foods in the house because you've labeled yourself as someone with no control. It can also look like an entire inner dialogue of categorizing “good” foods and “forbidden” foods and promising ourselves we'll only eat “clean” while also ignoring the fact we've never succeeded at this game in the past.
There are whole industries built on perpetuating this cycle.
It's a common pattern, so if you've found yourself stuck in it, it's not your fault. You've pretty much been told to do this.
We dig ourselves deeper into this cycle by restricting: drastically slashing calories, cutting out entire food groups, or committing to a restrictive diet until we get to a point where we rely on willpower instead of common sense. And then we rinse and repeat until we fall deeper and deeper into this cycle of restricting and eventually overeating.
I can say with so much confidence that we do not need to remain stuck in this cycle. And I also want to tell you that the solution for getting out of this cycle is to focus on more, not less. It is to stop restricting, to remove these labels of “good” and “bad” from our foods, to eat more and more frequently instead of trying to subsist on less.
The solution is also filling a majority of our food choices with whole foods, but also leaving room for foods that we love, like potato chips.
The solution is recognizing that less restriction and more flexibility in the way we approach our nutrition will help us develop a better relationship with food and with ourselves, while also allowing us to break through old thought patterns that tell us that our nutrition needs to be miserable in order to be right, when that's just not the case.
I know the examples I gave may sound far-fetched, but take a look at how you approach different foods, the labels you put on them, and how you feel around foods that have made you feel out of control in the past.
Are you somewhere in a cycle? Is that where you want to stay?
If not, examine how you label foods and where you could potentially add more flexibility and more supportive habits to the way you approach your nutrition.
We are committed coaches who work with committed clients and love nothing more than helping our clients find a sustainable approach to nutrition that allows them to work towards their goals without white-knuckling their way through yo-yo diets. Learn more about our KLN team here.