Binge eating? Look for sneaky restriction loopholes.
A core tenant of intuitive eating is giving yourself unconditional permission to eat. Getting to this non-restrictive relationship with food, especially the foods that diet-culture told us were “bad,” can be incredibly challenging. However, it is often this lack of unconditional permission that fuels feelings like being “out of control” around certain forbidden foods or binge-type behaviors.
The practice of giving yourself unconditional permission to eat food is rooted in the idea of habituation. When we give ourselves unconditional permission to eat what was once seen as a “problem” food, the need to binge, to eat it all now because you’re never going to have it again, or to eat all of it so that you won’t “mess up” again tomorrow, lessens. You become habituated to the food item. (Note that this is different from burning yourself out on a particular food so you’ll never eat it again - that is just another form of deprivation.) Restriction no longer feels necessary because the food is neutralized.
However, unconditional permission to eat does not just mean behaviorally eating a forbidden food; it also means minimizing mental restriction. This means not making rules about the quantity you are allowed per day, not engaging in thoughts about how you will have to atone for this food later, and not shaming yourself for eating the food in the first place.
I’ve identified three common restriction loopholes I’ve seen time and again with clients who feel out of control around certain types of food. If you are struggling with feeling out of control around a certain food even after you’ve behaviorally allowed yourself to eat it, I encourage you to consider if any of these sneaky restriction loopholes might still be at play:
Restriction’s Sneaky Loopholes
The Moderation Loophole: Telling yourself you have unconditional permission to eat cookies, but framing it as “I can have one cookie tonight and I can have one cookie tomorrow,” rather than, “I can have as many cookies as I want tonight and can have as many as I want tomorrow too.”
The Atonement Loophole: Giving yourself permission to eat candy today, but committing to a rigid, extreme workout regimen for tomorrow, rather than eating the candy and assessing tomorrow what kind of exercise may or may not feel good to engage in for your body.
The Control Loophole: Committing to giving yourself unconditional permission to eat bread, but doing so with a “what the hell” mindset, meaning that your thought process is “I’ll just eat it,” or “I have to get it out of my system,” with the ultimate intention of regaining control over bread.
If one or all of these types of mental restriction feel true for you, it may explain why you still feel the need to binge on forbidden food. I encourage you to explore what you might need to cultivate in order to minimize this restrictive thinking. Perhaps you need more self-compassion, an increased understanding of the psychology behind intuitive eating, or other options for self-soothing besides food. Whatever it is, how can you actively pursue meeting that need for yourself?