Common Myths About Food Freedom and Intuitive Eating
If you’re uncomfortable with certain bodies eating what they want, you’ve missed the point of food freedom.
Ever since I announced that I’m seeing a registered dietician who specializes in food freedom rather than weight loss, lots of people have pretended to be very supportive while simultaneously judging me and saying some incredibly tone-deaf things. The most common comment I keep getting goes like this:
“Don’t kid yourself. You can’t eat whatever you want and still be healthy.”
Some folks are more subtle in the delivery, but the message is always clear. Despite my long history of disordered eating, they seem to think my overall healing from that pain is far less important than their need to tell a fat person to eat “healthy” and “clean.” Why else would people insist upon telling me I can’t eat whatever I want every time I bring up food freedom?
It makes me so angry.
Yes, I’m sure that many of these people mean well. But every time somebody infers that I’m doomed to be unhealthy because I’ve chosen food freedom, I seriously want to scream. Worse yet, it’s a psychological trigger that leads to the compulsive urge to shut out the world and binge — since people seemed so determined to pick apart my choices anyway.
Healing from and working through an eating disorder is hard enough without others making such out-of-touch statements. It’s selfish and it’s rude to begin lecturing someone in treatment for an eating disorder about “healthy eating.” And frankly, it’s triggering AF to anyone who’s had orthorexia or BED when somebody suggests we’re just poisoning our bodies every time we choose food freedom.
As much as I try to ignore the triggering comments people make, my Aspie brain has a hard time letting some of that shit go. It’s hurtful. And it’s just as toxic as a doctor who chastises a patient who’s lost 60 pounds because “they’re still fat.”
Nobody needs to be weighing in on someone else’s recovery like that. The reality is that I haven’t had a binge eating episode for two months now and that’s an enormous win. If a person can’t be happy for me about that, so be it. But they seriously have no place to bring a recovering patient down by insisting that what they’re doing isn’t healthy.
It’s ridiculous, really. I have spent so much of the past week feeling like I have to justify and explain myself. As if I need to defend myself — for what? For eating proteins, produce, carbs, and small treats? For learning what I like to eat and what helps my body feel great?
Why would you ever want to trigger people who are working so hard to get to a healthier place by telling them those efforts aren’t good enough? Or that they’re dangerous?
Our culture is going through a sort of “collective orthorexia” where strangers find it completely acceptable to tell others what to eat and how, or what to avoid. I used to be caught up in all of this too. I used to think I couldn’t be healthy if I had a drop of sugar, or God forbid — some gluten. And I tried out all sorts of supposedly “clean” diets including paleo, keto, zero carb, and raw veganism.
It’s not even about weight loss anymore. Often, it’s all about “clean eating.” Yet nobody seems able to agree on what clean eating actually means. That makes sense when you consider how there’s zero evidence to suggest that all humans can benefit from the same way of eating. If anything, we know that different people do well on different things.
Intuitive eating, aka food freedom, isn’t a diet but a way of eating that takes an individual’s needs into account. Everyone can benefit from practicing intuitive eating, but that’s because the purpose is to get to the bottom of our unique needs and experiences. And to develop a happy, stress-free, and positive relationship with food.
It took many years for medical professionals to believe they needed to wash their hands between performing autopsies and delivering babies. Even when handwashing proponents improved mortality rates in maternity wards by washing their hands, other doctors had doubts. My dietician says that’s where we’re at with intuitive eating. We know that diets don’t work. We don’t like to admit it, but the research is already there. And a growing number of health professionals are beginning to support food freedom instead of dieting, but a lot of people still have their doubts.
Possibly, because they still fall for these myths.
Myth: Food Freedom is just an excuse to eat “junk” all day.
If this is what you think about food freedom, then you haven’t been paying attention. The main point of food freedom is listening to your body and eating without anxiety. Pretty sure if you ate candy all day and every day, your body wouldn’t actually feel good.
Our bodies want some variety, and a wide range of nutrients. That’s why “food freedom” dieticians, and those who specialize in treating eating disorders typically prescribe regular, and balanced meals.
When you allow yourself to enjoy three meals a day and stop banning food groups, your body quits panicking about when it’s going to get its next fix. This is about giving your body the freedom to make choices that make you feel good — inside and out.
Recently, when I wrote about mostly eating fish, frozen veggie soups, and god forbid— banana bread — folks still felt the need to email or DM me warnings about how eating whatever I want is going to kill me. Seriously?
Maybe you think that food freedom is unhealthy because it gives people permission to eat ice cream or potato chips all day, every day. But that’s not how it actually works.
All foods are permitted — but the whole point is to listen to your body. How would we really feel if we ate chips or ice cream for two weeks straight? How would we feel if we overate at every single meal?
Obviously, we wouldn’t feel good. Food freedom — and intuitive eating — is about figuring out what works best for us. It’s not a license to give the body nutritional deficiencies.
Myth: Food freedom is code for “giving up.”
To say that a person has “given up” suggests that they are losing something of value in the process. But here’s a shortlist of what people who choose food freedom through intuitive eating are actually giving up:
- Restrictive diets
- Shame and guilt about eating
- Arbitrary food rules which enforce a false sense of morality
- Fear and loathing of the body
- Detrimental habits like yo-yo dieting, self-punishment, and overly harsh exercise regimens
- Conventionally narrow standards of beauty
- An obsession with food, eating, and whether or not a certain meal fits with their plan
In exchange for such “losses,” people gain freedom and confidence as they stop seeing their weight as a behavior. Instead, they focus on freely choosing the food and movement which makes their body and mind feel good.
In a way, I do see food freedom as “giving up” on the notion that a diet will ever give me the control I want. And I’m “giving up” on hitting a certain — though once again, arbitrary — number on the scale. These aren’t bad things to release. If anything, these are the things that negatively deplete me when I keep holding on to them.
Myth: Food freedom is taking “the easy way out.”
None of this is easy. Diet culture isn’t easy. Intuitive eating isn’t easy. The difference is that diets are more like a band-aid than a solution. They give us a neat little formula, but then they do damn little to foster a truly healthy relationship with our bodies.
Intuitive eating and food freedom take a great deal of self-work, and that’s uncomfortable. Even harder, they require us to figure out our own boundaries instead of telling us where to stand. It means unlearning a lifetime of bad messaging and finally listening to your body.
The only reason I think anyone would write food freedom off as “an easy out” is that they don’t understand throwing out diet rules. Many people today have a lot invested in diet culture and believing those rules. Giving up on all of that to change course is scary. Plus, it feels sort of gross or disappointing to realize that maybe we’ve been wasting our time on a “healthy” system that’s done us far more harm than good.
Myth: Food freedom is only for slim people who “deserve” it.
In other words, folks tend to think that only people without an obvious weight problem can afford to eat what they like or indulge in treats like brownies and ice cream. You might have heard people refer to weight loss like paying off credit card debt. That analogy is problematic for lots of reasons, including the faulty implication that bodyweight is a behavior.
That sort of mentality leaves a lot of people feeling as if they’ve earned the right to eat a treat if their body is thin. On the flip side, people think that bigger bodies need shame, guilt, education, or policing to only consume “healthy,” “clean,” or otherwise “good” foods.
In reality, food freedom is for every body, regardless of size. It’s all about honoring your hunger and honoring your body. Not subjecting it to diet rules that only make your relationship with your body more strained.
It’s an individual journey, and it’s honestly not your place to decide where somebody else is on their path. You do you. And quit worrying about every fat person’s health by criticizing their journey.
Myth: Food Freedom and intentional weight loss can coexist.
This is a hard truth for a lot of people interested in intuitive eating. Especially me. By definition, intentional weight loss requires you to restrict your body in some way. To ignore hunger, cut out entire food groups, limit portions, and basically eat like you’re an equation or a robot. And we don’t like to talk about this, but the data on intentional weight loss really isn’t good. Most people don’t keep that weight off — even on medically supervised plans.
In fact, many experts now read the data to mean that intentional weight loss diets aren’t just big flops. They can actually predict future weight gain. Yeah, that means they tend to do the opposite thing they’re supposed to do. Great.
The good news, I think, is that intuitive eating and food freedom helps us deal with our bodies in the here and now. The goal is to see body size in a much more neutral way, like shoe size. When we do that, and we focus on giving our bodies the food and care it needs without guilt or shame, weight loss is a possible outcome, though it’s not the goal. After all, food freedom helps former dieters to quit binge eating, curb their unwanted emotional eating, and to quit withholding nutrition from the body for the sake of weight loss.
All of these things encourage the body to become better balanced. Such balance benefits our bodies and minds in extraordinary ways. Like with fewer stress hormones and greater mental clarity.
I don’t know what it will take for food freedom to go mainstream, but I plan to be a part of the movement. I don’t know if strangers will ever quit adding their two cents about the foods they don’t think I should be eating.
All I know is that for now, our culture has a fatphobia problem that feeds its corrupt diet culture and collective orthorexia. Even when we’re not worried about body weight, we’re worried about eating “clean.” And it seems that no matter how much we educate ourselves about food and nutrition, we can’t seem to shake the guilt. Our obsession with health and nutrition has become its own religion.
There has to be a better way to love our bodies and feel free.
My dietician is just one of many food freedom advocates on Instagram. Her nearly 90K followers suggest that something she’s saying is resonating with many different people. Dieters feel stuck in a cycle of restriction and self-loathing that isn’t giving them any peace of mind. It’s not healthy.
At any rate, chastising a fat woman for eating fish, veggie soups, and banana bread by telling her to quit fooling herself about food freedom is more than a little ridiculous, don’t you think? And it’s ridiculous that anyone tackling their eating disorder with intuitive eating and mindfulness should feel pressure to defend her treatment at all.
Sadly, though, that’s all par for the course with such a prevalent diet culture.
Let’s change that.