Stop Overeating and Binging by Legalizing Food

Using the non-diet approach to heal emotional eating means letting go of diet thinking and diet behavior. If you've decided to try this out, you already know that diets don't work. In fact, the physical process of dieting causes your metabolism to slow, so you actually gain weight more easily. And the mental process of dieting reinforces harmful and inaccurate beliefs like

1. You can't be trusted to feed yourself
2. You're out of control
3. Or you're bad for wanting to feel good

By legalizing food, you give yourself the opportunity to know that you are not out of control. It was deprivation that made you think you were addicted to brownies (or chips or whatever).

At first, when you legalize food, you may find yourself eating a lot of foods that used to be forbidden or restricted. Over time, your mind and body see that these foods are not going away - that you are not just binging in preparation for the next diet. And then you get to relax. The food is not going to be taken away from you. EVER. So it's okay to wait until you're hungry to eat it. It's okay to wait until you really want it.

Over time, food loses the magical allure of the forbidden. And you discover that sometimes, you don't feel like a brownie. What you really want is a baked potato (or a chicken leg or whatever). When this happens, you may feel relieved, or sad or both. The relief comes from knowing that you can be trusted to feed yourself in ways that are nourishing and caring. You are not out of control.

The sadness often comes from losing a ritual - waiting for the desire to build and the tension to rise, fighting with yourself over should-shouldn't, good-bad. And then giving in to the desire, maybe even hiding your eating. It's like a secret lover. When you legalize all food, your lover becomes "legal" like a husband or wife. You get to be loved in the morning with bad hair and bad breath. And in exchange for the comfort, you lose some of the passion. The trade off is well worth it.

I know what you're thinking - "but what about my cholesterol (blood sugar, blood pressure, etc.) I can't just eat ANYTHING!" But that's the next post.