I'm Not Eating This Burger To Be Sexy
"I would know if I wanted that because I'd feel called to it." I immediately perked up when I overheard a woman say this to a barista trying to tempt her with a gluten-free peanut butter cookie. "Excuse me, who are you and how can I think and speak the way you think and speak?!"That is the kind of trusting relationship I want to have with my body and food. I will intuitively know when I want to eat something because my body will tell me. Hearing those words of self-advocacy was powerful--"I'd know because I'd feel called to it." Knowing what my body wants is one thing, but it's an added challenge to honor those wants and needs out loud without fear of judgment from others.
Many of my food fears stem from a fear of what other people will think of me based on my food choices. I'm in a relatively small body (which I acknowledge despite my body dysmorphia), so most of the judgment I've encountered is of the salad-shaming, pizza-praising variety:
"C'mon, you can't order a salad at a steakhouse."
"It's so attractive when a girl can eat pizza without caring."
"Have a cookie! You'll be fine--you're so tiny!"
"You're really getting veggies instead of fries?!"
"I love when a woman orders dessert."
I don't even remember who the original voices were (let's be honest, most of them were men), but I internalized these sentiments and made them part of my judgmental inner-voice. I'd want to make it look like I was eating a lot, but be secretly restricting in other ways in an attempt to control my weight and body. In the process of learning to eat intuitively, I'm giving this judgmental voice less power and instead eating what my body wants when my body wants it--sometimes that will be a salad, sometimes it will be a double bacon cheeseburger. I'm not going to pick one over the other because you think it's hot when a woman has barbecue sauce running down her cheek (thank you, Carl's Jr. for sexualizing skinny girls eating burgers).
Obsessing over what other people would think of my food choices made me feel detached from so many experiences, like going to dinner with friends. I'd often get so stressed out in anticipation of what I'd eat later that I'd either overeat or restrict beforehand. So when dinner was happening, I would either eat when I wasn't hungry and become uncomfortably full or I would eat way more than I normally would because I'd been starving myself all day. Either way, it was a recipe for a shame storm. I would be entirely focused on calculating how much I'd need to purge or run or not eat the next day instead of on enjoying the company of the friends I was with.
Lately on my intuitive eating journey, I've been saying yes when I'm offered something. For instance, in that coffee shop today I had just tried a sample of the very same gluten-free peanut butter cookie the woman turned down. And that's okay! I feel like a kid in a candy shop in this phase of re-establishing a trusting relationship with food and my body. I say over and over again, "Yes, body, I promise that if you want something, I WILL LET YOU HAVE IT. You have permission to eat all food. Yes, really. As much of it as you want!" This means that I have eaten to the point of discomfort on occasion and I am learning to be a non-judgmental observer of that. Over time, it has become easier to stop when I'm full because my body is finally learning to trust that I will feed it whatever it wants again later. I got to practice having this non-judgmental inner voice today at lunch, "Heyyy Katie, I notice you're full! You can take home the rest of this ramen for when you get hungry later. I'll even fry an egg and pop it on there for you!" (I did and it was delicious and satisfying and fantastic. See?!)
Today I'm pausing to appreciate the small miracle of bringing home leftovers AND enjoying the company of my friend on our lunch date! Pre-intuitive eating Katie did not know what this was like. In my mind, every time I'd eat something "bad" (aka not a salad) at a restaurant would be the last time I'd have that particular food, so I'd eat everything on my plate and plot how I would "make up for" whatever I'd eaten by eating in some restrictively "healthy" way later. I'm grateful I don't have to live like that today. I'm taking one step at a time on this journey to food and body freedom. I'm choosing to trust that my body is on my side and I will "know what I want because I will feel called to it."