IIFYM Coaching

Please read this caption by TWICE!
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“WHY TRYING TO CONTROL YOUR FOOD MAKES YOU FEEL MORE OUT OF CONTROL AROUND FOOD//
📸:
🤔 Today the BBC posted a fatphobic and triggering article advising we adopt various different strategies to curb ‘comfort eating’ and lots of you had feelings about it!
✌️First up, I wanted to say that if you are eating more to self soothe than usual right now, that’s TOTALLY FU***NG FINE - in case you hadn’t noticed, SCARY S**T is going on all around us.
🍪 Humans are programmed to turn to things that feel safe and comforting in times of uncertainty - using food to feel better is NOT a pathology. Sometimes it’s the best or only way we have to take care of ourselves in the moment (especially if our normal coping mechanisms are unavailable to use just now).
😬 And how does it feel when we judge and berate ourselves for this? Probably not great, right?
☹️ It makes sense that we would try and stop or control this behaviour - diet culture teaches us that we are less worthy if we gain weight or don’t follow the ‘perfect’ quarantine diet. The reality is though, there’s no such thing as a perfect diet, and changes to our body are normal - it would be weird if we were going through something this monumental and we didn’t change - physically or emotionally: we are not coming out of this the same!
😵 But the problem is, when we try to adopt external control strategies and follow food rules, as opposed to following our body’s innate cues, it can wind up making us feel more OUT OF CONTROL overall.
Restriction and deprivation of our favourite foods leads to:
👉 more intense cravings
👉 disordered eating
👉 feeling obsessed with food and thinking about it constantly
👉 disinhibited eating and binge eating
👉 feelings of guilt, shame, anxiety, and self loathing when we can’t stick to the ‘perfect’ diet or we tie our self-worth on a number on the scales”
continued in comments...