In my previous post I discussed some reasons why we may experience a poor relationship with food and diet and how our society and its views on the ideal body can really affect how we relate to food. In this post I’m going to discuss a therapeutic technique that is widely used to improve mood, change perspectives and encourage mental flexibility. Unconditional Acceptance is something that I apply to my life on a dailly basis to help manage my anxiety and any other strong emotions or thoughts that aren’t very useful to me. Unconditional Acceptance means fully accepting yourself, your life and the world, including the things you like and the things you don’t like. People can often get the wrong impression of acceptance in that they may perceive it as the easy way out and as complacency but this isn’t really what it is. Acceptance means seeing things rationally, away from your judgement of the situation and your feelings about the situation, just simply seeing it for what it is. Albert Ellis was one of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century and was argueably Acceptance’s biggest advocate. He believed that our thoughts and beliefs about a certain situation actually cause us much more distress than the situation itself and that simply accepting a situation for what it is in the moment, is the best thing we can do for ourselves to avoid becoming overly worked up. We as human beings tend to apply meaning to a situation thinking things like “because this happened… this must happen” or “because I did this… this should happen”. What Ellis teaches us is that “shoulds” and “musts” are often the root of emotional distress and that by reducing these words when thinking about our lives and our behaviours we will reduce our distress in any situation. So… how does this apply to food and diet? Allow me to demonstrate.
How Shoulds and Musts Can Make Our Relationships With Food Suffer Greatly
Let me outline a situation for you:
You’ve decided you’ve had enough of your bad eating habits and have decided to only eat what you perceive as healthy from now on. You wake up on Monday morning and are feeling motivated and ready to begin your new lifestyle. You have a 45g bowl of porridge with low fat milk, chopped banana and some flax seeds sprinkled on top as well as a cup of coffee. Brilliant, you’re off to a flying start! About an hour and a half later, you may be in work and starting to feel hungry again. Alright, you’ve prepared for this. You have an apple and maybe a handful of cashew nuts to keep you going until lunch time. At break time, you fancy a cup of coffee so you head to the break room. You make your coffee and you see someone has left a box of biscuits on the table. You’re ready for this, you say nope! I’m not having any biscuits, they’re bad and unhealthy and I’m on my new diet! You head back to your desk feeling a sense of pride that you have avoided having a biscuit despite the sugar cravings that you’re now dealing with. You start working again but the biscuits are in the back of your mind and you find yourself counting down the hours til lunch as maybe a healthy lunch will satisfy those cravings. At lunch time, you begin digging in to the salad you’ve prepared with fresh lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers and a bit of dressing along with a strawberry yogurt for dessert. You finish eating and find that you’re not feeling fully satisfied but decide hey I’m on a new diet it’ll take time to adjust to all this healthy food. Next thing you know someone brings out a big chocolate cake for a coworker’s birthday. You contemplate what you’re going to do and decide you can’t be rude and take the slice offered to you. The cake is delicious and you mindlessly work your way through it while chatting to your coworkers. Suddenly a box of chocolates is passed your way and you take 2 or 3 without really thinking about it because they’re only small anyway. You get back to your desk after lunch and your belly is feeling full and satisfied but you can’t shake the guilt and shame that has started to creep up on you. Thoughts like “Why did I eat that cake, it’s so unhealthy and I was doing so well before then!” and “God I’m such a cow, on top of that big slice of cake I also had some chocolates, I’m so weak,” start swimming around your head and by the time you head home you’re feeling defeated and down on yourself, you just can’t stop thinking about how you indulged yourself! When at home your husband asks you if you’d like a takeaway and you decide that since you’ve ruined your diet already you may as well go for it. You’ll just have to start again tomorrow or next week!
Now there are several issues to this approach towards diet and healthy eating. First of all, the decision to only eat healthy food is quite a vague decision to make for several reasons. When people adopt this attitude towards food they tend to group foods into either the “good” category or the “bad” category but what is a good or bad food. People often class high calorie foods as bad even though foods like nuts are very calorie dense but are also rich in micronutrients as well as healthy fats that we need for heart and brain function. A person may then classify low calorie foods as good but a glazed donut is somewhat low in calories but is quite high in sugars and saturated fats, an excess of which can lead to type 2 diabetes. People often classify carbohydrate rich foods as bad but these are often rich in B vitamins needed for the functioning of the body’s metabolic processes as well as being sources of protein, fibre and an important source of energy. Alternatively, many people can classify high fat foods as bad but certain fatty foods are essential to good brain and heart health such as oily fish, nuts and seeds. Another issue with this is what about foods that contain “bad nutrients” as well as “good nutrients”. Should we refuse to eat a tuna sandwich because it is too high in fats and carbohydrates? Of course not! Add some salad on the side and you have a very balanced nutritional meal there that will really provide what your body needs to function well!
The second issue with this attitude is that the person has a rigid perspective towards diet where if she consumes something that she deems unhealthy, she feels guilt and shame over it. The attitude is that if she consumes one bad thing then her diet is ruined and she has really failed herself and she may as well just give up. She almost treats diet like a game where one slip up means game over, try again tomorrow! She feels as though she’s competing against herself and her cravings to stay on this strict dietary path where if she wins she obtains a more desirable body or better health outcomes. When it comes to our emotions, rigidity tends to get us nowhere. Thinking “I must do this diet perfectly to get the body that I want,” is really quite silly. Dietitians eat cake and sweets and remain healthy all the time, they just mindfully enjoy them in moderation and understand that indulging from time to time is perfectly healthy. This person must remember that she had a lovely nutritional breakfast, snack and lunch (Although the lunch could have used some more protein) but because she had cake she decided that there was no point having a nutritious dinner. Even then, she may have potentially consumed above the recommended calorie limited but she also got lots of healthy nutrients from her earlier meals and she should give herself credit for that instead of beating herself up for having cake in celebration of a colleague. When we accept the fact that not every meal or snack we have will be nutritious, but we can still live very healthy lifestyles, we can let go of some of that guilt and shame that really hold us back and leave us feeling defeated. This person should have the cake and make sure that she is very present with it, enjoying the flavours instead of eating it mindlessly so that maybe she won’t have such strong cravings later on as she will feel satisfied in her earlier enjoyment. If she had done this, she may have had motivation later on to cook up a healthy dinner with the help of her husband, and she could have even cooked up extra to use for lunch tomorrow, providing her with two nutritious meals.
When we are looking to alter our body and improve our health, a more helpful attitude can be eating to fuel our bodies. We take our bodies needs into account as well as our own. We could eat veggies to provide micronutrients for our eyes, our bones, our brains, our energy levels. We could eat healthy fats to provide energy and for our brains and hearts. We could eat protein rich foods such as eggs, dairy and meat for recovery and for muscle growth and we could eat brown bread/pasta/rice for fibre for our digestive systems. We can build meals around the nutrients we know we need to feel our best while also including some of our favourite foods we like to indulge in like chocolate and cake. We must accept that we are human and account for all our needs, including our needs for the foods that we enjoy most, in this way we are healthy.
NutritionWithMaidi 