When I first discovered the concept of intuitive eating, I was deep into the world of diet culture. I firmly believed that without an iron grip on my eating habits, all hell would break loose. Just letting myself eat anything whenever I felt like it? Well, in my head that translated into eating pounds of potato chips until passing out from overeating on the kitchen floor. Also, never glancing at a vegetable again. Also dying from a chips-induced coma at age 35. So, iron grip and constant vigilance around my eating habits seemed like the only option. I was carefully planning what to eat, and very carefully following hunger fullness signals to ensure I never ate a bite past fullness. And I was carefully driving myself up the wall in my process (all for my own good of course!)
Nonetheless, I did eventually choose to learn how to practice intuitive eating, when it finally dawned on me that the constant anxiety, vigilance, and stress around “healthy” eating were making me miserable. I felt out of control around food, and my health was not improving at all in the process (in fact, my mental health was suffering significantly, and the stress was also taking a toll physically).
And here is what I discovered in the process of embracing listening to my body.
Intuitive eating does not lead to a lifetime of eating only fast food or vending machine snacks (though there is also nothing wrong with those foods). What actually happens when you start listening to your body is that you go through an initial period of re-feeding, when you do eat more than you would have allowed yourself before, especially out of the foods that you previously considered dangerous, because your body is starved from years of physical and mental restriction. And then, once your body learns that it is safe and that it will actually be allowed to eat all foods always, you start craving a wide variety of foods. And you don’t feel the panicked need to eat a whole Costco-sized bag of chips, because you know you can always open it again if you have another chip craving later. And you do start having cravings for a wide variety of foods, including salad and fruits. Most importantly, you get a significant chunk of your life back when you let your body and mind chill out about deciding what and when to eat without overthinking.
Removing mental restriction around food is a very similar process to removing the restrictions a lot of us have around rest. Our society has taught us that rest needs to be controlled, deserved, and only consumed in tiny portions. It’s the chocolate cake of activities. We need to feel guilty if we let ourselves have a bite too many. We need to “work it off” if we “indulge” too much. We need to surreptitiously sneak some more when we are starving. We need to hide in shame if we let ourselves “binge” on it. We fantasize about having a period of relaxing and letting go, but just can’t get ourselves to do it (at least not without a large side serving of guilt, self-flagellation and several days of compensatory over-working to follow). We worry that if we just allow rest without guilt, we will choose to never move or work again, and will need to be surgically separated from our couch when we die, because we will have become a human-couch hybrid from not moving a single time in 50 years.
All of that is bulls**t! Just like allowing all foods doesn’t lead to anyone only eating chips forever (in fact, restricting chips is what leads to that out-of-control feeling around chips), so does allowing rest not immediately translate into a life of zero activity, work or movement.
What if we stopped treating rest as a sinful, guilt-ridden activity, and as a normal and lovely part of the human existence? Would we really want to not move or do a second of work for the next 50 years? Or would we let ourselves rest, and then want to do some other things in life when we are done resting, knowing that rest is always available and accessible to us when we need it? Sure, we may go through an initial period of re-feeding our bodies and minds with relaxation and spend some time resting more than we have in awhile. And that’s lovely! But, just as with chocolate cake (or chips; or cookies; or Netflix), when we unconditionally allow rest, we will crave and relish it for awhile, and then we will also realize we are craving and relishing some other activities in life. Because too much of anything, even if it’s our favorite, can become tedious and unpleasant after some time.
Human beings are wired to crave balance and contrast. And when we give ourselves options, we start craving variety.
So ask yourself today—what would happen if you stopped trying to control your need for rest, and started listening to your body instead?
