I have written previously of alternatives to dieting and to a weight-focused idea of health in the Breaking Free from the Dieting Cycle trilogy and my article on Intuitive Eating. This article is about doing a deeper dive into one of the 10 principles of Intuitive Eating – “Challenge the Food Police”. 1

What is the food police?

🎵 ‘The food police, they live inside of my head,

The food police, they come to me in my bed,

The food police, they’re coming to arrest me, oh no’ 🎵

While Cheap Trick’s original song had the subject matter of dreams, it so beautifully translates to the experience of having the food police in your head. Who are these uninvited law enforcers, you ask?

The food police is the name we give to the part of your brain that strives to enforce the rules of diet culture.

It is the thing that dictates the moral value of food and eating behaviours, calling you out when you eat dessert and praising you when you minimise your intake. The food police constantly monitor the difficult-to-follow and often arbitrary rules created by diet culture,1 handing out punishments that do not befit the crime. They are well-trained, rigid law enforcers, and not the easiest to chase out; but learning to challenge them is important in being an intuitive eater.

Why is challenging the food police important?

Let’s step back and see the bigger picture for a moment. I am often asked, ‘if I’m not on a diet and don’t have food rules, how will I know if I’m eating right?’. My simple response is usually, ‘your body will tell you’. It’s being able to tune into what your body has to say and respond appropriately – a process known as attunement –2 that tends to be the tricky part! This ability to tune in to your internal cues is called interoceptive awareness.2

Put simply, interoceptive awareness is the perception of internal bodily sensations, for example hunger, fullness, your heartbeat and physiological feelings related to your emotions.2

It is key to achieving what is referred to as “authentic health” – a state of health and wellbeing that that balances your internal needs with your values.2

🎵 ‘Cause they’re waiting for me,
They’re looking for me,
Every single night they’re driving me insane,
Those men inside my brain’ 🎵

So, back to the internal food police! Challenging them is important because they get in the way of interoceptive awareness.2 They create barriers to you listening to those internal cues, while also eroding your trust in your body’s ability to nourish itself. Left unchecked, the food police wait for every mistake, look for every slip up, and as the song says, 🎵 ‘they’re the judge and jury all in one’ 🎵.

How do we tell them this isn’t their jurisdiction?

The first step to any change is knowing what you want to change. This is where awareness comes in. In order to drive the food police out of our head, we need to create what I like to call in-the-moment awareness. In-the-moment awareness is where we notice that we are doing, feeling, or thinking something while we are doing, feeling, or thinking that thing. Rather than being on autopilot, we are present in the moment.

Bringing awareness to unhelpful thoughts puts you in a position to take command of the narrative in your head, rather than unknowingly letting them influence you – but that comes later.

I haven’t done this before, where do I start?

You are aiming to ‘clock’ these thoughts, rather than change or dispute them. This can be tricky, as we often want to jump ahead and ‘do’ something, or we feel the need to make a judgment call on what we’re hearing. Despite this, I really encourage you to simply notice and tell yourself that you heard that. Be available. Be non-judgmental. In the first instance, work on noticing the existence of those unhelpful thoughts that get in the way of interoceptive awareness. This could involve noticing food police comments like:

  • Are you really going to order a burger instead of a salad?
  • You’re so good for having carrots instead of chocolate as a snack!
  • If you eat that for morning tea you can’t have dessert tonight
  • Better work off last night’s takeaway dinner!

What next?

Once you’ve brought in-the-moment awareness to these thoughts and are confident in telling yourself ‘I heard that’, you can progress to challenging them. You might actively dispute what they are saying, or replace them with more helpful thoughts. This might sound like:

  • Yes, I’m going to order a burger; it’s what I feel like enjoying right now
  • No, I am not ‘good’ for eating carrots and ‘bad’ for having chocolate
  • I will decide what and how much I want to eat when the time comes – no need to limit myself from now
  • Movement is not punishment for eating
  • Food has no inherent moral value
  • I do not gain or lose value as a human based my food choices

This might be tricky for me…

You’re not the only one! Challenging the food police inside of our heads is not an easy task. My advice is seek support. Having a health professional on your side to help you navigate this new way of seeing food rules and restrictions can make a huge difference in driving the food police out, making way for interoceptive awareness, attunement and, ultimately, authentic health.

Stay tuned for part two, where we tackle the external food police.

Life is too short to live with food stress, so don’t wait to get the support you need! Stefanie is highly trained to provide evidence-based nutritional advice and support tailored specifically for you.

References:

  1. Tribole, Evelyn and Resch, Elyse. 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating. The Original Intuitive Eating Pros. [Online] intuitiveeating.org/10-principles-of-intuitive-eating.
  2. Cook-Cottone CP, Tribole E, Tylka TL. Defining healthy and intuitive eating. Healthy eating in schools: Evidence-based interventions to help kids thrive. 2013;25–43.