I hope you are finding the deep dive into the principles of intuitive eating created by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch to be helpful, eye opening and thought provoking when it comes to your relationship with food. Today I’ll be exploring the fourth principle of intuitive eating: Challenge the Food Police. This principle is really all about embracing nonjudgment of your food choices and releasing fear, judgment and shame as it relates to food.

The food police are deeply entrenched in diet culture rules, regulations and beliefs about food. The food police tend to show up when you make a particular food choice and then will label that choice as good or bad—which we know only causes an internalization those feelings and creates a projection of how you will feel about yourself. This plays into feeling superior or inferior in relation to your choices rather than grounded and accepting, which is how you might prefer to feel.

The food police can be an external force as well. The people, books, studies and otherwise that will make comments about your choices, question your choices, praise you for making a “good” choice and maybe look at you a bit funny or even make a comment—with judgment—if you are making what they perceive as a “bad” choice. All of this only perpetuates stigma around food, body image and ultimately creates internalized feelings of guilt and shame.

Guilt shows up as your conscience. Guilt is an appropriate and helpful emotion to feel if you’ve actually done something wrong. Let’s say you are frustrated and take out that frustration on someone you care about and speak unkindly to them. You may experience feelings of guilt. That person did not deserve to be spoken to in that way, and most likely if you weren’t frustrated you would not have reacted in this way.

The guilt you experience is a helpful compass that signals to you that the way you acted was not in alignment with how you want to treat others or show up in the world. Now you have a choice to respond to that emotion. You can rectify your behavior through an apology. Following your apology you can show a concerted effort to change your behavior. The next time you feel frustrated, you can determine how to more appropriately and effectively cope with, manage and express that emotion.

I know this guilt talk has been a bit of a detour, however, it’s important to understand the nature and need of guilt. Guilt is helpful if you’ve actually done something wrong. If you eat a cookie, you are not doing anything bad or wrong and more importantly you are not a bad person for making that choice. The guilt that may show up from the food police in your head or around you however may make it difficult to wade through and clarify these feelings for yourself. Recognizing the amount of guilt you experience when it comes to your food choices allows you to explore your own food police more rationally and in depth.

What’s even worse is that the food police work through guilt and shame and when those feelings become internalized it can lead to emotional eating patterns. These patterns increase feelings of guilt and shame and lead to things like eating in secret, feeling ashamed and an increase in food cravings on an intense and deep level. Listening to and believing the food police ultimately can lead to dangerous emotional eating patterns and overeating because they are bound up in the diet mentality, judgment and the concept of restriction. When you allow food to be just food and ditch the judgment you feel more grounded and balanced in your choices.

Noticing the food police is enhanced when you pair it with the practice of mindful eating. Making a choice about what to eat and then doing so in a way that allows you taste, enjoy and be present with your food—without judgment. Be aware of thoughts about what you are eating and try to align with the facts about it rather than any emotions or judgments.

Some nonjudgmental self-statements might sound like the following, practice using them to combat the food police in your head and those potentially around you:

This food tastes good to me.
This food provides nourishment.
This food satisfies me.
This food satiates me.
This food makes me feel _______________(healthy, energized, grounded…)

Some ways you can practice speaking to yourself in a kind, food police revoking manner might sound like some of the following:

Today I choose to honor my hunger.
The food I choose is my choice.
I trust my choices.
I know what my body wants and needs.
I will eat this food with a mindful focus and notice the effects it has on my body.
I deserve to enjoy my food.
I deserve to nourish my body.

When you engage in this process of mindful and intuitive eating you begin to strip away judgment, fear and shame. Ironically, you may find that you crave less and restrict less at the same time.

For this week, practice noticing the food police while you are eating one mindful meal or snack. Be aware of any feelings of guilt and challenge them, ask yourself, “have I actually done anything wrong?” Take notes and see how you can transition to speaking to yourself internally in a nonjudgmental and compassionate way when it comes your food choices and your body. Begin using some of these self-statements and feel the internal shift that comes with this powerful practice.

The third principle of Intuitive Eating is: Make Peace with Food. This principle builds on the first two principles of intuitive eating, reject the diet mentality and honor your hunger. When you make peace with food you no longer categorize foods in a judgmental and stressful way. When you make peace with food, you allow yourself the opportunity to eat anything you want and to not have forbidden foods based on fear, shame or judgment.

When you make peace with food, you may also recognize that there are certain foods that don’t serve your body. This allows you to make an empowered choice to not eat those foods. However, this choice is based on your peaceful relationship with food, your body and your wellbeing—not fear and control.

When you feel as though you are at war with food and your body, eating itself becomes stressful and possibly shameful. When you carry guilt and shame related to food, you create a host of other problems internally and this struggle only increases potential emotional and stress eating patterns. These patterns lead to constant thoughts about food—which is definitely not a peaceful way to be with food.

When you restrict certain foods based on fear, judgment and shame, you will inevitably crave those food and possibly overeat or binge on them. When you tell yourself “I can’t have that food” it makes you want it even more. This is why restricting, dieting and extreme rules related to food creates cycles of “I’ll only eat it just this once,” cheat meals, or “this will be my last fun day with food” before that majorly restricting diet that you may put onto yourself out of punishment for these other seemingly out of control choices. When you make peace with food, food can be just food.

Thoughts about food, fear about calories, worrying about good food versus bad food and what’s the right or wrong thing to eat all create stress. When food is on your mind all of the time it creates fear about food and can lead to eating in secret and feelings of guilt and shame. These occurrences will only keeps you stuck in the dangerous cycle of emotional eating. Making peace with food is a process and practice that begins with mindful eating.

When you eat mindfully you are not judgmental of the foods you are choosing to eat. You look for the facts, what is true and release emotions surrounding food. That doesn’t mean you can’t look forward to eating a particular food, enjoy it and savor the process of eating. Quite the opposite really! When you are nonjudgmental you get to release any guilt, fear or shame around eating certain foods and be present with whatever you are choosing to eat.

As you begin to integrate this step into how you relate to food, eating and your body, you come closer to trusting yourself and the ability to know what your body wants and needs. Intuitive eating is about tuning into your body and its individual needs in relation to food, calories, combinations of nutrients and portion sizes. Mindful eating is about tuning into your body and being present in a nonjudgmental manner so you can enjoy your food, savor the flavors and take in the pleasure you can derive from your food choices.

When you make peace with food you are intuitively aware of how different foods make your body feel, you honor your hunger and move away from restrictive thoughts. You are also able to tune into cravings and understand why the craving is presenting itself in this moment.

Cravings can be complicated. However, they can be addressed through the intuitive and mindful eating process and managed without stress, fear and shame. If you are experiencing a craving it can mean that your food choices are boring, repetitive and you feel unsatisfied. A craving could be a desire to release an uncomfortable emotion or to calm your stress. A craving could mean that you are out of balance nutritionally. A craving could mean that your body is out of balance. A craving could mean that you heard about a certain food and you just can’t get it out of your mind!

When you are mindfully aware and intuitive connected to your body, you are able to make a non-emotionally driven decision about what to do with your craving. This process requires self-reflection, self-awareness and often some discipline to pause and give yourself space to consider what your craving is really all about.

The first question to ask yourself when you experience a craving is, “am I hungry?” If yes, “what am I hungry for?” If no, “what is the nature of this craving, what does it want me to know?” This is where you can get really curious! Check in with your stress level, mood state and give yourself space to release any emotions that need to be witnessed and understood. Did you get this food on your mind because it happens to be around, you heard about it, saw it, or smelled it?

When you experience a craving, you want to get deeply curious about the message of the craving rather than acting on it right away or resisting it with an effort to “be good.” The more you reflect and grow in self-awareness, the closer you find yourself to creating a more peaceful relationship with food.

As you create peace with food, you find that your thoughts are less driven by food, or if they are you understand why and have the tools to cope. As you create peace with food, you eat more mindfully and offer a nonjudgmental experience with the process of eating. As you make peace with food, you make peace with yourself, and this is the true gift of this process.

This principle of making peace with food can feel daunting as emotional and stress eating patterns are often deeply layered. Remember that this is a process and path to explore. There is no need to be perfect, just to be present, curious and attuned to your mind, body and your unique needs.

Finding where you can begin to make peace with food, one small step at a time, will create great amounts of freedom and space in your life for more pleasure with food. As you begin to consider how you can make peace with food, allow yourself to be nonjudgmental with yourself, the process, and notice how you begin to release old beliefs about food and open yourself to greater inner peace and mental wellbeing.