When I decided to start this blog a little over a year ago, I had wanted it to be a way to document my journey of letting go of diet culture food rules and learning how to eat intuitively. But as I was going through the beginning stages of the process, I realized it was way harder than I had anticipated. I was struggling just doing it, so it felt impossible to express myself and explain things to anyone else.

A year later, I think I’m ready to start talking about what I’ve been experiencing – the highs and the lows. And I think it’s best if I start by explaining what it is that I’m even talking about. So let’s start with a few general definitions:

Diet Culture: A movement that promotes and values thinness and weight loss – often disguised as “health”

Food Rules: Self-imposed rules about what you can and cannot eat (not related to allergies) often attaching morality to foods (good vs bad food).

Intuitive Eating: Trusting your body to know which foods and how much of them it needs

Over the last year, I have worked on letting go of all of my food rules so I could move closer to eating intuitively. If this isn’t something you’ve ever struggled with, it might be hard to understand what I’m even saying.

So what’s it like being entrenched in diet culture and food rules? You’re constantly thinking about food – what you ate, what you’re going to eat, what you’re not allowed to eat, what you shouldn’t have eaten, how much you’ve eaten, what you ate yesterday, what you’re eating tomorrow, what options will be at that gathering you’re going to, how many carbs you’ve had today, how you’re going to fit in more vegetables at the next meal, how badly you want those cookies your coworker brought in, how “unhealthy” it would be to eat them, how little “control” you have around “junk food”, how many calories are in a full banana, how to stay within your calories/macros/containers for the day/week – the list goes on and on!

It’s honestly amazing I could accomplish anything else when so much of my brain power was used up thinking about food. Before and after every meal, I was doing calculations and planning. Before noon, I would already be asking my boyfriend what he wanted to do for dinner, because that was going to dictate what I “could” have for lunch. Carb filled dinner? Better skip the carbs at lunch. Cheesy (fatty) dinner? Better not put cheese or avocado on my salad at lunch.

My intention of being “healthy” had turned into an unhealthy obsession – physically and mentally. I was consumed by what I was and wasn’t consuming. With so many diets endorsing conflicting information, figuring out what to eat had become some sort of strange math problem.

Learning to let all of that go and trust my body to let me know what it needs is an ongoing journey. Switching from all the food rules and restriction to an over-indulgent free-for-all and now working on finding a happy and fulfilling footing has been anything but easy, but I truly believe it is the best thing I’ve done for myself, and I hope you’ll consider doing it, too.