Welcome to How to Love Your Body. On today’s episode we are talking about one of the major obstacles in truly becoming an intuitive eater and finding food freedom, and that is “sensibility”.

It might make complete sense to you to stop the CRAZY fad diets, where you cut out major food groups or count points religiously. That part of diet culture can be easy to cast aside in the pursuit of healing our relationship with food.

What is much harder to let go of is the notion of being “sensible”. This is what we call “Diet Culture Light” -- being on board with letting go of intense, fad diets BUT you “should” still be sensible, eat whole grains, lean meats and just have processed foods on occasion. 

This sounds RIGHT doesn’t it? 

So when “allowing all food unconditionally” comes up in Intuitive Eating it creates pause - especially when it comes to binge eating… I ALREADY eat all the food and that’s the problem.

This is tricky work.

You cannot go half way with this work if you want true freedom (and true freedom is the ONLY way to maintain a life of wellness without the obsession).

So what happens when we only go half way from actively dieting to trying to eat “sensibly”?

First, you begin releasing the reigns on your strict food rules a little bit and that is great!

Then you allow yourself a little bit of enjoyment here and there but always in the back of your mind you’re thinking -- BUT NOT TOO MUCH!

It is still the RULE of sensibility that is running the show, not your intuition, not your body signals, but the elusive concept of being sensible.

And to add to the confusion - what does sensible even mean?? It is a vague concept that you cannot adhere to so you always feel like you aren't doing it right.

In the end, there is no room for intuition and freedom, just a looser leash.

What happens when we go ALL IN and allow all food unconditionally- as part of the 5 phases of UnDieting (note: there is more to this work than allowing all food but this DOES need to be included).

First, you open the flood gates, EEK. Yes you can eat whatever you want, whenever you want it.

Then your thought process begins to shift: ooh there’s a candy jar at work, great, I can have as much as I want…. But I can also have as much as I want at home and those chocolates I bought yesterday look way better than these stale gummies.. You begin to get more selective, to feel less desperate around food.

At first you may feel like you’re eating a lot but as your body and mind begin to realize it's truly available to you… it begins to lose it’s power. Binges begin to lessen and eventually disappear. There's no need to binge when there is no restriction.

Allowing of this food also includes mental allowing - being OKAY mentally with eating the food that you’re choosing to eat. And this is the work we do - allowing people to dive FULLY into this work so they can push through to the other side where freedom and wellness without the obsession awaits.

After you’ve truly allowed all food, you begin to listen to your body more, sure you can eat 12 donuts right now, but you probably won’t want to. The IDEA of allowing all food and going ALL IN sounds scary but the reality of it looks a lot more like balance, enjoyment and freedom.

So are you ready to go ALL IN, to become an intuitive eater?

Want to know what’s holding you back in becoming an Intuitive Eater? We have a free quiz you can take that will tell you what is holding you back in becoming an Intuitive Eater and how to begin breaking through that barrier. You can take the quiz by clicking the link in the show notes www.thebodylovesociety.com/quiz , you can also find the link on our Instagram at @thebodylovesociety.