This blog title is actually a common search term people use who end up finding my site.

How do you know what to eat?

It’s as simple as your cravings.

We are so afraid of our cravings. We seem to think that if we just eliminated cravings, we would be so healthy and happy and be-a-u-tiful!

But here is a little secret: if you didn’t have cravings, you might actually die. Because you wouldn’t care to eat. And you wouldn’t eat what your body needed. You’d keep eating salads when your body really needed carbs. You’d keep eating fish when your body really needed fruit. You’d keep eating polenta when your body really needed some fat.

Cravings are not the villains we think they are.

This applies to you both if you are in the midst of what feels like Binge Eating Disorder, or if you are now completely normal with food.

If you currently feel out of control with food, you probably think that cravings are your enemy. You’re probably in the camp of “if only I didn’t have cravings…”

But the more you resist those cravings, the stronger they will be. Most people crave carbs because they actually need them. If you’re restricting, the body wants to re-feed. It needs surplus. It needs calories. And if you’re craving dense foods, there is a reason for that. It’s the easiest way to fix your body from it’s low metabolic state. The body wants to know that there is enough. Feeding it carbs will take it out of that low metabolic, starvation, is there a famine state.

The sooner you allow cravings, the sooner you will give the body what it needs, and allow your mind to lessen the power of those foods too.

If you are someone who is normal with food, that means you’re already giving into your cravings, and you know that following what you desire is the best way to feel fed, satiated, and truly be able to hear what you truly need, ongoing.

If you deny what you’re body is craving, there is a backup. The body believes that it can’t get what it needs and so it just tries to speak up louder. This is the cause of lots of bingeing.

Just listen to your cravings. It’s the closest thing to loud intuition you’ll ever experience.

This isn’t a trick. I really don’t condone mindful eating.

And I’ll tell you why:

When you attempt mindful eating, you’re going to make it into an obsessive, perfectionistic way to eat, and then it’s gonna backfire, and you’re going to binge and wonder why ‘it’s not working’.

If you’re someone who has been stressed about the food you eat, the antidote is not mindful eating.

The antidote is neutral, normal, messy, haphazard, who-gives-a-fuck-if-you-order-fries eating.

You don’t need to add one more day of worrying that you’re eating too fast, or not rating your hunger level, or not paying attention to the chickens who lay the eggs in the muffin you’re eating.

I mean it.

You need to just eat, and eat what you want, and eat a lot. That is the ONLY way you’re ever going to neutralize food, and neutralizing food is the ONLY way you are ever going to actually be able to hear what your body wants without all that NOISE and the ANXIETY in the way.

And being able to neutrally hear what the body wants (and doesn’t want) is the closest you ever need to get to mindful eating.

I mean that so sincerely.

You don’t need to eat slowly in order to learn to eat normally.

If your goal is to be a monk, that’s another story. Then… sure. Eat slowly and mindfully and meditate over your food. Make it part of your spiritual practice. What do I care!

I’ll be eating casseroles and ice cream in front of the tv, stopping when I’m done because I don’t feel like more, and waking up to drink my morning cappuccino while I multi-task.

That’s the way you find food freedom. Make food less of a big deal instead of more of a big deal.

And the paradox is (and there is always a paradox), that’s the best way to really give yourself what you want and need.

There really are only four reasons anyone has trouble eating normally.

1. Physical Restriction (Controlling and limiting what you put in your mouth)
2. Mental Restriction (“I shouldn’t eat like this”)
3. Poor Body Image (“I should change”)
4. Not wanting to feel emotions.

I normally focus on 1-3. And it is actually VERY simple.

Your physical restriction is affecting your relationship to food. It makes your body wired to seek food. It makes your mind wired to seek food. It slows down your metabolism. It sabotages all efforts at normalcy with food.

Your guilt over eating, even when you are “allowing it” will continue to get in your way. It feels like there’s an impending diet, and BOOM. Binge.

Your body image that’s been ingrained over time is largely the cause for the first two anyway. When we think our bodies are wrong or ‘our fault’, we subconsciously think we should control our food – then – backlash. The cycle worsens.

But #4 is one I don’t talk about as much. It’s where fear of feeling your emotions can cause people to “eat to numb.”

Just like alcohol, a little bit of emotional eating is a non issue. It’s actually fully normal, healthy, and comforting. It’s only when you are SO out of touch with emotions that you need to constantly numb that emotional eating is a problem.

And even then, emotional eating is NOT bingeing, but often becomes bingeing when people feel guilt (#2) over their emotional eating. They’re eating and they tell themselves “tomorrow, no more!” and it becomes a binge.

So what is my advice to you?

1. Do not restrict
2. Become aware of all guilt and limiting beliefs in the way
3. Get right with your body. Learn about Health at Every Size. Follow body positive accounts
4. Commit to feeling your emotions, but DO NOT restrict food. Eat AND feel.

And boom, you are now a Fuckiteer.