How about the jungle gym instead

Hello! It's Vanessa here with you. Karen is going to cover the "What The Heck Effect" with you this week, and I want to talk about a similar concept here.

We've talked about food rules in this program before. Dependence on external rules to tell you when, what, and how much to eat means that you are often disregarding your body's intuitive cues. What happens if you break one of these external rules? You can have such difficulty hearing your body's own satiety cues that any attempt at moderate eating leaves the building and feelings of guilt can follow since you "broke the rules". And as guilt increases, sometimes the quantity of intake does as well. This is related to the "Seesaw Effect" and usually precedes the "What the Heck Effect". What goes up, must come down.

The Seesaw Effect teeters between deprivation on one side and guilt on the other. As someone restricts foods they enjoy eating, their feelings of deprivation become greater and greater. This is one side of the seesaw, going UP. But the guilt, which balances out restriction, decreases. A food rule follower doesn’t feel guilty because they are using those food rules to stay away from "bad" foods. They are being "good". The other side of the seesaw, going DOWN.

But there are limits. When people can no longer tolerate being deprived of foods (according to the food rules they have set for themselves), they give in and begin to eat these foods. The deprivation side of the seesaw goes DOWN. Their feelings of guilt then immediately start to increase. That side of the seesaw goes UP. The guilt triggers feelings of being "bad", since you ate a "bad" food. This can lead to more food: the What The Heck Effect - you feel that nothing matters anyway. Once the guilt becomes too great, restrained eaters start depriving themselves of certain foods again and the seesaw action continues. On and on, up and down, diet to binge.

How do restrained eaters get off this seesaw? They allow themselves access to ALL foods with no deprivation or food rules to restrict their eating. Once given unconditional permission to eat whatever foods they want, restrained eaters no longer need to overeat to overcome the feelings of deprivation of not being able to eat the “bad” foods. This unconditional permission to eat means:

1. All foods can be part of a healthful diet. There are no good or bad foods because no one food eaten by itself can make you healthy or unhealthy.

2. Eating the foods you really want to eat, not foods that you “should” eat because they are good for you.

3. Eating without guilt or making deals with yourself such as I can eat this brownie today because I will have a salad for lunch tomorrow. This is the very definition of conditional, not unconditional.

When you allow all foods into your meals, foods become emotionally equal and no longer carry a “good” or “bad” label. With this change you begin to understand that your food choices in no way reflect your moral value. You will no longer feel guilty if you choose to eat a cup of ice cream instead of a cup of kale.

This can sound scary. Karen will share some strategies to make this a little less so. Can you give yourself unconditional permission and get off that seesaw? There's a lot of other toys in the playground that are more fun.