Is your diet too strict?

When someone expresses dietary struggles to me, I often hear responses like "I need to be more disciplined" or "I feel so out of control, I need to get back on track." While it's advised to adapt a nutritious diet for health reasons, eating healthier should never become rigid and extreme. And unless you adapt your eating in a way that honors your hunger, makes you feel satiated and aligns with your personal health and activity goals, you may find yourself with a lot of food-related guilt, shame, deprivation, and a feeling of failure from an unstainable style of eating.

Signs that your eating style may be too strict include:

• watching the clock for permission to eat
• having an off-limit food list
• only eating conditionally (ex. reward food)
• developing a fear of "bad" foods
• avoiding social situations involving food
• feeling constant hunger
• difficulty focusing, headaches or lightheadedness
• avoiding foods that you enjoy
• eliminating food groups or certain foods from the diet
• feeling out of control when eating a certain food
• desire to eat perfectly

The need to be so in control around food (and body weight) often leads to most out of control behaviors. Trying to eat in a way to fix your body into a specific weight, size or look that society views as ideal can lead to feeling out of control around food. In order to feel good about your food choices, it's important to welcome all foods. And to do this, you must be able to tune into your hunger and satisfaction signals. It's nearly impossible to feel in control around food when you are starving. Keep yourself fed and nourished throughout the day by honoring your hunger.

Signs that you are letting yourself get too hungry include: 

• poor concentration, dizzy, lightheaded
• tired, sleepy, sluggish
• hangry, irritable, moody, cranky
• stomach making noises, feelig empty
• low blood sugar, feelig shaky, tingly lips, salivating 

Individuals who try to sustain a strict diet often have standards that are too high (and unrealistic). A perfect day of eating should involve foods that you enjoy, those foods should make you feel satiated and energized, and those foods should fulfill your nutrient and energy needs. You don't need to only eat for health, you also need to eat for enjoyment. Putting limits on what you can or should eat can lead to out of control behaviors, followed by a lot of guilt and shame.

As a final note, the foods that most people feel out of control with are the foods that most people try to avoid - often containing sugar, salt, carbs, and fat. As a result of feeling out of control with certain foods, it's normal to want to set an off-limit food list (to reduce the risk of binging). However, this only leads to overeating. This is a cycle that continues until those "bad" foods are taken off an imaginary forbidden food list. Yes, donuts, muffins, bagels, chips and ice cream can be on the same food list as salads and quinoa. Once you level the food playing field, you can decide what foods make you feel good, rather than feeling controlled by certain foods.

If you feel like you've been trying to follow a strict style of eating, which could be leading to feeling out of control with certain foods, remind yourself that a sustainable style of eating should never involve discipline, willpower and rules. Give yourself unconditional permission to eat all foods.

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