05/17/2022
Come have a seat and let's have a talk about weekends and diet culture. 👎
Diet culture pushes "clean eating" during the week to compensate for "cheat days" over the weekend. 🙄 In reality, this is a form of disordered eating called a binge-restrict cycle.
Binge cycles have four phases:
1️⃣ Binge - Some event triggers a binge. This can be anything from stress to extreme hunger to the desire to numb yourself emotionally.
2️⃣ Emotional Backlash - Binging causes feelings of shame, guilt, and self-loathing. Post-binge, emotions are running high and, naturally, you don’t want to experience them again.
3️⃣ Determination to "Do Better" - To try and make sure you never feel those feelings again, you decide that you’ll “never binge again.”
4️⃣ Restriction - As part of the determination to never binge again, you restrict later on. This is both to “balance out” the large quantity of food you’ve just had, and to bring back a sense of control that you have lost during a binge.
And then... the cycle repeats itself. 🔄You experience a new or recurring trigger and start binging again. This is going to happen until you take action and break the cycle.
Intuitive Eating helps reinforce the fact that no foods are "bad" or "off-limits." When you stop restricting what you eat and learn to listen to your body's built-in hunger and fullness cues, you'll find that you no longer feel the need to binge and start the cycle all over again. 🛑
Instead of restricting during the week to prepare for "cheat days," remember these tips for a nutrition and wellness-filled week ☀️
✅ Pay attention to your hunger and fullness cues
✅ Practice nutrition by addition, not subtraction
✅ Implement the 7 Branches of Wellness through small, simple changes
✅ Meal prep to save time during the busy workweek
