Eat this, avoid that. This one food will cure everything. But this one you should NEVER eat. You can eat these foods, but only during strictly controlled times of day. Statements like these are all over social media, gyms and even health care offices.
But do you need to follow such rules to be healthy? Most often the answer is “no.” Health and nutrition are much more complex and nuanced than a simple list of what to eat and what to avoid. Despite this, strong opinions about health and nutrition are common because of diet culture, which is a sneaky, insidious system of beliefs that, at its core, considers thinness to be the ideal, stigmatizes fatness, preys on insecurity and promotes unsafe and psychologically damaging eating practices.
As a registered dietitian specializing in eating disorders, I have seen how the majority of my clients have been, and continue to be, harmed by diet culture. They wrestle with guilt and shame around food, and their health is often negatively affected by rigid beliefs about nutrition. Rather than improving health, research has shown that diet culture increases your risk of unhealthy behaviors, including yo-yo dieting, weight cycling — losing and gaining weight over and over — and eating disorders, like orthorexia, which is when a preoccupation with “healthy eating” is so obsessive it can be dangerous.
If following the rules of diet culture isn’t healthy, what is the answer? I believe an “all-foods-fit” approach to nutrition can offer an antidote.
What is ‘all foods fit’?
“All foods fit” may sound like “eat whatever you want, whenever you want,” but that is an oversimplification of this approach to nutrition. Rather, this model is based on the idea that all foods can fit into a healthy diet by balancing food and nutrition in a way that promotes health. This approach enables flexibility in your diet through listening to internal body cues to decide what and when to eat instead of following external rules.
All foods fit allows for nuance to exist in health and nutrition. Diet culture tends to be black and white — foods are either “good” or “bad.” But nutrition and health are much more complex. For starters, many factors beyond diet affect health: exercise, sleep, stress, mental health, socioeconomic status, access to food and health care, to name a few.
Similarly, while general guidelines around nutrition are available, everyone has individual needs based on their preferences, health status, access to food, daily schedule, cooking skills and more. The flexibility of all foods fit can help you make empowered food choices based on your health goals, tastes, exercise habits and life circumstances.
‘All foods fit’ in action
A common pushback to the all-foods-fit approach is that you can’t be healthy if you are eating “unhealthy” foods, and giving yourself permission to eat all foods means you’ll primarily eat the “bad” ones. However, research shows that removing the morality around food can actually lead to healthier food choices by decreasing stress related to food decisions. This reduces the risk of disordered eating, resulting in improved physical health.
To see what an all-foods-fit approach might look like, imagine you’re attending a social event where the food options are pizza, a veggie and dip tray, and cookies. According to the diet you’re following, pizza, cookies and dips are all “bad” foods to avoid. You grab some of the veggies to eat but are still hungry.
You’re starving toward the end of the event, but the only food left is cookies. You plan on eating only one but feel so hungry that you end up eating a lot of cookies, and then feel out of control and guilty. You feel sick when you go home and promise yourself to do better tomorrow. But this binge-restrict cycle will continue.
Now imagine attending the same social event, but you don’t label foods as good or bad. From experience, you know you often feel hungry and unwell after eating pizza by itself. You also know that fiber, which can be found in vegetables, is helpful for gut health and can make you feel more satisfied after meals. So you balance your plate with a couple slices of pizza and a handful of veggies and dip.
You feel pretty satisfied after that meal and don’t feel the need to eat a cookie. Toward the end of the event, you grab a cookie because you enjoy the taste and eat most of it before feeling satisfied. You save the rest of the cookie for later.
Rather than following strict rules and restrictions that can lead to cycles of guilt and shame, an all-food-fits approach can lead to more sustainable healthy habits.
How to get started with an all-foods-fit approach
It can be hard to divest from diet culture and adopt an all-foods-fit approach to nutrition and health, particularly if you have been restricting certain foods for a long time. Here are some tips to help you get started:
- Remove any moral labels on food. Instead of good or bad, or healthy or unhealthy, think about the name of the food or the nutritional components it has. For example, chicken is high in protein, broccoli is a source of fiber, and ice cream is a dessert. Neutral labels can help determine what food choices make sense for you in the moment and reduce any guilt or shame around food.
- Focus on your internal cues — hunger, fullness, satisfaction and how food makes you physically feel. Becoming attuned to your body can help you regulate food choices and determine what eating pattern makes you feel your best.
- Eat consistently. When you aren’t eating regularly, it can be hard to feel in control around food. Your hunger can become more intense and your body less sensitive to fullness hormones. Implement an eating schedule that spaces food regularly throughout the day, filling any prolonged gaps between meals with a snack.
- If you restrict certain foods, reintroduce them into your diet. Start with foods that feel less scary or with a small amount of a food you’re anxious about. This could look like adding a piece of chocolate to lunch most days, or having a bagel for breakfast once in a while. By intentionally adding these foods back into your diet, you can build trust with yourself that you won’t feel out of control around these foods.
- Check in with yourself before eating. Ask yourself, “How hungry am I? What sounds good right now? How long until I can eat again?”
- And sometimes, you may need more support. This can be especially true if you’re experiencing disordered eating habits or have an eating disorder. Consider working with a registered dietitian to help challenge nutrition misinformation and heal your relationship to food.
Carlson is the director of the Kendall Reagan Nutrition Center at Colorado State University.
This article was produced in collaboration with The Conversation, a nonprofit news organization.
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