Do you label how you eat? Or, want to change it?
aka how to eat well without a living in a diet trap
Do you feel pressured to label your eating habits?
We all know that magazines, news articles, celebrities, and basically the entire internet have been telling us about the latest labeled craze for decades.
But, there are two enormous problems with giving your eating habits a forever-type label:
Your body, health, and life’s circumstances will change over time, even seasonally. If you label your eating habits, you might prevent yourself from evolving as you need to, and,
Diet labels can be a mask for disordered eating.
I personally gave up labeling my eating habits a few years ago and it feels SO much better than trying to live in the box of a diet label. As a certified health coach for over a decade, I’ve tried every way of eating under the sun. After years of trial and error, I realized that I didn’t need a label. I simply need to eat mostly real (i.e., not highly processed) food.
Instead of a label, I focus on eating high-quality whole foods most of the time, but that’s about it. When I made this mindset shift, I found that I actually ate better than before! Now I focus on quality, not a label.
However, some people feel freer with the black & white choice of naming how they eat. (I go into detail about determining if you’re a “moderator” or “abstainer” in my book, The Health Habit, if you need more guidance with eating well without strict dieting.)
If you’re somewhere in the middle, and like the idea of putting a name to how you eat, but don’t want to feel trapped in a strict label, this new post is for you.
Over on the blog today I’m discussing what it means to be a so-called “flexitarian,” which is the most flexible of all labels, and how to use it if it feels good to you:
My hope for you is that you eat well with ease whether you choose to label your eating habits or not.
More for You on the Blog:
Cheers!
Elizabeth