The Balanced Life, Huntsville Alabama

It is very normal to be curious what “normal eating” looks like. I often hear “I just want to eat like a normal person.” How do we define normal eating? What makes something normal or abnormal?

One of the first things to consider is that appropriate eating (what I would call “normal eating”) is going against the norm of our society. The diet industry is $66 billion dollar industry, and if diets worked, they wouldn’t have repeat customers creating billions of dollars of profits. How I define normal eating includes:

All Foods Fit. There are no good foods or bad foods. There is no morality attached to food. Eating a salad does not make you a better person, just as eating cake does not make you a bad person. Neither food is good or bad. All food provides us energy, which we need for our body to work properly. Sweet foods are an appropriate part of our diet that often get treated as bad foods we must avoid to be healthy.

Unconditional Permission to Eat. We all deserve to eat. We don’t earn calories or food by exercising. Eat foods that you actually want to eat. We don’t have to decide “if I eat this, then I can’t have that” or “If I do this activity, then I can have that food.” When we give ourselves unconditional permission to eat and enjoy our food, we lose the urgency of eating them. If they’re always an option, we won’t feel deprived. We also regain the control and don’t allow food and cravings to control us.

Enjoy the Pleasure of Eating. You are allowed to enjoy food. It is important to enjoy food. While not every meal has to be the most delicious food you’ve ever eaten, giving yourself permission to enjoy food is freeing. Considering most of us eat 3-5 times per day, we ought to enjoy it as often as we can. The vilifying of certain food groups or kinds of foods often prevents us from allowing ourselves to find pleasure in eating.

Learn your Hunger and Fullness. By listening to your hunger and fullness cues, you are able to enjoy the pleasure of eating and eat unconditionally while still caring for your body. Your body tells you when you are hungry and need to eat, yet we often question this. Hunger is your body’s way of communicating it needs fuel to function, and fullness tells us when we have just the right amount of fuel. When we’ve ignored these cues, it can be challenging to recognize these signals in our body.

Your Weight Does NOT Define Your Worth. It can be easy to get caught up in the diet trends all around us these days. But, know that your weight does not define your worthiness as a human, nor does it determine if you deserve to eat. Fuel is important for bodies of all sizes and treating ourselves as worthy human beings is important. Weight is not necessarily the best indicator of health.

One of my favorite ways to define normal eating comes from Ellyn Satter, RD, MS, MSSW. I frequently share this with clients because it helps us see there is not one right way to eat. She defines normal eating as follows:

Normal eating is going to the table hungry and eating until you are satisfied. It is being able to choose food you enjoy and eat it and truly get enough of it – not just stop eating because you think you should. Normal eating is being able to give some thought to your food selection so you get nutritious food, but not being so wary and restrictive that you miss out on enjoyable food.

Normal eating is giving yourself permission to eat sometimes because you are happy, sad or bored, or just because it feels good. Normal eating is mostly three meals a day, or four or five, or it can be choosing to munch along the way. It is leaving some cookies on the plate because you know you can have some again tomorrow, or it is eating more now because they taste so wonderful. Normal eating is overeating at times, feeling stuffed and uncomfortable. And it can be undereating at times and wishing you had more.

Normal eating is trusting your body to make up for your mistakes in eating. Normal eating takes up some of your time and attention, but keeps its place as only one important area of your life. In short, normal eating is flexible. It varies in response to your hunger, your schedule, your proximity to food and your feelings.

Ready to make changes to your eating habits, address disordered patterns or work toward giving yourself unconditional permission to eat? Call Chelsea at 256-258-7777 x 107 or email her at chelsea@thebalancedlifellc.com