Been working on your relationship with food? Here’s a quick quiz to monitor one aspect of it:
True or False:
1.) When there’s a certain food in your home or workplace you experience an odd amount of psychic energy thinking about whether or not you are going to eat it
2.) You are known to finish certain foods to “get them out of the house.”
3.) You notice you are continually trying to “get back on track” or postponing it just one more meal, day, week longer
4.) Your mind works in absolutes, as in ,”Starting ______ I’m never having X again.”
5.) There’s foods that you are worried to take a single bite of
6.) There are certain foods that, when eaten, result in a food free-for-all because, hey, you blew it anyways
Answer a good deal of Trues?
Take note – These are symptoms of dietary perfectionism.
(More on dietary perfection)
The pattern is predictable: The foods you are trying to avoid enter your world. You eat them again. ”Agh!” You feel you’ve failed. You might rationalize eating a lot to get the craving out of your system for good. You swear off this food (starting tomorrow). You think in absolutes. The cycle continues.
Some experience day after day of Last Supper Syndrome, always putting off their dietary perfection for the next day. Some waiver between periods of Last Super Syndrome and periods of pristine eating.
Details aside, doing the same thing over and over again with hopes that it turns out differently is no real remedy at all.
A huge part of this initial quandary is there are foods that you believe you cannot have.
You may believe if you do eat them there will be a very negative (or even intolerable) consequence.
One grounded, practical, down-to-earth, sort of way of working with Last Supper Syndrome is to challenge the pattern by consciously throwing a wrench in the system.
How? It’s a little different for everyone.
In it’s broadest sense, I help my clients do the good work of putting all foods back on the menu again. No mind tricks. No empty promises. No more absolutes. It’s a step that simply can’t be skipped in your pursuit of “health,” or even finding a healthy sustainable weight.
We also navigate the richness and the complexity of all that gets kicked up in the process.
That’s where the Real Work is anyways and it deserves so much love and respect.
What sort of work are you willing to do? What sort of eater would you really, deep down, like to be?
With love,
Laura
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