If you were to check off a relationship status in regards to food, would it be neutral or it's complicated? For some of us, it's the latter. So how can we rebuild our relationship and improve it?
Thank you for defining and explaining food neutrality! I have heard people talk about it but it’s never been really clear to me. I feel neutral now that I’ve discarded a dieting mindset. I still have different types of complicated feelings about food. First, I can feel neutral toward food but that doesn’t mean other people will feel neutral about my food choices. So I do still feel concerned about my experiences of social judgment. This is a common experience for fat people. Our eating is policed to see if we are behaving as “good fatties” and subscribing to the dieting rules to keep us submissive and shamed. Second, I have chronic illnesses and eating is a genuine challenge on a daily basis so while I don’t ascribe moral values to individual foods. Any food often feels nauseating to even consider eating. That makes for a laborious process to find things that I can tolerate. And my interoception is low so that makes it even more challenging. So it really helped to be able to distinguish these challenges from the meaning of food neutrality.
I wrote a little about this today. Twenty months in on intuitive eating, my relationship with food is better than it’s ever been. Food noise is gone, and there is no more food shame and blame. My relationship with my body, though, is still very much a work in progress. While my food hang ups are pretty much gone, I’m still working to tap into somatic awareness. https://www.almostsated.com/p/tapping-into-somatic-wisdom
This is a great primer! Thanks for writing this.
Thank you 😊
Thank you for defining and explaining food neutrality! I have heard people talk about it but it’s never been really clear to me. I feel neutral now that I’ve discarded a dieting mindset. I still have different types of complicated feelings about food. First, I can feel neutral toward food but that doesn’t mean other people will feel neutral about my food choices. So I do still feel concerned about my experiences of social judgment. This is a common experience for fat people. Our eating is policed to see if we are behaving as “good fatties” and subscribing to the dieting rules to keep us submissive and shamed. Second, I have chronic illnesses and eating is a genuine challenge on a daily basis so while I don’t ascribe moral values to individual foods. Any food often feels nauseating to even consider eating. That makes for a laborious process to find things that I can tolerate. And my interoception is low so that makes it even more challenging. So it really helped to be able to distinguish these challenges from the meaning of food neutrality.
Yes food neutrality can be complex because we are so wired to think differently from society.
I wrote a little about this today. Twenty months in on intuitive eating, my relationship with food is better than it’s ever been. Food noise is gone, and there is no more food shame and blame. My relationship with my body, though, is still very much a work in progress. While my food hang ups are pretty much gone, I’m still working to tap into somatic awareness. https://www.almostsated.com/p/tapping-into-somatic-wisdom