Why I don’t like the term: “eating in moderation.”
Terms like "moderation," "mindful eating," and "portion control" sound like reasonable terms to the intellectual mind, but have you ever noticed an emotional binge or overeating response when you hear them?
That's because these terms have been used so many times by the diet industry that they have become synonymous with unsustainability.
These terms also don't take into account one very real issue among people who feel out of control around food -- the control and restriction of food, even in "reasonable" ways, is out of reach. So instead of being an answer, it becomes another problem because we feel more broken, like "why can't I just eat like a normal, responsible adult?? How hard can moderation be??"
But moderation is next to impossible if you have a history of the binge restrict cycle, or even if you're just predisposed to using food as a psychological rebellion.
Before your body/mind would even contemplate eating in "moderation," it has to overcome the deeper issues that created the binge and overeating in the first place.
If diet culture convinced you that you needed more self-control and willpower to shape your body into society’s ideal, you may still be harboring the shame and condescension from that messaging and it’s interrupting your ability to “just eat in balance.”
The good news: you CAN overcome this. You are not destined to eat in a surplus all the time — your body does understand how to regulate food, but we have to get the diet culture mentality out of our way first.
