For as long as I can remember, I’ve been surrounded by advertisements and people showing me how to achieve the perfect body. The first commercial I remember watching was an advertisement for the LAP-band surgery ─ a surgery that inserts a ban in your stomach to help you feel fuller sooner. I remember my mom signing up for a Weight Watchers program when I was 5 and my dad getting liposuction surgery for his stomach when I was 8.
A few years later, the summer I started college, my friend and I exchanged stories about our struggles with diet culture. She told me that she practiced something called intuitive eating and explained how it positively changed her relationship with her body.
Intuitive eating rejects diet mentality and restrictive eating and instead advocates to honor one’s own hunger and cravings ─ as well as encourage individuals to make peace with all food. When you eat intuitively, you don’t subscribe to the typical three meals a day. You eat when your body tells you it’s hungry. You learn to check in with yourself, almost like a meditation, and listen to your body. You stop labeling food as “bad” or “good.”
Ultimately, you stop comparing what you’re eating to what others are eating. It’s a continuous practice of trusting and listening to yourself. It’s important to remember that intuitive eating is a practice. It’s okay to not be immediately great at knowing your own body ─ the truth is, most people don’t.
Everywhere I looked, the message I received was strong: I needed to restrict food in order to be accepted. At 7 years old, I wanted to go on a diet. At 11 years, I asked my parents for a weight loss tea for Christmas. I constantly thought about the food I ate and the calories I took in.
At 12, my body started uncontrollably changing. I grew taller, my hips became wider, and I got boobs. I felt out of control and hated my body. I didn’t know what to do. I was eating the same as I always had but that didn’t keep my body from changing. I became petrified that I would bend over and someone would see my stomach rolls or the stretch marks on my thighs.
The older I got, the more I felt the need to restrict my eating. I tried different diets, cutting out carbs, sugar and dairy, but it always resulted in me binging every time I was around food. My diet during the week became extremely strict, cutting out all “bad foods.” But, when the weekend came around, I would eat so much “unhealthy food” that I would get sick. I didn’t yet understand the mental and physical health issues that come with restrictive eating.
As I moved through my junior year of high school, I slowly started to accept and love my body for how it was ─ not how I thought it should be. I started to question if the problem was with my body or with the society that I grew up in.
I am not alone in this experience and that is why learning about and practicing intuitive eating is incredibly important for UO students. The National Eating Disorder Association conducted a national college survey from 1995 to 2008 and found that eating disorders have increased from 23% to 32% among females and from about 8% to 25% among males. Disordered eating affects all genders and young people are especially at risk. According to the Child Mind Institute, younger individuals are most at risk to develop an eating disorder during their college years.
With the holidays coming up, people with disordered eating feel an array of emotions. Some people are nervous about eating around their family, others are worried about eating too much or too little. So let this be a reminder that the only opinion that matters is yours and your body. Your food choices are no one’s business but your own. I challenge you to practice tuning in with your body in order to truly see what it needs to fuel itself.