Earlier today I tuned into one of Esther Perel’s Sessions (an online educational webinar for professionals in the helping field). She talked about our current state of anxiety and grief, how our lack of touch deprives us of oxytocin, and that right now in the middle of a pandemic, self love is more important now than ever. Couldn’t agree more. But then her co-host said something that threw me off — that self-love in the form of “a donut” wouldn’t be a good form of self-love, since it ultimately harms you down the road.
I would argue that *that* is much more harmful thought! Sitting there thinking that a donut — which maybe sounds good or is available to you in that moment— will then be harmful to your health down the road contributes to food fear. It says “When I take pleasure from food, I’ll feel guilty later”. Spoiler alert: food fear starts a cycle of restricting, overeating, and guilt – which ACTUALLY will harm you down the road.
Feelings of food guilt weaken our intuition and make it hard for us to trust ourselves around food. We start to automatically associate foods with guilt, rather than remembering that we can get pleasure from food, and have NO GUILT!
When it comes to eating, I think self love looks like trusting your body and mind to tell you what foods sound good in a moment and what doesn’t. Don’t we trust the people we love, and love the people we trust?
Giving yourself permission to eat a donut out of self love won’t mean you’ll eat donuts everyday. You probably won’t want donuts everyday! (This is a nod to Abundance Theory, which I’ll dive deeper into another time). But it does mean that when you want a donut, you’ll have one, and move right along loving yourself the whole way.