How to Reframe Food Police Voices with Jennifer Baugh

Hola amigos! Welcome back!

Many of us are in a trap with eating, our minds swirling with health information battling our food preferences. Our minds have eating voices and the food police voice is particularly unhelpful! Tune in to learn how to ditch the food police through reframing exercises.

Highlights of this episode:

• Where Eating Voices Come From
• Food Policing
• Reframing Exercises

Announcements:

• Jennifer Baugh is a licensed and registered dietitian nutritionist at Orozco Nutrition, who is currently taking new clients. She offers free discovery calls prior to booking, so that you can ask any questions you may have about how she will work with you.

Episode Description: 

[03:49] Introducing Jennifer Baugh

 Jennifer is a registered dietitian nutritionist (RDN) at Orozco Nutrition. She identifies as an adopted southerner. Before becoming an RDN, she felt out of place with her career choices. Jennifer wanted to know more about health for herself, and ended up discovering her true career path in dietetics. What started as a need to fix people through dietary recommendations has evolved into empowering people with intuitive eating skills and using a health at every size approach.

Jennifer is familiar with the eating voices that lead to dieting, weight cycling, and poor health.

 [08:28] What are Eating Voices? 

Eating Voices are thoughts surrounding food, eating behaviors, food choices, that can be emotional. Some are helpful and some are not helpful. The concepts were identified in the book, INTUITIVE EATING: A Revolutionary Anti-Diet Approach by Evelyn Tribole, MS, RDN, and Elyse Resch, MS, RDN.  Different voice archetypes are identified by the authors as either Destructive or Ally Voices.

The most common destructive voice is the Food Police, it’s negative and authoritarian, which can be external and internal. The external influences our internal voice over time. A lot of “shoulding” is involved in this police state, “I should be eating this way.”  

As a young child, we eat more naturally. Negative voices come from experiencing the world, from the home, school, work environment, in entertainment media, social media, news media, it’s everywhere. Whether we realize it or not, there are many messages about food and health influencing the way we view food and our bodies.

[1815] Expanding Your Point of View

Jennifer grew up in the 80’s, a time where people in large bodies were always portrayed in a negative way. This can really skew a person’s point of view and damage their relationship to food. Fatphobia influences, and increases, our destructive eating voices. 

What we get exposed to has an impact on our beliefs and behaviors. Often times, depending on what you are are exposed to, you may not realize the diversity in bodies engaging in various diverse behaviors.

[20:04] Eating Voice Archetypes

Fatphobia can influence your destructive eating voices. The destructive voices are the Food Police, Nutrition Informant, and the Diet Rebel. Many dietitians get caught up being the nutrition informant because of our traditional training.

The eating voices are based off Eric Berne’s ego state divided into the parent (Food Police), adult (Nutrition Informant), and child (Diet Rebel). The voices are destructive because they can lead to disordered eating, disordered eating, unnecessary self-blame, and self-isolation.

The ally voices are Food Anthropologist, Rebel Ally, Nurturer, and Nutrition Ally. These voices are supportive, and a technique Intuitive Eating counselors use to lower the volume of the destructive voices’ power.

A food police voice is critical and will put things in a good and bad category. There are food rules and operating the judge and jury. For example, “bread is bad and needs to be limited.” It’s a trap because the voice is policing out of the fear that food will kill them. It’s sneaky because the voice can come from good intentions, out of honoring health.

[26:18] Food Police and Nutrition Informant

The informant is the perfect partner for the food police. The voice is to support the policing because it thinks food is only for health, wrapped up healthism, instead of actual health. It’s inferred that if you don’t eat these health foods, you are doing wrong or you are bad.

[28:39] Diet Rebel

The Diet Rebel is a self-destructive voice. When you follow the rules of “supposed to” and look at one factor of health, like the weight scale, and there is not progress, then the rules get thrown out the window. “I’ll show you!”

The rebel is an evitable destructive partner, coming from a place of deprivation from the food police and nutrition informant.

[31:01] How to Reframe the Eating Voices

Reframing these destructive voices does takes practice. Bringing in the Ally voices to help are identified as the Food Anthropologist, Rebel Ally, Nurturer, and Nutrition Ally. The food Anthropologist is like a child discovering food for the first time. Like an anthropologist, all assumptions are dropped. All you use is facts and non-judgment to help you make food decisions. Instead of emotions, using objective data, can help tune out the destructive voices.

At a workshop at Clarify Fitness, Jennifer and participants wrote down some destructive voices and reframed them into Ally voices. These are some of their examples:

Food Police: “flour and sugar are addictive as heroin and need to be avoided.”

Reframe: Food is not a street drug.

Why this is okay: These foods have been within most people’s food ways for centuries. Diet culture demonizes foods and then the “forbidden” mentality is not helpful for our health.

Food Police: “I’m too bloated for this outfit, so I need to skip a meal.”

Reframe: Our bodies require food, there are many reasons to be bloated, what can I learn?

Why this is okay: Bloating is a body signal. Since our bodies need food, there is not a real reason to skip a meal. Instead, explore what it could have caused it. Was it the food? Was it how much I ate of it? What if I’m bloated for a non-food reason? Like drinking a lot of water or stress.

Food Police: “You need to burn off your food.”

Reframe: Even at rest, my body deserves food.

Why this is okay: This is a punishment statement, reflective of “calories in, calories out,” mentality. If you ate a meal with “too many” calories, “too much” fat, etc., there may be a reason that happened. Going into punishment mode can lead to more unhealthy behaviors, like undereating and over exercising.

[45:14] One Small Thing to Have Helpful Voices

The one small thing to have more helpful voices is to be present, non-judgmental about these voices or thoughts. If there is a lot of “shoulding,” that is a sign of a destructive voice. Exploring that voice and how our bodies feel with non-judgment is a small step towards gaining more helpful voices. And, remember, it’s ok to need help. There is so much misinformation about nutrition, based on fear.

Check out our new eating voices handout here:

Resources:

• INTUITIVE EATING: A Revolutionary Anti-Diet Approach (book)
• Fat and Fit, Ultra runner: Mirna Valerio (article)

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Chop the diet mentality; Fuel Your Body; and Nourish Your Soul!