Hi and welcome back to the Fresh Focus podcast. My name is Megan Rivenburg, and I am a dietetic intern at the Bay Pines VA in Florida. If you’ve been listening along to this series then you’ll know that one of my favorite things to do is to help people dispel common myths about nutrition and about food in general. There’s so much information out there that it can be hard to sort through what’s real information and what’s not. Over the past few episodes my goal has been to tackle 6 of these myths that are really common and shed some light on the truth. And today’s topic has to be one of the ones I was most excited to talk about.
That is the myth that in order to be healthy, we need to eat perfectly 100% of the time, the myth that we cannot enjoy the foods we love if they are not seen as traditionally healthy, and the myth that dietitians expect you to eat perfectly all the time. Because in reality, dietic interns and dietitians alike love their pizza and ice cream just as much as you do! And they know that you are a human, who has your own taste preferences and comfort foods and needs more than just fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean proteins to feel happy and satisfied.
It’s easy for us to get caught up in the “all or nothing” mentality that tells us we must eat perfectly healthy all the time, and if we “mess up” by eating a cookie, then we might as well eat 10 more cookies and start all over tomorrow, right? I think most of us can relate to thinking this way at some point or another. But what’s interesting is that this all or nothing mentality really just sets us up for failure because it’s self-sabotaging. Think about it- what’s the better option?
Craving pancakes in the morning and making them for breakfast and then continuing on with your day and eating nourishing, well-balanced meals and snacks and even getting a workout in, or craving pancakes and thinking the whole time while eating them “these are so unhealthy,” and letting that feeling dictate how you eat for the rest of the day. Choosing other foods that you consider unhealthy or don’t make you feel the best, because you “already messed up,” and skipping that workout because you don’t see the point when you already ate “poorly.” If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone.
There’s actually a really interesting concept that I learned about in a psychology class back when I was in undergrad called ironic process theory. It was first theorized by Daniel Wegner in 1987 when he was studying thought suppression, and is often referred to as the white bear problem. Let’s walk through an example.
I’m going to time you for 10 seconds, and my only ask for the whole 10 seconds is, whatever you do, do NOT think about a white bear. Ready? Go. (10 second pause).What did you think about during those 10 seconds? I can almost guarantee you were trying so hard not to think about a white bear, that all you could think about was a white bear. Am I right?
Wegner’s ironic process theory refers to the idea that when we tell ourselves not to think about something, we will naturally start to think about it even more than we would have otherwise. I mean, when’s the last time you thought about a white bear before just now?
So, how does this relate to the topic of nutrition? When we are told we can’t have something, or tell ourselves that we can’t have something, like ice cream for example, because ice cream is my favorite, that thing becomes all we can think about. Ice cream becomes the “white bear.” When we are actively trying not to think about ice cream, or when we are aware in the back of our minds that we “can’t have” ice cream, we will likely think about wanting it even more than we would have thought about it under normal circumstances.
The solution? Let yourself have some ice cream! When ice cream is no longer deemed “bad” or seen as “off limits,” it actually becomes a whole lot less exciting. It’s still amazing, of course, because it’s ice cream, but there are times when it just… might not sound that appealing. There was definitely a time in my own personal life when I put ice cream on a pedestal, and would have laughed at this idea and called it crazy, but it’s pretty cool how true it is!
There is no doubt that food is fuel. It keeps us alive and keeps us going. But food is also so much more than fuel. It helps facilitate connection between people, it’s an aspect of culture and tradition, it’s a medium through which some people show their love. Food is a way to express creativity, fun, and pleasure, food can bring us back to a special time or place, and food can also be comforting. All of these things are OK. You can eat a healthy diet and still allow food to be all of these things. After all, it’s really so much more about what you do most of the time than what you do some of the time.
As someone going into a career in nutrition, there’s no doubt in my mind that food is an incredibly important aspect of health. But I think it’s also really important to put things into perspective and remember that food is just one aspect of physical health, and physical health is just one aspect of overall health. Choosing food that feeds your soul can have a place that’s equally as important as choosing food that fuels your body.
The bottom line here is that eating should be enjoyable. And, as many dietitians love to say, all foods can fit into a healthy diet.
Thank you so much for listening along to this myth buster series on the Fresh Focus podcast. I am so happy that you tuned in!