Is Entitlement Eating Disrupting Your Intuitive Eating?

Coming to consciousness around diet-culture can be overwhelming. Anger is not an uncommon emotion to experience. You may be angry that diet-culture stole years of your life, favorite foods, and important relationships. This anger is normal.

Honoring feelings, including anger, is essential to the intuitive eating process. However, behaviors that are reactive to this anger can be a signal that diet-culture still has its hold on your life.

When we react to something, we are likely still controlled by that something. In intuitive eating, we call this entitlement eating. It can look like, “Diet-culture told me I could never have Nutella, so now I’m going to eat all the Nutella and no one can tell me not to.” 

By all means, eat the Nutella. But if you’re only eating the Nutella as a “f*ck you” to diet-culture, then diet-culture is still controlling what you’re eating. It’s just now, you’re eating what it told you not to eat, instead of what it told you to eat. You aren’t deciding what you want to eat from a place of attunement, satisfaction, self-care, and hunger; you’re deciding what to eat based on whatever is the opposite of diet-culture’s rules. Therefore, the rules are still dictating your life.

How do we avoid this trap? First, name it. Then, redirect yourself to intuitive eating’s principles: Are you hungry? Does it satisfy a craving? Does eating this support my needs right now? How else could I honor the anger I’m feeling? 

When you redirect and make decisions from this place of attunement, you’re responding rather than reacting. Sometimes, you might still want the Nutella. That’s cool, too, but now you know it's because you’re eating intuitively, not because you’re in the entitlement eating trap.