Repairing Your Relationship with Forced Food from Childhood

We all have foods we hated as a child because we were forced to eat them or told, “You’re not allowed to leave the table until your plate is clean.” I remember when I was six, sitting at my grandmother’s table with a plate of thick-cut ham, canned spinach, and mac and cheese. I had no problem eating the mac and cheese and ham, but with the spinach, I can still remember the bitter taste of the unseasoned greens. Sitting at that table for thirty minutes after the rest of my cousins and grandparents had finished eating and moved on to the next room was humiliating. Because I had to force myself to eat that spinach, I grew to resent it and would feel sick whenever I saw or smelled canned spinach. This behavior and psychological correlation between spinach and sickness continued until I reached my twenties. I beat this way of thinking by finding different ways to prepare spinach and found that I prefer spinach raw.

Building the Relationship

Constructing a healthy eating relationship with the food you once scorned as a child is vital in Intuitive Eating. You can accomplish this feat similarly to what I did—finding different ways to prepare the food you were forced to eat than how they were ready for you in the past. If your forced food came pre-frozen and had to be microwaved, see how you prefer them if you cook them. Expand your knowledge and look up seasoning options to improve the taste of foods you previously didn’t like; you may find a new fun way to cook them! You can find raw options of pre-frozen foods that give you more power over how it comes out. 

Challenge The Food Police

Learning how to challenge the food police and honor your hunger/ feeling your fullness are two of the ten principles of Intuitive Eating. Challenging the food police is giving yourself the authority to choose what you want to eat and how much you want to eat to feel full. If you have a plate full of food, and you eat the amount that makes you feel full, do not feel like you have to clean off your plate to be done. When you are full, then you are finished eating that meal. 

Honor Your Fullness

Honoring your fullness can come from the experience of eating a portion of food that fulfills your sensation of fullness, but that does not mean you overeat. For those who have been involved with diet culture for an extended period of time or have recovered from an eating disorder, the sensation of fullness may be forgotten. This is not easy to overcome, but it will take time; please do not give up on yourself! Unlearning the “clean plate club” takes time and effort; this old way of thinking can disconnect internal hunger cues and when the body is full. 

This leads to making peace with food that used to be forced as a child. You can make peace with them by working through the two processes described above and finding newer ways to prepare forced foods. If you have questions about Intuitive Eating workshops, please email Robin Harris at robin@bodypositiveacupuncture.com, to schedule a workshop or a one-one session.