Can I eat Ice Cream for every meal???

Yes, you totally can – eating is your choice and you can decide. Give yourself permission to eat what you want. Ice cream or any other food for that matter is neither good nor bad.

But, eating only ice cream for every meal is not really intuitive eating. Giving yourself unconditional permission to eat ANY food at ANY time is part of the Intuitive Eating journey. Intuitive eating is knowing that there is a lot more to health than just what you eat.

“Intuitive eating is knowing that there is a lot more to health than just what you eat.”

It consists of your mental health, your relationship with food, how you feel in your body, your physical health and so much more. While it is 100% your choice to decide what you eat, you are probably not at your best if you only eat ice cream or anything else 100% of the time. Intuitive eating’s goal is to get you to truly sustainable health – which includes eating the foods you love without judgment and also helping you feel your best. 

For many chronic dieters, the idea of having ice cream always available prevents habituation (aka getting comfortable), which is key to having a healthy relationship with food. For example, habituation is why leftovers from thanksgiving get less and less appealing each day. You can only take so much turkey and stuffing. Diets, however, cause foods to be “forbidden” and then that food becomes all-consuming and when you finally get the chance to eat, you usually overeat and then feel guilty and then that leads to a feeling that you are not able to control yourself around that food. It is a vicious cycle that gets stronger and stronger with each diet.

Eating Ice cream all the time may sound like a dream come true, especially if you have been in the diet trenches a long time, but in reality, it is probably not what you need (or even want).  But, and this is SO key, you should give yourself to eat all the ice cream you want. It will ALWAYS be there for you. It is not either good or bad. Understanding this and giving yourself unconditional permission to eat is one of the steps in Intuitive eating. Letting yourself know and comprehend that no food is going to go away and you always have the option to eat it helps you begin to begin gaining trust back with your body and also give you the power again, not the food. 

This is a hard concept to understand and to put into practice - but I promise taking the power away from food and not letting food be a moral issue is one of the first steps to healing your relationship with food and learning to live a healthy balanced life.