What is Mental Restriction?.... By Nathalie Mouawad

Most people who come to intuitive eating have recognized how depriving themselves of the food they enjoy or adequate food fuels overeating and binging, but there’s another type of restriction that impacts your relationship with food. This blog post explains how mental restriction impacts your relationship with food, and four tips for overcoming it. 

In my experience, most people who come to intuitive eating do so after realizing that restricting the foods they love in the name of weight loss just leads to binging, emotional eating, and impulsive eating. Over time (and usually many, many failed diets), they start to recognize that maybe the problem isn’t them, and may actually be the dieting itself. They’re not in fact uncontrollable eating machines, but rather suffering from the predictable effects of dieting and deprivation. 

What is Mental Restriction? 

Mental restriction is a type of restriction that occurs when one isn’t physically refraining from eating a food, but are telling themselves they shouldn’t be eating something, or mentally setting conditions for it. While you might be physically allowing yourself to eat the “bad” food or a more adequate amount, emotionally, it still feels like you’re doing something wrong. The stress and shame that’s created by mental restriction interferes with your ability to have a peaceful relationship with food, and to confidently feed yourself. 

With mental restriction, you may have stoped dieting, but your brain hasn’t! 

Mental restriction shows up in thoughts and emotions around food and eating rather than behaviors. Here’s some examples of mental restriction:

* “I can’t believe I ate that. I should have eaten something healthier”
* “I’ll let myself eat this today, but I’ll be better tomorrow.” 
* “If I didn’t let myself eat desserts every day, my body wouldn’t be so gross.” 
* “It’s OK that I’m eating this as long as I make it to my workout class tomorrow morning.” 
* “It’s fine that I’m eating this today, but I probably shouldn’t eat it again this week.” 
* “I should be able to ignore my growling stomach and make it until dinner. What’s wrong with me for needing a snack?”

For some, mental restriction may not show up in specific or coherent thoughts, but rather intense feelings of anxiety or shame when eating certain foods. 

Intuitive eating and other non-diet approaches teach that physical restriction, or the deprivation of specific foods, food groups, or adequate nutrition, fuels a powerful drive to eat, a drive that can only be contained for so long. If someone can contain that drive to eat for an extended period of time, it’s almost never without significant physical and mental health consequences - ya know, the symptoms of an eating disorder. 

However, aside from physical restriction, there’s another kind of restriction that can damage your relationship with food, and make eating much more stressful than it needs to be. It’s called mental restriction, which I sometimes refer to as emotional restriction. While mental restriction is much less talked about, it can be just as harmful as physical restriction, and is often something people struggle with well into their healing journey.