A Gift of Trust

Heather, we trust you, we just don’t trust the situation. I heard this often as a teenager in my high school years. I didn’t like it because it didn’t make any sense to me. If my parents trusted me, couldn’t they trust that I was smart enough to handle whatever situation life threw at me? 

So surely they didn’t trust me. 

And because I decided that they didn’t trust me, I decided that I might as well behave in an untrustworthy way. 

Now even though I was an extravert—I wasn’t a drinker or a partier. 

I was a sit in the living room at a friend’s house and play euchre kind of girl. And occasionally I was a go to Dunkin Donuts at midnight kind of girl. 

The only problem was that I had to be home by 11pm. 

So I’d come home by curfew and go to bed. I’d wait under my covers—dressed in my day-time clothes—until the house was quiet. Then I’d hold my breath as I’d tiptoe to the front door, slowly open it and quietly slip out into the darkness. Once in my car, I’d both breathe a sigh of relief and feel exhilarated. I was untrustworthy, but I was free. 

Free to do what? Usually free to go play more euchre. And it definitely wasn’t the cards calling my name, but the bright and funny kids holding those cards. I didn’t want to miss out on any of the fun.

Did I ever got caught sneaking out of the house or slipping back in? No, but I’m happier being a rule follower than a rebel and so the sneaking out and the story I told myself of why I had to sneak out felt heavy.

Today I see things more clearly. My perspective has matured and I agree with my parents. There are situations out there that we shouldn’t blindly trust—and for me, one of those is the processed and packaged food industry. 

As a coach, I hear over and over from my clients that they don’t feel like they can trust themselves around food. They blame themselves for not having enough willpower as they repeatedly succumb to the foods that they don’t, but do, want to eat. 

With some embarrassment or a deep sigh, they’ll tell me that they “cheated.” 

But I don’t see it that way—the way I see it is that the foods are cheating them.  

Here’s why: as humans, we’ve evolved to crave sugar, salt and fat—all necessary for survival. We’re biologically driven to seek out foods with these ingredients. The processed foods industry knows this—and intentionally designs its products with the exact right combinations of sugar, salt and fat to make us consume as much as possible.

It’s not personal, it’s business—the more addicted we are, the more we’ll want and the more we’ll buy.

So it’s not the apples, celery, broccoli or burgers we need to worry about. It’s the cereal, chips and candy bars. Even a once upon a time innocent yogurt can now come with more sugar than ice-cream and feel impossible to put down. 

Eating well is a decision that can initially feel like an uphill battle—but with attention and intention, it possible. And over time, becomes much easier.

So would you like to trust yourself around food again? 

These three steps will show you how. 

1. Remove the worst offenders from your home—these are the foods you know aren’t doing you any long-term favors. It’s not fun to be sneaky, so create a home you don’t have to sneak around in. Don't worry about missing out, this doesn’t mean you can’t ever eat them again—but at least your home will now be a safe place from the foods that are intentionally designed to keep you eating.

   Look in your kitchen cabinets and remove 3 items that end up filling you with shame and regret. Give them to a neighbor or ask your loved ones to eat them so that you can no longer feel their pull on you. 

2. Fill your kitchen with whole foods and all their flavors—sweet, salty, bitter, sour and umami. Sweetness never comes alone in nature. It's always packaged with a bitter flavor. Bitter is the taste that satiates us and the food industry knows that if there isn't a bitter element in a product, it'll be harder to stop eating it. This is why the avalanche of refined, processed sugar in our diet has been stripped of any nutrition (and other flavors), it’s so that we have seconds, thirds, fourths and fifths. Apples can be as sweet as cookies but they’re much more filling because of their bitter skin.

   Make your next grocery list with at least 75% flavorful whole food ingredients and at a maximum 25% processed, packaged foods. 

3. Create a trust list of splurge foods. These are processed, packaged foods that probably rank high on industry metrics like cravability, snackability, crunch and mouthfeel but you're able to stop eating them. My trust list includes cassava chips, they’re good and designed to not fill me up, but somehow I can manage to stop eating them before the bag is empty. What’s not on my personal trust list? Dried organic mango. I’ve learned that if I buy it, I eat the whole bag and then I feel sick and swollen. My body isn’t designed to be able to process that much concentrated sugar at once so I no longer buy it and my life feels lighter because of this decision.

   What’s going on your trust list of splurge foods? And of equal importance, what’s not?

Life throws a lot of situations at us. 

Some of them are less trustworthy than others—but you, you are always trustworthy.

You see, you never cheated.

The very savvy processed and packaged food industry cheated you. But now you know the game that’s being played. Allow this knowledge to this fill you with desire and motivation for better!

May this holiday season bring you the gift of trust—trusting the person you are today and trusting in your future potential. Trusting that even if you haven’t trusted yourself in the past, that you can decide to do so now.

May you trust in you.