Should You Be Eating In Moderation?
By Katherine Metzelaar, MSN, RDN, CD
The use of “eating in moderation “ is something that has been around for some time and is used colloquially in culture and language.
In many places and spaces you’ll often see the use of “eating in moderation” when it comes to food as an encouragement. You can hear recommendations around eating in moderation at doctor's offices, at friend’s houses, in grocery stores and all over the media. Common ways it’s used are, “You can eat whatever you want as long as it’s in moderation” or “Everything in moderation is a way that you stay healthy.”
But what exactly is eating in moderation when it comes to food? And is the word helpful when you are wanting to create a more peaceful relationship with food, free from rules and diets and food restriction?
The definition of moderation
Moderation by itself is defined as “the avoidance of excess or extremes, especially in one’s behavior or political opinions.” And culturally, moderation is seen as the gold standard when talking about eating. So, when talking about what moderation means regarding “eating in moderation,” what does “excess“ or “extremes” mean when it comes to food? And how do you make sense of eating in moderation in the context of diet culture? Are there any exceptions in which eating in moderation is not recommended? How does someone know what moderation is? Is it a portion size, a quantity, frequency, or a measurement?
The answer is that it's virtually impossible.
It’s quite challenging to talk about the use of eating in moderation when it comes to food because it’s being used in the context of diet culture. This is because diet culture tells you that there are “good” and “bad” foods and that you need to be extra careful when eating certain foods and limit your intake. Thus, “eating in moderation” is often used as a way to encourage dieting and restricting food, even though proponents of moderation would beg to differ. In fact many diet companies advertise their diet as being something that’s “moderate” and that you can “eat whatever you want as long as it’s in ‘moderation’.” They teach moderation as a virtue and as a fast track to weight loss.
“Eat in moderation” is used as an encouragement to restrict certain foods/food groups without having to explicitly say it and quick search on google will show you how true this is. The first many pages are filled with dieting tips, weight loss encouragement and demonizing foods if only you can learn how to eat more moderately.
Is there a place for “eating in moderation” if you want to heal your relationship with food?
When you have been stuck in cycles of dieting for some time it is very common that once you start nourishing yourself and eating enough to support your body and its energy needs, you will experience a lot of extremes. You will begin to experience the extreme of hunger and of fullness. You’ll experience the extremes of swinging from one side of the pendulum to the other with hunger and fullness. You will experience the rebound effects of not dieting anymore and not restricting your food intake and coming out of that often with a voracious appetite. There is no place for moderation in this case because your body is healing and needs to know that food is abundant and that you will feed it.
So if you consider that moderation is often a synonym for food restriction and an encouragement for weight loss in this culture, when you tell yourself to eat in moderation it will feel like restriction because it is. Whether or not this is your intention, the impact is what matters most. For example, when you go out and buy yourself a pack of your most favorite chocolate chip cookies. As soon as you open the bag, you tell yourself that you need to eat them in moderation. So in this context, what does moderation mean? Does it mean you can only have one cookie? Two? How many would moderation dictate and who determines that?
You can see very quickly in that scenario that moderation becomes food restriction in an instant and telling yourself to eat in moderation often leads to eating more than you had intended and/or feeling a sense of deprivation. This is why eating in moderation is not possible when you’re wanting to heal your relationship with food. This is not to say that you will be eating more or less than what you imagine “eating in moderation” to be, but rather that it’s not helpful as a path to healing.
In fact, for many people who have chronically dieted or been stuck in disordered eating, even the idea of eating in moderation can be triggering for them. This is because after years of food restriction, it’s hard to tolerate even hinting at food restriction and can cause people to eat more than they usually would because it feels like a threat to the body.
Why “eating in moderation” doesn’t work
Food takes up a lot of headspace when you’re stuck in disordered eating. You feel out of control around food, that you can’t keep certain foods in the house, and that certain foods are “addictive”. It’s common to to fear yourself unconditional permission to have food and eating in moderation can seem like a middle group when you feel afraid of food. But the resolution to disordered eating is not to introduce more food restrictions and that is what ultimately is what eating in moderation means.
Healing disordered eating means rejecting cultural and societal notions of what you “should” be eating and how much you “shouldn’t” be eating because those judgements and ideas are fueled by diet culture. Creating peace with food means that you will need to assure that, in addition to making sure you get enough food, that you cultivate a greater sense of connection to your internal experience and allow that to guide how much you do or don’t eat.
So the irony here is that when you’re wanting to create peace with food and stop dieting, you will need to completely abandon this notion of eating moderation in its totality because it’s too closely associated with a cultural belief around food restriction being a “good” thing.
How are eating Moderation, Gluttony and Weight Stigma connected?
It’s difficult to talk about eating in moderation and why this culture reveres it so much without talking about the notion of gluttony. The infamous term that is rooted largely in religion, but has over time made its way out into mainstream media. And any time that gluttony is discussed or depicted in movies, shows and stories, there is always a fat person that plays that role.
The association with “gluttony” and fatness is something that is repeated so much that it becomes internalized. It’s a prime example of how weight stigma is built into our language and then impacts beliefs about your body and other people’s bodies. In this way, it’s not possible to talk about eating in moderation without talking about the association to it being the opposite of gluttony and therefore the “path to thinness” and a distancing from fatness.
In reality, bodies come in all different sizes and shapes and most of what impacts your body size is largely out of our control despite what this culture tells us. Things like genetics, history of dieting/disordered eating, trauma, endocrine disorders and medications impact body size and the range in which your body feels most safe.
So in conclusion, as a dietitian I don’t support the use of “eating in moderation” and I want to encourage you to reject it too. It’s confusing, encourages food restriction, is an ambiguous term and has harmful weight stigma baked into it. There are many other ways to create a peaceful relationship with food free from diets and food restriction that allow you not to feel out of control with food that has nothing to do with the way this (dieting) culture tells you to “eat in moderation.”
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