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Diet culture makes us believe we're "good" or "bad" if we eat certain foods. When you have Crohn’s or colitis, these feelings may intensify, especially if you go on an IBD diet such as the specific carbohydrate diet (SCD), where there are "legal" or "illegal" foods.
Yes, there are inflammatory foods that, if consumed on a daily basis, could eventually lead to inflammation and active disease. However, even with those inflammatory foods, we can have them here and there without causing active disease.
So, give yourself some grace. It's okay to have that ice cream or whatever floats your boat when you're craving it. It's not what your diet looks like on any given day, but what your diet looks like overall that makes the biggest difference.
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The biggest concern most people express is that they don't trust their body and believe that if they truly listen to their food cravings they'll just keep eating foods like ice cream. The truth is that this is simply not the case when you're focused on listening to your food cravings rather than listening to diet culture thoughts.
One of my clients LOVED fast food but worried that if she consumed it when she was craving it, that she would overdo it.
I told her to eat fast food whenever she craved it that week and she ended up eating it for lunch and dinner 4 days in a row. But do you know what she had that next day for lunch? A roasted veggie bowl.
“That was an interesting choice. Why didn’t you have fast food again?”, I asked her.
She told me, “it just didn’t sound good.”
While this is an extreme example, it highlights the point that I see frequently in my practice. When people restrict food that they enjoy and then allow themselves to consume it, sometimes their initial reaction is to consume a lot of it. This is a perfectly natural response to restriction and not something to be fearful of. Overtime, your food cravings will start to balance out without the influence of diet culture.
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