Intuitive Eating for College Students

I remember when I first started college at my small liberal arts school. At this time, I had a pretty disordered relationship with food. I had been trying to lose weight for years by skipping meals, over-exercising, and fasting for large parts of the day. This would (of course) lead to me bingeing in secret in my room after school.

I thought going to college would be liberating and it was-  just not with food.

Dining hall food is notoriously awful. Unless you’re going to some very unique college, your options are limited. You may be lucky enough to have a kitchen to cook your own food or options off campus that are tasty and affordable. But many of us, like myself back in the day, are pretty stuck with dining hall food.

Combine this with everyday fatphobia around the “freshman 15” and going away to college makes eating fraught with fear, confusion, and limited options. To make it more complicated, any kind of choice can feel overwhelming when you move from the structure and routine of your family and friends and enter an entirely new environment. Maybe a whole new culture, whole new geography! Mix in understandable identity shifts and it’s a chaotic time.

I want to help you find a way in this chaotic time to have more peace with food and your body.

The first step is to commit to not dieting.

I’ve said this in other places and I’ll say it here, too- you are more interesting than your weight. You are so much more interesting than how your body looks or performs or functions. You do not have to fit into the crowd by dieting or restricting, by over-exercising, or by perpetuating fat-hate.

The second step is to commit to getting to know yourself deeply.

Maybe this is even scarier for you than the first step! But, dear one, this is what college is honestly about. (I say this not only as a former college student myself but as a professor!) In my course, I walk you through Intuitive Eating, but first I want you to understand that this whole process if about connecting you to you. It’s about getting to know your patterns with anxiety or perfectionism, it’s about finding what motivates you in life and what your passions are, and it’s about learning what boundaries feel good to you. This process is about you launching yourself in your adulthood with a strong foundation of knowing who you are and what you value.

I’m a therapist, so of course I think food is actually about emotion. What did you really expect?!

The third step is to start learning about your hunger and your fullness.

Do you get hangry like me? Every person I’ve ever dated has learned to provide me with snacks before having a serious conversation with me. I do not do well on an empty stomach. I need to eat breakfast first thing or I will be a very irritable person. If it’s 2pm and we haven’t stopped for lunch yet, you better get ready for escalating sassy comebacks. But, I do not need gourmet meals all the time and I don’t need to find the best burrito in the city. I don’t need a feast for every meal, but I do need to eat at regular intervals. Start looking at what patterns of eating and what types of food make you feel your best at that moment.

The fourth step is accepting change, and learning to cope with it.

This I think is especially hard during the college years, when there’s already a lot of change and instability. With the ending of every quarter or semester is a change in classes, professors, classmates, etc. You may be changing rooms or roommates, friend groups, clubs, and you’re already dealing with the change from your high school life. I can keep naming ways college (and even your early 20s) is filled with upheavals, but the point of the matter is it’s a very unstable time for many of us. This may be part of the reason food or your body feel like a safe place to exert some control. The reality is you do not have control over your body. You can’t control your size or shape or weight as much as you may think you can. Instead, what will really help you eat with more peace, is learning to cope with change in other ways. And learning to accept that your body is going to change through your college years because that’s what bodies do. They change! You change! College is about change!

So let’s find a more peaceful way to work with it.

If this all sounds overwhelming, that’s understandable! It is quite different than what most of us are taught. What I’m proposing is a deeper way to feel more at ease during this phase of your life. Really, what I’m proposing is a whole new way of living for your whole adulthood!

If you’re up for this challenge, I’ve got some things to help! Check out my store for my e-courses and other materials focused on Health at Every Size, Intuitive Eating, and Self Compassion. My website has info for other resources and providers in your area. And, of course, I provide one-on-one therapy for students just like you!