Structure + Freedom: We ALL need BOTH.
But! WHAT ABOUT BREAKFAST.
Image: Old Woman Selling Eggs, Hendrick Bloemaert, 1632, Rijksmuseum. Used with permission.
Hi friends! After last week, a reader asked if I was veering off in a whole nother direction by personally "skipping" breakfast. This is a good question! Because "MEALS" is basically the one-word solution to a boatload of problems, and I want you to know what I mean by that word.
Reader, here's the answer: I suppose I might one day veer off in a whole nother direction. But NOT TODAY. In detail:
Humans do best with some amount of structure. That's true of all eaters, not just binge eaters or problem eaters.
It's great to have a structure that's repeatable, aka MEALS at MEALTIMES. Reinventing the wheel every time you think about eating is really gonna cut into your time and creativity and emotional reserves.
(By the way, reinventing the food wheel every day is what Intuitive Eating asks you to do, which is why it's such a confusing shitstorm of disastrous confusion, despair and spectacular weight gain for so many of the people I talk to.)
The only way to find a structure that works well enough to repeat is if you have the freedom to choose your own structure.* This means that if you live in Spain, dinner might be at midnight. On a school night! Does this mean you're late-night snacking? It does not. It means you're eating dinner. At your dinnertime.
And freedom to choose your own structure means that if the thought of food before noon nauseates you (it's not unusual), you're not skipping breakfast. Only a person who normally eats breakfast can skip breakfast. Same for any other meal.
Therefore, breakfast, like most things, is a Do or Don't. Up to you! There's nothing magic about breakfast.
Unless we're talking about German pancakes. Those are true magic.