Abstinence vs Moderation

Abstainers vs Moderators

I was watching a reel yesterday, carnivore content, and then I did what most of us do. I went into the comment section.

The same sentiment kept coming up.

“I’d rather completely abstain than try to practice moderation, because if I have one bite, I’ll eat the whole thing.”

And to be clear, that experience is real.

This particular reel was about carnivore, and I am not here to argue carnivore versus mixed whole foods. The reality is simply this: many people cannot do full carnivore.

I’m one of them.

My triglycerides go up.

My digestion suffers.

My liver takes strain from excessive protein.

That is not ideology or preference. That is my physiology.

So yes, if abstinence felt like the answer to everything, I can understand why someone would want to believe in it.

What really stopped me, though, was a comment that said:
“You can’t reach moderation if you were never addicted to food.”

That made me pause.

Because I acknowledged my food addiction socially long before it was even a conversation people were willing to have.

Back then, my mindset was very much rooted in a victim state. Unlike other substance abuse, you cannot just give up food. You need it to survive.

Complete, or even partial abstinence, was never going to be an option for me.

At the same time, I also did not have the awareness back then to explore what was really going on underneath that behaviour.

Unpacking that belief is what ultimately led me to the work I do today.

I had to mend my relationship with food so that it became about nourishment and sustenance, not comfort, not reward, not regulation.

That meant asking harder questions.

What foods were driving a dopamine response?

What was I eating that made it impossible to stop at two bites?

Because if you cannot stop, the food is telling you something.

Here is where nuance matters.

There is nothing inherently addictive about homemade carrot cake if there are no deeper issues underneath.

If you are eating something homemade, made from whole foods, and you have already removed the obvious addictive and destructive additives like refined sugars, industrial seed oils, emulsifiers, flavour enhancers, then something else is going on.

At that point, you are not eating because the food is addictive. You are eating for comfort or reward. And that is still emotional eating.

The difference is that this actually makes the trigger easier to identify.

When you address the root, food stops needing so much control.

Food addiction is a symptom.

It is not the root problem.

Abstinence can be a tool.

Moderation is a skill.

Neither works without regulation.