Food control

What is food control?

Food control is an agreement where one partner decides what, when and how much the other eats. It is discipline applied to food: there are rules, someone enforces them, and something rides on it. Because it touches health, this is one of the heavier agreements you can make.

What food control looks like in practice

Food control almost always starts small, and usually not with food but with asking permission.

A common form is this: you eat what is put in front of you, you start only when you’re told to, and you don’t snack in between without asking. Nothing else about your diet changes. The rule is about who decides, not about calories. In an evening version it runs from the aperitif to dessert and then stops.

The extended form shows up with people who have longer-running arrangements. In the Journal of Homosexuality, Dancer, Kleinplatz and Moser described how 146 people who call themselves slaves use everyday matters like housework and finances to keep their roles going. Food sits in that same category: it happens every day, so it reminds you of the agreement every day.

That works because food belongs to the tools named in the description of discipline within BDSM: withholding a reward or asking for a service is as much discipline as punishment is. A dessert that happens or doesn’t is exactly that.

Why people like food control

The appeal is in not having to choose about something you already do every day. Someone who makes decisions all day finds that a menu with nothing to pick from brings calm.

For the person who follows the rules, it gives an agreement that comes back three times a day without anyone having to be there. For the person who sets them, the payoff is in the care: you don’t only decide, you also have to know what someone needs, and that takes attention. For two people together, the meal becomes a moment where the dynamic is visible, even on an ordinary Tuesday.

Food control is not supposed to be about weight. The moment losing weight becomes the goal, it stops being play and turns into a diet with a power imbalance around it, and that is a bad combination.

When food control doesn’t fit

Food control touches something people don’t all have the same relationship with. For most people it’s play, for some it sits closer to the bone.

If you already notice that food takes up a lot of room in your head, or if rules around food bring tension instead of calm, this is probably not the agreement you want to make. And anyone who does make it agrees in advance that the rule lapses the moment it turns to weight or looks.

Thuisarts.nl describes when being occupied with food tips into an eating problem, and what you can do then. That information stands apart from this agreement, but it’s good to know where to turn.

How people agree on it

1. Set the range. Only during a date, only at the weekend, or ongoing.
2. Agree on what it does not cover: medication, breakfast, work, and anything with a medical reason behind it.
3. Fix a floor instead of a ceiling. Not “at most this much”, but “at least three meals”.
4. Agree on how the submissive can step out without hassle, and that doing so is not a violation.
5. Review monthly, out loud, outside the play.

The whole agreement stands or falls on that fourth point. Dancer and colleagues saw in their research that people who describe themselves as slaves use their own will when it is in their interest. That is not a weakness in the dynamic. That is what makes it last.

What I see of it myself

Food control almost always comes up with me as part of something else. Someone wants a whole day of not having to decide anything, and food is the first place that becomes concrete.

The calm doesn’t come from the restriction but from the predictability. Knowing that something will be there at seven and that you don’t have to have an opinion about it does more than any rule about portions.

And what I always ask about: what the rest of your relationship with food looks like. Not because I have a judgment about it, but because this is the one agreement that can stir up something that was already there. When in doubt, we do something else. There’s plenty else. How we go over an agreement like this beforehand is on the page about the BDSM date.

What you can do yourself

• Agree on a floor, not a ceiling, and put it on paper.
• Keep medication, medical diets and breakfast out of the agreement, always.
• Stop the agreement the moment it turns to weight or looks. That’s the moment, not later.
• Make it easy to tap out. One word that suspends the rule for today, with no explaining afterwards.
• Talk about it if you notice the agreement is on your mind more than you’d like. With your partner, or with your doctor if that feels better.

Read more about food control

On this site, the article on the power of discipline and positions covers rules in general, and the piece on building a positive body image covers the relationship with your own body that this agreement touches.

Off this site, Thuisarts.nl holds the information on eating disorders that doctors themselves use, including what you can do and where to turn.

Sources

• Ik heb een (beginnend) eetprobleem. Thuisarts.nl, Nederlands Huisartsen Genootschap. Provides the description of an eating problem as being too occupied with eating or not eating, the list of signs, and the advice to seek help as soon as possible.
• Eetstoornis. Thuisarts.nl, Nederlands Huisartsen Genootschap. Provides the finding that early eating problems can grow into an eating disorder, that eating disorders are serious conditions that do not resolve on their own, and that a visit to the doctor is an important step.
• 24/7 SM slavery. Dancer, Kleinplatz & Moser, Journal of Homosexuality 50(2–3), 81–101, 2006. Provides the 146 respondents, the use of everyday matters like housework and finances to keep the roles going, and the finding that these people use their own will when it is in their interest.
• Discipline (BDSM). Wikipedia. Provides that discipline covers, alongside punishment, the withholding of a reward and the asking of a service.

Related terms

• Discipline. The broader category food control is an application of.
• Service-oriented submission. The checklist category food control usually sits under.
• 24/7. The ongoing form this kind of agreement belongs in.
• Contract. Where the floor and the exceptions go on paper.
• Chastity. The same engine, but with denial in a different area.
• Foodplay. The other food term, but as play material rather than as a rule.