Are you locked in a never-ending struggle with food guilt, or perhaps teetering on the edge of disordered eating? Let's break those shackles together! I, a seasoned dietitian and body image specialist, am here to guide you towards the captivating concept of food freedom. We'll dissect diet culture, dispel the demons of fear and guilt often associated with food, and outline the roadmap towards a more harmonious relationship with our meals. Rebuilding trust in our body's signals and choices, we'll find that food freedom isn't merely a catchphrase, but a reality within our reach!
But, our journey doesn't halt at food freedom; it's just the beginning. We'll discuss how to ditch diets, disordered eating, body shaming, and learn to love ourselves for who we are. Towards the end, I'll introduce you to my program True Body Image Freedom for Everybody, a haven for body liberation and self-love. Remember, each step taken towards self-acceptance is a leap towards victory. Subscribe, and drop a review along your journey to help spread body liberation!
Are you locked in a never-ending struggle with food guilt, or perhaps teetering on the edge of disordered eating? Let's break those shackles together! I, a seasoned dietitian and body image specialist, am here to guide you towards the captivating concept of food freedom. We'll dissect diet culture, dispel the demons of fear and guilt often associated with food, and outline the roadmap towards a more harmonious relationship with our meals. Rebuilding trust in our body's signals and choices, we'll find that food freedom isn't merely a catchphrase, but a reality within our reach!
But, our journey doesn't halt at food freedom; it's just the beginning. We'll discuss how to ditch diets, disordered eating, body shaming, and learn to love ourselves for who we are. Towards the end, I'll introduce you to my program True Body Image Freedom for Everybody, a haven for body liberation and self-love. Remember, each step taken towards self-acceptance is a leap towards victory. Subscribe, and drop a review along your journey to help spread body liberation!
Connect with us! @jamierd_
Speaker 1:
Welcome to Bites in Body Love. I'm Jamie, a dietitian and body image specialist. Join me to liberate yourself from diets and body shame in bracing true freedom and confidence with food and body. Take your place at the table on this transformative journey towards a life of freedom and confidence. On today's episode, we're going to be talking about what is food freedom, and is it even attainable? Is this a real thing? I'm sure you have heard it thrown around obtain food freedom, be free of the chains of food and feeling like it's in control of you. I want to talk about if that's actually something that we can attain and talk about If we can attain it. How do we attain it? What is food to freedom? Food freedom is a place where you can feel like you can trust food. You can have all foods in your diet. No foods are charged up. We're not binging on foods, we're not restricting foods. We are in a harmonious relationship with food, being able to eat intuitively, navigate our food choices without fear, without judgment, but really being able to tune into our body and make choices that are best for us mind, body and soul. Now, that may sound too good to be true If you are in the throes of diet culture and you have been in the throes of diet culture for a while. If you are recovering from an eating disorder, if you're in a disordered eating and if you just have a hard relationship with food, want to tell you that food freedom is absolutely possible. Really, we were born with that relationship with food. We were born where we weren't fearing foods and no foods were scary, no foods were charged up. Then others' relationship with food and diet culture start to seep in and we pick up those messages and we go through things that really detach us from our intuition and from our trust. But we were given a body we can trust.
Speaker 1:
I want to invite you to think about the relationship that kids have with food. Let's think of them at a party. Usually what happens is you'll see them running around, playing, having this joyous relationship with movement in their relationships, playing with the other kids. They go to the snack table to pick up a few things. They might grab a couple of carrot sticks and with ranch and they might jump and grab a cupcake. Then they stop their cupcake halfway to go play and then they come back and finish it. They're just, it's harmonious, it's with their relationship with life. That's because they have nothing to fear. They haven't had all those messages come in yet, or that they're picking up around diet culture. That's something that just is not something for them. They just it's not part of their relationship with food. Yet they have this trusting relationship with food. We can get back to that as adults and have this wonderful relationship with food. That feels really good.
Speaker 1:
Yes, the first thing I want to say is food freedom is absolutely attainable. Honestly, the work I'm doing it would be very, very, it's very tough work, but it'd be very, very hard. I would not be doing it if there were no hope, if people could not get to this place, because then what am I doing here? So it would be a very sad, sad profession and passion. So I want to talk about how we get there and before we talk about how we get to food freedom, I want to talk about how it's very understandable feeling stuck and feeling in this place where relationship with food is very confusing, and that is because you're bombarded with diet messages everywhere. You are bombarded with messages about how you can't trust your body and also, when you're trying to pursue food freedom, you're given a lot of bad advice, a lot of wrong advice, a lot of advice that pushes you back or confuses you and really, because there's so many like, even when we're talking about giving up to hiding, you see all these people promoting lifestyle fixes and that's. That's just another form of dieting. It's another way of restricting and trying to control yourself. It's not built on trust. And if you take away anything from this episode, I want to, I want you to take this away and that is that your relationship with food, if you want a relationship with food that is compassionate, respectful, trusting, accepting, intuitive that those are the tools you need to use to get to it, tools that are built on trust and gaining more trust, on respect, on compassion, on acceptance, on building your intuition.
Speaker 1:
You cannot move toward a healthy, happy relationship with food if it's built on shame, distrust, disrespect, not accepting being disintuned to your body. How are we supposed to get there that they don't equate? You cannot get there on that path and that's why diet culture, disordered eating, any external type of quick fix or any just external thing, saying that they know your body better than you do, that's confusing, that's not going to get you to where you want to go. So what are those steps to get there? How do you get there? What are those? What's the toolbox that you need in order to get to food freedom? We're going to be talking about those things today.
Speaker 1:
Number one we need to ditch diets, disordered eating and body shaming, because those bring you further and further away from a healthy relationship with food. If there's restriction diets, external cues that we are listening to and basing our decisions off of, that is going to bring us further and further away from having trust with food and being able to build freedom with food and our bodies. So we really need to assess what diet culture messages we are still listening to, why we are still pursuing diets, what is continuing to draw us to diets, asking ourselves if that has worked, looking at restriction and seeing if restriction is part where it's a part of your life where it's showing up. What kind of restriction is happening? Are you removing certain food groups? Are there certain foods off limits? Do you have rules? You are following certain types of times of the day you can only eat. Are you restricting yourself mentally by shaming yourself even for the foods you're choosing? So you might be allowing yourself to have the cupcake, but you are shaming yourself throughout that process and while you're having it. That is going to hold you back, because that is shame, that is external rules that you have picked up from diets, from other people, from a place of distrust, and that's going to keep you from being able to tap into your intuition. So we need to ditch diets.
Speaker 1:
So the second thing is that we need to learn how to get in tune with our body and be able to eat intuitively, which means we can't. It's being able to eat according to how we're feeling emotionally, mentally, physically. What makes us feel good, from a place of acceptance, compassion, where we can tune in and understand what feels good. When does it feel good? What way fuel's my body in a way that feels good for me, physically, emotionally, mentally? How do I have that satisfaction in eating and enjoy eating? How do I listen? How do I get back my cues that tell me when I'm hungry, when I'm full, when feels good to start eating and stop eating? What kind of routine and consistency is good for me to make sure I have good energy, I'm feeling good, I don't have, I don't have dips in energy, I'm not getting too hungry, but I'm consistently respecting my body with food and consistent food.
Speaker 1:
Learning to eat intuitive is very, very important, and you can put those two things together, kind of learning to ditch diets while we're learning to eat intuitively Super, super important. These are the things that I work on consistently and really iron out understanding these things with my clients, helping them to get to that place where they can fully understand why am I dieting, thank you. Why what's making it hard to give it up? What am I still holding on to so that we can be grounded in a decision to give up dieting and restriction, because it's what we want and it's not because someone is telling us we should do it. It's because of what we want, our experiences and wanting something better for ourselves. So really working on getting rid of restriction completely. So we are not feeling like we're still holding onto that while we're moving forward with intuitive eating, but we're ditching diets completely and then we're getting uncomfy by creating a new relationship with all these foods that we once feared and starting to eat intuitively, getting back in touch with our cues, learning to trust food again, bringing it back in all foods. So those are two separate ones, but we can lump them together too.
Speaker 1:
The next thing is and the third thing that I want to talk about today is addressing body image. Part of food freedom is addressing body image. Whenever clients start with me and their goal is to work on achieving food freedom whether it's to stop binging, whether it's to stop restricting whatever behaviors, to move toward a place where they can just stop thinking about food, enjoy food again, not give up foods they love, not worry about binging when that goal of food freedom is there every single time, body image comes up. Every single time to reach full freedom, to 100%, body image needs to be addressed and many times people don't understand what this is and they don't know how to go about it, and it just with every single step of the way it comes up in healing their relationship with food and getting to a place of food freedom. Because, of course, tied to that fear of achieving food freedom and that pull towards diets is due to a relationship with body that is uncomfy, that's not from a place of acceptance, that's not understood, that's trying to be manipulated, and so addressing and understanding body image and all the different components that come with it is such a big part of food freedom.
Speaker 1:
What is body image? I have another episode on that. We won't get into that today, but you cannot and I will say this till the day I die If you want food freedom, you need to work through body image. If you want healthy relationship with body and body image, you need to have food freedom. Those two things need to come together. I have seen it time and time again In order to have one, you have to have the other and you have to address both. So, overall, what we are talking about with how to get to food freedom if food freedom is really attainable, how do we get there?
Speaker 1:
Through this, these three different things ditching diets, learning, intuitive eating, addressing body image these all can be under the umbrella of building body trust. And to build body trust, you have to do things differently. You have to get uncomfortable, because diet culture, disordered eating, that is not built on body trust. So you have a lot of messages and a lot of thoughts that really push you away from believing you can trust your body, and so to go in a different direction. Whoo, that is difficult. It is very, very difficult to start to understand, learn and trust that you can have something as incredible as body trust, because you have been getting the messages that you cannot trust your body and you cannot trust food for your whole life.
Speaker 1:
So as I let you go here, so as you move forward with your day, I want to one more time just say food freedom is there for you and most likely you have been trying to go about it in all the wrong ways, missing really important steps in the process to get there. But it is there for you, it is attainable and you deserve it. Thank you for tuning in to Bites in Body Love, ready for true food and body freedom. Apply to join my program True Body Image Freedom for Everybody, where we will guide you every step of the way. Dm me at jamieRD underscore on Instagram or Facebook for a no pressure conversation so we can learn more about you and your fit for the program. Remember every step toward loving your body is a victory. Subscribe and leave a review to support our message of body liberation. Stay awesome and see you next time You've got this.