How to Make Peace With Food (and never diet again)

Are you always thinking about food? Do you wonder how many calories or fat grams or sugar grams food has? Are you constantly tracking your food? If you answered YES to any of these questions, then please know it is possible to make peace with food and never diet again!

For the past few years, I’ve been learning a lot about nutrition.

It began when I first started “dieting” 12 years ago. I learned about what foods were “good” and which foods were “bad.” I tried to get more of the “good” foods; vegetables, fruits, whole grains, basically anything unprocessed. I also tried really hard to eat less of the “bad” foods; sugar, fat, everything processed.

Then two years ago, I got more into low carb eating. I learned that fat was actually good for me. I also learned how certain grains can affect our body, so I eliminated most of them.

For a while, I felt really good! My cravings were gone, I had more energy between meals, my blood sugar was stable, my hormones were beginning to come back into balance.

But then I went farther and farther down the low carb rabbit hole and started cutting out foods like fruit, sweet potatoes, and rice. I thought, the less carbs I ate, the better. That’s when I started to feel worse. My energy was lower, I was working out and eating healthy but gaining weight, my hormones were slowly starting to decline again. That’s when I knew that I needed to change my outlook on food.

While I know that food is capable of healing us, I also know that food can lead us to have feelings of guilt, confusion, and negativity.

I deemed carbs the enemy. I deemed sugar the enemy. I deemed anything processed the enemy.

Opening a magazine, turning on the TV or even listening to your favourite podcast, we are bombarded with messages that promote fear-based relationship with food. But I don’t believe that’s the worst influence… I believe the biggest threat is how we feel about ourselves.

 

You may be thinking that my road to recovery and making peace with food began with….well, FOOD!

But I’m here to tell you, it didn’t start with food.

For years I told myself  that I wanted to make peace with food and end my yo-yo dieting. I would do just about anything to achieve it. But the truth is, my constant striving to stop the restrict-binge cycle could not happen without changing anything else.

Making peace with food is definitely possible. But in order to get there, I had to go beyond the food. And in order to do that, I needed to come face to face with something much bigger.

In order to make peace with food, I HAD to make peace with my life.

Food only loses its power when we own our own power and stop using food as a band aid. Too often, food is the quick fix for things that we are not willing (or are too fearful) to address directly.

I thought that losing weight was going to solve ALL of my problems.

• I would start feeling better about myself
• I would have more confidence
• I wouldn’t notice all of the flaws on my body
• I could rock and bathing suit and feel good in it

But the truth is, once I lost all the weight, NONE of those feelings went away.

I didn’t feel any better about myself. I still saw the flaws on my body. I still didn’t have confidence when walking into a room. I still didn’t wear a bikini or bathing suit in fear that someone would be judging my body.

Making peace with food meant making peace with myself first. I had to learn to love myself…and I mean ALL of myself! My physical body, my mind, the way I look, the way I see myself, the way I carry myself.

For years, I used dieting as a means of control. I couldn’t control how I felt about myself, but I could control what my body looked like and what I ate. And at the time, that made me feel good. But eventually, those feelings went away. The compliments others would give me meant nothing. The food I was eating meant nothing. The exercise I was doing meant nothing. The smaller sized clothes I could wear meant NOTHING!

I had to come face to face with how I really felt about myself. I forced myself to look in the mirror every day and tell myself that I am beautiful, that I am worthy! I forced myself to look at my stretch marks, loose skin, and cellulite and appreciate what my body has done for me over the years. I repeated these things over, and over, and over again until I started believing them!

It wasn’t until I started dealing with and facing those insecurities that I was able to make peace with not only food, but myself.

I want you to imagine a life where you don’t worry about what size pants you wear or what the scale says. That you don’t diet and you don’t binge and you generally make good choices.

And I want you to understand that it happens because you’ve looked the loneliness, insecurities, stress, anxiety in the eye and gotten the help that you need to change it. You’ve learned to stand tall and speak up on your own behalf.

You’ve rebalanced your life. You LOVE yourself again. You’ve done the hard work. You’ve unleashed your inner champion.  That’s what it takes to make peace with food.

I want you to know you are not alone on this journey. I am here to stand tall beside you and guide you to be your BEST self, to learn to love yourself again. My Drop a Dress Size groups will help you make peace with your body and with food, to end the diet mentality, to live a life of freedom and happiness and balance without feelings of guilt or shame.

If would like to work with me personally on this journey, please sign up HERE.

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