Find Your Food Voice

Do you tend to eat on the couch and with distractions, rather than at the dining room table? Are you someone that avoids the dining room table because of past trauma related to mealtime? Are you just trying to navigate this whole food peace journey, and are looking for some direction? Listen now for some steps you can take today. Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds. Check out this summer's special blog post series: Empowering Your PCOS Journey. It aims to help you understand PCOS, improve your relationship with food, and advocate for better care. You will be hearing from nutrition grad student Kimberly Singh and her experiences with PCOS as well as evidenced based info to help arm yourself with the most up-to-date research.  We are so excited to release our first blog post on Wednesday June 14th. Episode's Key Points: Vulnerability is a part of healing our relationship with food, but there is also a time and place for NOT being vulnerable! It's all about balance. Rachel Cole joins to talk more about vulnerability and food peace! Having a nourishing and safe place during mealtime as a child is super important! If we don't have that, it can really impact our relationship with food and eating in adulthood. Expand your choices!! Your food behavior shouldn't be dictated but "should's," but instead by what you honestly want to do. There's a time and a place for non-distracted eating, but don't force it! Eat where you feel SAFE. There's no timeline, should's, or black and white thinking... it's all about being "choiceful!" Pleasure is an important part of the eating experience, and we should embrace that. Make sure that the food you're eating is something that you WANT to experience. How do we re-parent our traumatized childhood selves without giving them all the power? Reach out to a therapist to work through this struggle, and have an active dialogue with that child! Put in the effort to make the dining area welcoming and safe... create a warm environment, and make the area available to you with zero pressure to eat there. Make small steps... what would it be like to have one meal at the table? Or just a cup of tea? Start with the lowest hanging fruit! Immerse yourself in the experience with non-judgmental awareness. We should strive to make ALL areas of our literal and metaphorical houses welcoming and comfortable for us. Have compassion for the ways that we take care of ourselves, even if our coping mechanisms aren't the most sustainable!! If your experience doesn't feel good, start getting curious about what would make it feel better. EXPERIMENT!! Explore, get feedback from your body and your emotions, and continue to check in. We are the expert of our own bodies... connect to your body, embrace embodiment, and explore body trust! Listen to a podcast or invite or call a friend while eating if you're feeling lonely and want company, and don't feel like watching the television. Don't be afraid to reach out for support in any capacity to help you through this food peace journey! Show Notes: Link to subscribe to the weekly FREE Food Peace Newsletter. It is sent out every Tuesday morning and no spam EVER. By signing up, I will also send you Love Food's Season 1's Food Peace Syllabus. "Dieting is a Violent Act" by Rachel Cole Finding Yourself in the Kitchen by Dana Velden Rachel Cole's FEAST program <--This program looks AMAZING and EMPOWERING!! Eating Disorder Dietitian Julie Dillon RD blog Do you have a complicated relationship with food? I want to help! Send your Dear Food letter to LoveFoodPodcast@gmail.com.  Click here to leave me a review in iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue! Thank you for listening to the Love, Food series.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Are you worried about your bikini body? Does vacation food make your anxiety spike and start the inner dialogue of self-loathing? Is preoccupation with your body getting in the way of you enjoying time spent adventuring? Listen now to hear my tips from a previous Love, Food Podcast episode on how to start living in the moment. Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds. This episode is brought to you by Pursuing Private Practice Masterclass. Ready to start doing things your way and kiss the corporate world goodbye? Details here and remember the super secret discount code BOSS for 10% off. Episode's Key Points: Food should help us enjoy life MORE, not detract from the experience. The best way to keep yourself bingeing while on vacation is to restrict before, and plan to restrict after. A lack of permission throughout the year leads to "indulging" while away! When you're on vacation, you're there to enjoy the food and experience life the way another culture does... not to obsess over what you're eating and how it may or may not be impacting your body size. How do we work on permission to help prevent this kind of preoccupation about food and body during vacation? Think about a pendulum (courtesy of Maria Paredes)... if we don't interrupt the calm sway, the highs and lows stay pretty even-keeled. This is what an intuitive, normal relationship with food looks like! If we eat past fullness for any reason, the pendulum adjusts and we eat less at some point in relation to our intuitive hunger signals to make up for it. This is how our body takes care of us! BUT if we look at the pendulum another way, with a disordered relationship with food, we can see violent swings back and forth between restriction and bingeing. SO the only way to stop it from moving violently in the bingeing direction is to STOP pulling in the direction of restriction! Take a hands-off approach!! Check out my blog post to learn how to slow down that pendulum! It's ABNORMAL to have a competent relationship with food in our culture!! Being human is about following rhythms... the seasons, hunger... we can't contain these rhythms, but we should trust them! When we step away from diets, it's NATURAL to experience a feeling of rebellion. The best way to bypass this rebellion is to immerse yourself in this "vacation brain" while you're at home. Eating when you're hungry and stopping when you're full is simple, but it's NOT easy! Unconditional permission is FUNDAMENTAL to food peace and intuitive eating. Restricting food will only lead to bingeing, and if you want to have a vacation experience free from food preoccupation and filled with cultural immersion, it's time to take away the food rules and diet talk during your regular, everyday life. Always remember to reach out to an eating disorder dietitian to help you on your food peace journey! Show Notes: Link to subscribe to the weekly FREE Food Peace Newsletter. It is sent out every Tuesday morning and no spam EVER. By signing up, I will also send you Love Food's Season 1's Food Peace Syllabus. Start your private practice! Click here and use code BOSS to get 10% off Jennifer McGurk's Pursuing Private Practice Masterclass! Maria Paredes' Love, Food Podcast episode Aaron Flores' Love, Food Podcast episode "When relying on hunger is too scary" by Julie Duffy Dillon Eating Disorder Dietitian Julie Dillon RD blog Do you have a complicated relationship with food? I want to help! Send your Dear Food letter to LoveFoodPodcast@gmail.com.  Click here to leave me a review in iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue! Thank you for listening to the Love, Food series.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Have you been struggling with bingeing? Do you feel alone, and find yourself eating in secret, feeling ashamed? Listen now for some insight into this difficult food peace challenge. Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds. This episode is brought to you by Pursuing Private Practice Masterclass. Ready to start doing things your way and kiss the corporate world goodbye? Details here and remember the super secret discount code BOSS for 10% off. Episode's Key Points: Binge eating disorder is the MOST common eating disorder experience! One third of people who seek out weight loss treatment are actually struggling with binge eating disorder. Pursuing weight loss actually makes bingeing WORSE! Healing your relationship with food is messy, but it's a beautiful mess, and it's worth it. What exactly does "overweight" even mean?? I say over what! Weight gain around puberty is COMPLETELY normal! But unfortunately we often shame girls for this. When the world tells us small bodies are valued and larger bodies are unacceptable, it lays the groundwork for the binge eating experience. Getting help can be the first step to peeling away the shame associated with bingeing. What's the difference between a "healing" relationship with food vs a "healthy" one? A healing relationship with food helps us walk away from the perfectionism and the black and white thinking around food. Kari Anderson from Green Mountain at Fox Run joins to talk more about binge eating! Sometimes we use food to try to calm our anxiety... and that's okay! You don't need to feel ashamed about it. Be compassionate to yourself instead! Trusting yourself around food again is a huge step towards healing your relationship with food. Food can have a sense of freedom, rather than fear. It is SO important to validate the role and the function of food in our lives... look at it as a coping mechanism that DID serve you, until it didn't anymore. We may even have to grieve our previous relationship with food in order to move onto the next version. We live in a world where we demonize our food choices constantly!! Our culture doesn't help when someone is trying to heal their relationship with food. We have to jump off the diet train!! The restrictive mindset CREATES the weight "problem." We should never limit the choices in our lives because of our weight! You have a choice in your eating behaviors. If funds are preventing you from getting the help you need to find recovery, there are scholarships you can apply for! Show Notes: Link to subscribe to the weekly FREE Food Peace Newsletter. It is sent out every Tuesday morning and no spam EVER. By signing up, I will also send you Love Food's Season 1's Food Peace Syllabus. Start your private practice! Click here and use code BOSS to get 10% off Jennifer McGurk's Pursuing Private Practice Masterclass! Eat What You Love, Love What You Eat for Binge Eating by Kari Anderson and Michelle May ---> This week's Food Peace Syllabus addition Am I Hungry? Green Mountain at Fox Run and the Women's Center for Binge & Emotional Eating Contact Kari, this week's Love Food expert guest Eating Disorder Dietitian Julie Dillon RD blog Do you have a complicated relationship with food? I want to help! Send your Dear Food letter to LoveFoodPodcast@gmail.com.  Click here to leave me a review in iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue! Thank you for listening to the Love, Food series.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Do you have a love/hate relationship with food? Are your food issues related to your fear of gaining weight? Have you been struggling for some time, going back and forth between recovery and eating disorder behaviors due to the fear around what food peace truly means? Does food insecurity impact your relationship with food? Listen now for some tips on how to overcome these challenges. Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds. This episode is brought to you by Pursuing Private Practice Masterclass. Ready to start doing things your way and kiss the corporate world goodbye? Details here and remember the super secret discount code BOSS for 10% off. Episode's Key Points: Meret Boxler, host of the Life. Unrestricted podcast, shares her letter about her food peace journey and struggles! None of this is your fault!! Sometimes our family dynamics produce a situation in which the children have to become their own parents to survive. This can impact our relationship with food very deeply. Ellyn Satter's food hierarchy of needs versus the Maslow hierarchy of needs: our foundational needs must be met in order to build towards needs higher up the pyramid. If we're struggling with our foundational needs, we won't be motivated to reach for our more nuanced needs. For example, food security is the foundation of the food hierarchy of needs. If someone wants to work towards wellness, food security must be established first! Some examples of food insecurity: poverty, growing up with caregivers who were always on diets or policing food etc. These environments prevent a foundational sense of food security from forming. Wellness is NOT the most important thing in our relationship with food... it's food security. Permission around foods (especially fun foods!) can be part of the big picture of healing from a past of food insecurity.  Feeling our feelings is very important in this food peace process!! If we work at it, our needs around permission and food security will eventually be met. Be patient! You are worth this work!! Food peace is your birthright. Weight stigma is at the core of a lot of our food peace struggles. It is OPPRESSIVE! We need to stop the discrimination based on weight, rather than push people to change their bodies. We need to end weight-based bullying!! The media tells us which body sizes are acceptable. Representation of ALL kinds of bodies is so important. Weight-based stigma in the eating disorder community is a big problem! You can't tell by a person's appearance if they're struggling with an eating disorder. Weight is NOT indicative of health! All bodies of all sizes and abilities can strive for health-promoting behaviors, including body acceptance and intuitive eating. Self-compassion is key!! Show Notes: Link to subscribe to the weekly FREE Food Peace Newsletter. It is sent out every Tuesday morning and no spam EVER. By signing up, I will also send you Love Food's Season 1's Food Peace Syllabus. Start your private practice! Click here and use code BOSS to get 10% off Jennifer McGurk's Pursuing Private Practice Masterclass! Ellyn Satter's work Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs Ellyn Satter's Food Hierarchy of Needs When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies by Jane R. Hirschmann and Carol H. Munter ---> This week's Food Peace Syllabus addition #1 Secrets of Feeding a Healthy Family by Ellyn Satter ---> This week's Food Peace Syllabus addition #2 Eating Disorder Dietitian Julie Dillon RD blog Do you have a complicated relationship with food? I want to help! Send your Dear Food letter to LoveFoodPodcast@gmail.com.  Click here to leave me a review in iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue! Thank you for listening to the Love, Food series.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Would you consider yourself a food addict? Do you find yourself trying to abstain from certain foods so you don't "lose control?" Are you unsure if food addiction is the right way to describe what you're experiencing? Listen now for some expertise on the latest research and find out more about the truth behind the food addiction model. Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds. This episode is brought to you by Pursuing Private Practice Masterclass.  Ready to start doing things your way and kiss the corporate world goodbye?  Details here and remember the super secret discount code BOSS for 10% off. Episode's Key Points: Holidays like Easter and Passover can bring foods out of the woodwork that we don't usually eat! (Think: chocolate bunnies, Peeps, jelly beans.) When these foods resurface, because we haven't learned to make them "neutral" yet, it can feel like we're addicted to them when they're finally around. Our bodies don't need to rely on dieting to find health. In fact, dieting HURTS us, and it can lead to bingeing and an OCD experience with food. Eating is just like peeing!!! When you gotta go, you gotta go, and how much or how little you pee doesn't matter. But with hunger, there is so much JUDGMENT attached to it. So what if we took that judgment away? What if we treated eating just like peeing? They're both bodily functions that do just fine on their own without outward policing. So stop judging when you're hungry, or how much or how little you need to eat to feel satisfied! Eating is like peeing. Marci Evans joins to talk about her expert knowledge on food addiction research! Food doesn't need to have so much power!! You are NOT alone... your pain is individual, but your experiences with food are so common. What are the first steps to making peace with food when dealing with these problems?? Compassion! Challenging food addiction in and of itself The food addiction model is problematic and has many limitations! The term "food addiction" is very poorly defined in the research community. Most 0f the research has been done on animals, not humans, and the research that has been done on humans has had a LOT of mixed results. It fails to consider alternatives to the biological response to food that mimics drug use, such as pavlovian conditioning, the fact that food is meant to be rewarding, or the impact of restraint, restriction, or previous dieting on our pleasure reactions. Food is meant to be rewarding!! The pattern of restriction and restraint that then swings to bingeing can lead someone to think they're addicted to food... but that might not be the case! Bingeing is often a reaction to deprivation!! Current food addiction research does NOT account for restraint, restriction, or dieting history. Our natural biology REBELS against restraint!! So how do we move beyond the food addiction model? Remember you are not alone! Consider what "healthy" means to you, and make sure it's BALANCED and SATISFYING. Use resources to support your journey. Notice what's happening in your body instead of what's happening in your brain. Once we take the judgment away, we can really listen to what our body actually needs. Our body craves balance!! Remember, healthy eating includes satiety and pleasure! If you deny these parts of eating, you won't find a peaceful relationship with food. Show Notes: Link to subscribe to the weekly FREE Food Peace Newsletter. It is sent out every Tuesday morning and no spam EVER. By signing up, I will also send you Love Food's Season 1's Food Peace Syllabus. Love, Food Podcast Episode 53 Love, Food Podcast Episode 6 with Marci Evans Start your private practice! Click here and use code BOSS to get 10% off Jennifer McGurk's Pursuing Private Practice Masterclass!! Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch ---> This week's Food Peace Syllabus addition #1 Eat What You Love and Love What You Eat by Michelle May ---> This week's Food Peace Syllabus addition #2 Starting Monday by Karen Koenig ---> This week's Food Peace Syllabus addition #3 Find Marci on Twitter! Eating Disorder Dietitian Julie Dillon RD blog Do you have a complicated relationship with food? I want to help! Send your Dear Food letter to LoveFoodPodcast@gmail.com.  Click here to leave me a review in iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue! Thank you for listening to the Love, Food series.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Have you numbed out using emotional eating or binge eating yet now finding ways to stop? Sounds great, right?!? Not so fast: How do you tolerate these tough emotions? Will they ever end? Have you found alternatives to emotional eating, but are now dealing with confronting these emotions for the first time without the ability to use food as a buffer? Listen now for some tips on handling this part of the food peace journey. This episode is brought to you by Pursuing Private Practice Masterclass. Ready to start doing things your way and kiss the corporate world goodbye? Details here and remember the super secret discount code BOSS for 10% off. Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds. Episode's Key Points: Intuitive Eating: a way of experiencing food WITHOUT food rules... following your inner wisdom to determine what and how much to eat. Our relationship with food MIRRORS how we relate to the world! Intuitive eating will lead to experiencing a more intuitive life in ALL regards. Learning how to eat intuitively in response to hunger and fullness cues, learning to tolerate emotions without food, and learning how to type on the computer without looking at the keys are all similar experiences!! (Listen for the full metaphor... it makes sense, I promise!) It all may feel a bit obsessive at first, or carry a sense of hyper-awareness... but you're learning a new skill, and that's okay! It will calm down and feel more natural eventually. Do we always need to feel all of our feelings?? Yes and no. Manage your emotions like you're making holes in a volcano! Find ways to release before you explode. Work with a therapist or counselor to help you find ways to release your emotions that work for you. We must acknowledge and honor the trauma we've experienced! Work with a therapist to process this trauma. Sometimes being aware ALL of the time of our hard emotions can be exhausting! Sometimes we have to distract ourselves from our emotions so that we can get things done. Just don't let them build up or rely on these distraction techniques too heavily! Show Notes: Link to subscribe to the weekly FREE Food Peace Newsletter. It is sent out every Tuesday morning and no spam EVER. By signing up, I will also send you Love Food's Season 1's Food Peace Syllabus. Start your private practice! Click here and use code BOSS to get 10% off Jennifer McGurk's Pursuing Private Practice Masterclass!! Love, Food Podcast Episode 10 with Jennifer McGurk Intuitive Eating and the Intuitive Eating Workbook by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch Love, Food Podcast Episode 62 with Evelyn Tribole Eating Disorder Dietitians Julie Dillon RD blog Do you have a complicated relationship with food? I want to help! Send your Dear Food letter to LoveFoodPodcast@gmail.com.  Click here to leave me a review in iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue! Thank you for listening to the Love, Food series.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Do you consider food to be your enemy or a waste of time? Are you tired of struggling with body image, yo-yo dieting, and food hate? Do you desperately want to embrace intuitive eating, but are too afraid of leaving behind the safety of an eating disorder? Listen now for a breakdown of how to confront these common food peace dilemmas. Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds. Episode's Key Points: Anita Johnson joins to talk recovery! We live in a world of PARADOX... it's about food, but it's also not about food at the same time!! So how are our food issues not about food? This struggle is a messenger to let us know that there are other issues going on in our lives... what other hungers are we starving for?? What is the symbolic nature of our food struggle? If we struggle with food restriction, it's important to look at other areas in our lives where we are restricting. If we struggle with binge eating, it's important to ask where else we feel scarcity in our lives. How do we create a peace-keeping force in our lives? We explore compassionate curiosity, rather than judgment. The foundation to food peace is compassionate curiosity!! How do we discern our symbolic hungers?? First we need to change our patterns in our lives... then we can tackle the patterns in our relationship with food. So how do we crack the code on our food behaviors?? Sugary foods usually indicate that we are needing sweetness in our lives, either from ourselves or others. Salty and crunchy foods generally indicate repressed anger and frustration. Warm foods mean we are yearning for emotional warmth. Spicy foods are often connected to a desire or fear of excited, stimulation, or change. Chocolate is all about sex, romance, and sexuality. So what next? After we explore our metaphorical relationship with food, how do we reconcile that information with our everyday lives? We're the experts of our bodies!! We're the only ones that really can understand what the food metaphors mean. Show Notes: Link to subscribe to the weekly FREE Food Peace Newsletter. It is sent out every Tuesday morning and no spam EVER. By signing up, I will also send you Love Food's Season 1's Food Peace Syllabus. Food & Metaphors Free Gift ---> This week's Food Syllabus addition #1 Light of the Moon Cafe ---> This week's Food Syllabus addition #2 Eating in the Light of the Moon by Anita Johnson ---> This week's Food Syllabus addition #3 Anita's email and counseling info Eating Disorder Dietitians Julie Dillon RD blog Do you have a complicated relationship with food? I want to help! Send your Dear Food letter to LoveFoodPodcast@gmail.com.  Click here to leave me a review in iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue! Thank you for listening to the Love, Food series.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Do you ever make your food choices based on what other people might think? Have you ever eaten "for show," or eaten in ways that aren't sustainable because of your food reputation? Listen now for some things to try for your own path to food peace and to break out of this pattern. Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds. Episode's Key Points: Sometimes the way we eat, interact with food, and move our body can become our IDENTITY and sense of SELF-WORTH! But we CAN'T get a healthy sense of sense from our food choices. Becoming a dietitian takes a LOT of work, including a ton of science education. Often, people who go into nutrition are intelligent and want to help people! These characteristics are so much more interesting and make up a much bigger part of our identity than our food choices!! In order to heal, it's time to let go of food as a part of our identity. It's VERY likely that your friends and family don't actually think of you in the context of your food, and that this is an identity you've created and maintained all on your own! Think about how you actually want people to identify you! Write it down, and keep it on hand for whenever you experience normal eating and feel like your identity is being compromised. Bingeing is often a by-product of rigidity, restriction, or other forms of strict eating. Recovery requires a team approach and a ton of support... find a dietitian near you who specializes in eating disorders and seek out therapy! What is "normal" eating?? Normal eating is balanced, non-restrictive, and nourishing. Our biology, and the drive to eat when we're restricting, is here to save us!! Symbolic hunger vs. physiological hunger: Sometimes when we follow rigid eating plans, our bodies start screaming for our attention! Depression and anxiety can surface because our physical needs aren't being met. There's is science out there supporting why diets and restrictive eating don't work! Seek it out. Show Notes: Link to subscribe to the weekly FREE Food Peace Newsletter. It is sent out every Tuesday morning and no spam EVER. By signing up, I will also send you Love Food's Season 1's Food Peace Syllabus. "What is Symbolic Hunger?" by Julie Duffy Dillon Secrets from the Eating Lab by Traci Mann Eating Disorder Dietitians Julie Dillon RD blog Do you have a complicated relationship with food? I want to help! Send your Dear Food letter to LoveFoodPodcast@gmail.com.  Click here to leave me a review in iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue! Thank you for listening to the Love, Food series.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Are you someone who has recovered from an eating disorder, but are suddenly experiencing symptoms again? Do you feel like you're falling down a slippery slope, and recovery is slipping out of your grasp? Are you needing some new tools to pursue a peaceful relationship with food? Listen now for some new ways to experiment with the recovery process. Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds. Episode's Key Points: Recovery is NEVER linear! It's messy and complicated, and super personal. This experience is so common the experiencing symptoms even after recovery is the rule, more than the exception. Self-compassion is key for dealing with relapse. Sumner Brooks joins to chat about recovery some more! Disappointment and shame can make us feel so stuck in eating disorder behaviors and relapse. It's so important to NORMALIZE this struggle! You are not alone, and there are a number of reasons we can experience a return of behaviors. Try to react with compassion when you notice the shame and disappointment bubbling up. Recovery will come much quicker with self-compassion! If you're trying to examine the return of a behavior, think about whether or not there are physiological needs not being met (such as hunger), or if there are emotional needs triggering these behaviors meant to soothe and cope. Be aware if medications (such as birth control, SSRIs) or other environmental changes are potentially impacting your mood and contributing to the return of these behaviors! Nothing about recovery or relapse is black or white... figuring out where to go next is a journey!! What are your needs?? Are they being met?? Explore this! Be CURIOUS about this experience! It's an important part of finding what you need to change. Even the slip ups are a part of moving forward. Acknowledge that you may feel like you've screwed it all up, but believe that it isn't true! Spiral UP rather than out!! Show Notes: Link to subscribe to the weekly FREE Food Peace Newsletter. It is sent out every Tuesday morning and no spam EVER. By signing up, I will also send you Love Food's Season 1's Food Peace Syllabus. EDRDProSymposium Sign up here! Savvy Girl, A Guide to Eating by Brittany Deal and Sumner Brooks ---> This week's Food Peace Syllabus addition Sumner's Instagram and main website Eating Disorder Dietitians Julie Dillon RD blog Do you have a complicated relationship with food? I want to help! Send your Dear Food letter to LoveFoodPodcast@gmail.com.  Click here to leave me a review in iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue! Thank you for listening to the Love, Food series.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Are you feeling lost without all your diet rules? Are you struggling with the phase of intuitive eating where you give yourself permission to eat all foods? Do you feel chaotic, scared, and exhilarated all at the same time? Are you worried that this phase is never going to end, and your relationship with food is never going to calm down? Listen now to start working through these struggles. Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds. Episode's Key Points: When we are trying to learn a new way to eat, we have to recognize the old rules that dictated our way of eating in the past. We also need to recognize the harm that these rigid rules inflicted on our body, emotions, and relationships!! The "calm" that comes with strict food rules is an ILLUSION! These rules are not nourishing or comforting. This new way of intuitive eating has NO rules because our bodies are not meant to be controlled or regulated. Willpower should not be associated with food intake. Instead, food intake should be thought of like a pendulum! Think about how a pendulum evens itself out... if you pull it back and allow the pendulum's swings to peter out on their own, its movements become much less erratic. But if you continue to pull it back and don't allow it that time to settle, it will continue to swing from one extreme to another. The more the pendulum is pulled, the more it reacts! Give yourself time to heal!! Diet rules are ingrained in us from such a young age, and we have a lot of unlearning to do. This will take TIME. Your brain will likely start to crave a return to diets and rigidity... notice these thoughts, but try not to act on them. Be COMPASSIONATE for where you are in the moment!! An eating disorder is a monster that sucks the life out of people affected, including family. Self-compassion is essential for recovery. If a person is in strong recovery, settling into intuitive eating can take at least a year... give yourself time!! Weight restoration: for many people in recovery, eating a lot more food during recovery to satiate the body post-eating disorder is very necessary! Gaining weight can be a super hard experience though, so be patient and kind to yourself. We live in a world that considers dieting to be "normal" eating... but it's not! Our world is dealing with its own eating disorder. Food and recovery are not black and white. There is so much gray area in our intentions!! Having a recovery team, including a therapist and a weight-inclusive dietitian, is essential to successful recovery. Why are carbohydrates getting such a bad rep?? Every cell in our body needs glucose... which is what carbs break down into when we digest them! The food addiction issue: if you feel like you aren't allowed to eat something and eventually "give in," it can feel like certain foods are addictive. But if you give yourself permission to eat all foods, "addictive" foods lose their power! The more one is deprived of a food, the more their body is going to want to eat it!! Even though intuitive eating and recovery can feel like you're walking a tight rope without a safety net underneath you when you first walk away from dieting and eating disorders, in the long run you are pursuing healing and health!! Show Notes: Link to subscribe to the weekly FREE Food Peace Newsletter. It is sent out every Tuesday morning and no spam EVER. By signing up, I will also send you Love Food's Season 1's Food Peace Syllabus. Evelyn Tribole on Love, Food Marci Evans on Love, Food "When Relying on Hunger is Too Scary" blog post 8 Keys to Recovery from an Eating Disorder by Carolyn Costin ---> This week's Food Peace Syllabus addition Eating Disorder Dietitians Julie Dillon RD blog Do you have a complicated relationship with food? I want to help! Send your Dear Food letter to LoveFoodPodcast@gmail.com.  Click here to leave me a review in iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue! Thank you for listening to the Love, Food series. Give me feedback via Twitter @FoodPeaceRDN.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy