Feeling overwhelmed with thoughts around food and body and just want to escape and have freedom. Do you feel like you have been waiting on your dream body forever? What if food was a source of joy and connection? What if your body was designed to provide you life to live out your wildest dreams?
Does this feel like a possibility to you?
Maybe not, at this moment at least.
You likely are struggling with obsessive thoughts about food and your body because we are bombarded by these messages ALL THE TIME!
When you are told to look for red cars on the road, you begin to notice all the red cars and forget there are also white, blue, black, yellow, silver and a lot of other colored cars.
This works the same way with messaging around what we eat and our bodies. When we are constantly bombarded with the idea that we should eat this and we should not eat that and also we should be aiming for weight loss, it’s no surprise we actually believe these things. We are informed by diet culture in a million and one ways that are bodies are not ok.
When we are looking for flaws in our bodies, we are going to find them. When we are looking for tolerance, gratitude and acceptance, we can also work towards that goal!
Let’s break this down into some steps of where to get started:
Step 1:
Begin to identify your thoughts on food, nutrition, your body weight and appearance and write out these thoughts.
Begin by writing out an exhaustive list of everywhere you have learned about body image and food. This may have started early on in your family from your own parents and how food was discussed at home, through family gatherings around the dinner table to aunts and uncles and others. It may also have been learned in health class, by the radio, magazines, to today with coworkers, health providers etc.
We must first begin to understand what this messaging has looked like, so we can begin to understand how our beliefs have formed over time.
Step 2:
Question if these ideas work for you.
Just because we may have been told that sugar is “bad” for us, does not mean you should never eat sugar again. Even though society has treated people poorly in larger bodies, does that mean you want to continue to think less of yourself? No!
Now, let’s question the validity of these ideas. This may be a big challenge as we often look to “professionals” for information. Unfortunately even the medical community may not be well informed on thoughts around our bodies, weight and how to eat to care for our bodies.
WHAT DO YOU MEAN NICOLE?
Well, those medical providers also grew up in diet culture and for so long just adopted these ideas to be true without questioning it. There are a lot of biases we just fall into about weight and food. As well intended providers maybe sometimes they also get it wrong prescribing the wrong ideas to patients. The eating disorder community understands that we need to have balance with food, rather than prescribing restrictive diets and that genetically people are going to be in larger bodies, and that’s ok!
We need to question if we are really wanting to take out every enjoyable food, simply because it's been told to us it's bad. I personally believe the negative thoughts about what we eat are much worse for us than the food itself. Remember, all foods fit!
Life was meant to be enjoyed, part of that is having enjoyment with food. Let’s not be restrictive, just because we have been informed to do so for decades.
Same goes with our body. Do you really want to spend your life’s mission attempting to lose weight? Or do you want to live your life, regardless of your body’s size. Do you want to wake up and look in the mirror and hate what you see or learn to live in your body, exactly as it was designed.
Step 3:
Be open towards a neutral stance with your body and food.
What does this look like: balance, moderation and enjoyment with all types of foods. Be open to the idea that maybe, just maybe you won’t have to hate your body. Move your body for enjoyment, not punishment. Ensure you are eating regularly both nutritious foods and fun foods.
In order to stop obsessing over our bodies and food, we need to ensure our basic needs are being met with food and water. It’s so important we are eating throughout the day, with a variety of foods both fun and nutritious. We also need to find middle ground with how we view our bodies. It clearly has not helped to hate ourselves into wellness. Which is the assumption I am making about where you may be at in your relationship with your body. Exercise needs to shift from being a punishment to being something enjoyable we do for our bodies.
Step 4:
Work through your negativity and guilt associated with such foods and the negative thinking patterns about your body.
Through finding balance, we may also struggle with underlying negative thoughts about our bodies and the food we may now be allowing ourselves to eat. We may struggle with fear around what this could do to our bodies and how we may change. There could be underlying concerns about letting go of previous thoughts about needing to change our bodies through food and exercise.
It’s so important to challenge these negative thinking patterns to support our overall goals. You likely have thought these patterns for years if not decades, it’s not going to switch overnight and likely without any mental resistance.
But you have to start somewhere!
Step 5:
Assess where you are struggling. What are your biggest challenges? Seek further guidance from an eating disorder specialist, therapist or dietitian or other source that makes you feel good not ashamed.
Identify your biggest stuck points. Do you struggle to believe that all foods fit in moderation, that your body is ok exactly as it is or that you can eat more freely without guilt.
Begin to see where you are struggling to let go and make the change. Now make a plan for this. How are you going to get help with your biggest challenges?
To summarize:
Obviously I have written these steps to seem pretty straight forward. Each step takes a lot of work and practice and could have lessons to each piece. This by no means is a simple process, it’s only a starting point.
Remember that it can take weeks to months or longer to identify, change and work through this process to heal the relationship you have with your body and with how you eat, enjoy and eat food.
It’s going to be a huge paradigm shift to start believing that foods are not good or bad, all foods fit, everything can be enjoyed in moderation, exercise is for enjoyment not punishment, our body gets to exist exactly as it is, weight is not an indication of health or my worth etc. etc. etc.
AND… there’s no better time than the present to get started on making these shifts to live out that full, beautiful, fun filled life without all the negativity and hate towards your body or food.
If you found this article to be helpful, check out my free resource “Make Peace with Food.” It’s a 5 day FREE video series teaching lessons to challenge negative thinking around food and our body.
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