Creating Peace With Food

If you feel out of control around food or you spend more time and energy than you’d like thinking about it, this episode is for you.

I’m sharing my struggle with food and how I was able to lose weight and get healthier not just in my body but also in my head by creating peace with food.

If you want to think less about food, feel more in control, and reach your weight loss or health goals, I’m diving into the main strategies to get the creation process started.

If you want to take what you’re learning on the podcast to the next level, implementing these lesson into your life, come work with me.  I’m currently offering 1:1 private coaching. Click here for more details!

WHAT YOU WILL DISCOVER:

• What creating food around peace looks like
• How the stories you have around food are hurting or helping you
• The roles food plays in our life
• Why you must intentionally choose the role you want food to play.
• What to do with cravings and urges

FEATURED ON THE SHOW:

• Work with me! 
• Would you help me out? I have a goal to get 100 podcast reviews before the year is up. Please leave a review on your preferred podcast platform and share the podcast. Thank you!
• Follow me on Instagram for more
• Website

TRANSCRIPT:

This is The Joyful You Podcast, episode 95, Creating Peace with Food.

Welcome to The Joyful You Podcast.

On this show, I talk all about the tools you need to cultivate a healthy relationship with food, your mind, and your life.

I’m your host, Rachael Collins.

As an eating psychology practitioner, a certified life coach, and a weight loss expert, it is my mission to show you how to work with your body, manage your mind, process your emotions, and create supportive habits so you can live well, feel well, and become your strongest, healthiest, happiest, most amazing self, a joyful you.

Hey there, welcome to the podcast episode.

Thank you for being here today.

Before we dive in, I need your help.

I am trying to grow the podcast, and the best way to do that is through shares and reviews.

So, I was wondering if you would leave me a podcast review if you haven’t already done so, and if you will please, please, please share this podcast with others.

Text your favorite episode to someone, share it on your social, or email a link to someone you think would like it to or would benefit from it.

I am setting a lofty goal to get 100 reviews by the end of the year.

Now, I think that we can do it, and it’s going to be so exciting, but I’m going to need your help.

So, thank you in advance for helping me be able to reach my goal.

Today, we are going to talk about creating peace with food.

Many of you know, but if you don’t know, food is something that I struggled with forever, it feels like.

I remember as a teen looking at all the different diets, all the diets that I saw my mom on and my friends’ moms on, and even some of my friends were on diets.

I had one friend who always seemed to be on the cabbage soup diet.

She even brought it to school and she literally would eat nothing except for this soup that she brought and this little orange Tupperware.

I had another friend who would only eat grapefruit and cottage cheese.

Now, this was in the late 80s, early 90s when fat was considered bad.

So everything was non-fat, which looking back, I can see that was part of the problem because there was little to no focus on nutrition at all.

It was all on just eating no fat, which when they took the fat out of these products, they added in a ton of sugar.

That was part of the problem.

And my favorite treat of the day was Snackwell’s cookies and no-fat Fig Newtons.

You guys remember those?

They were really good.

But then in the early 2000s, I had a friend introduce me to calorie counting and quote-unquote nutrition.

I’m using air quotes here.

I remember she showed me this book and on the front cover is this gorgeous woman who was fit and had this body that I had always dreamed of having, which at the time in the early 2000s was rail thin because that’s what was in.

I remember trying to follow her plan, which was really just a diet, but it was hidden under the guise of healthy eating.

Now, before I even went on this diet, and I’m saying that in air quotes because she didn’t call it a diet, but it literally was a diet.

I really didn’t need to lose weight.

I was fine.

My body was at its natural weight.

I just wanted to be real thin, like everyone in the day.

My eating also was pretty much in harmony.

I didn’t really have a problem with food up until this point, but it was all downhill after this.

That really was probably the thing that drove my eating and made me feel out of control around food.

When I went on this diet, I started feeling a lot of guilt, and I had a lot of shame around even some of the healthy things that I wanted to eat.

But this book said that I shouldn’t eat them, and I started to really feel out of control around food.

I stopped listening to my body and what my body wanted, and I started listening to what this food expert was telling me my body really needed, as if she knew, right?

As if she knew my body.

And certain foods became an enemy, which made them even more tempting.

What is it about the bad guy that all the good girls want?

That was me with food, which meant that I was constantly in a battle.

I wanted it, but I knew I shouldn’t have it, so I didn’t want it, but I really wanted it, but I didn’t want it, but I wanted it.

Every day, it was this battle, and most days, I lost, I lost the battle.

And I started to gain a lot of weight, and my health really took a dive.

And I went from diet to diet, to doctor to doctor, to medication to medication.

It didn’t seem to help.

I had one doctor that even put me on weight loss medication, and I lost weight, I did.

But my relationship with food was still crap.

I still had no idea what to eat, and I still had a lot of thoughts about this is good, and this is bad, and I can eat this, and I can’t eat this.

All the drama.

And once I could no longer take the medication, I of course gained all the weight back, plus some.

I had gained an extra 60 pounds.

Now, my last attempt to lose weight, because I just knew that was the thing that was going to help me create peace with food, so I thought, right?

I thought if I could just lose the weight, I would never struggle with food again.

So I went on a popular 30-day elimination diet.

I just knew that was going to fix all of my problems.

And somehow, I white-knuckled my way through the 30 days and I lost weight.

And I felt really good.

But then I became afraid of certain food groups, deeming them as bad because that 30-day elimination diet in my mind had made these foods bad.

So this is things like grains and dairy and legumes for crying out loud.

And I also became ultra, mega ultra obsessed with nutrition.

And there’s a name for this.

It’s called orthorexia.

I worried about only eating organic and eating sugar was of the devil.

And grains were terrible for me.

And so were legumes.

And if I even had a yogurt, oh my gosh, that was going to just ruin my health forever.

Yet, I still craved these things.

I still wanted to eat these things.

I still wanted to eat cookies, and I still wanted to eat yogurt, and I wanted to eat birthday cake and ice cream with my family.

And most of the time, I tried really, really hard not to want these things and not to eat these things.

But then, at the end of the day, by the time the witching hour of 4 o’clock came along, when all my kids were home from school, I’d find myself hiding in the pantry, eating Oreos by the sleeve.

And I think my thinking was, okay, I’m going to get this out of my system, and then tomorrow I’m going to be really, really good.

And once I got all the Oreos, and I got it out of my quote-unquote system, I would be washed over with guilt and so ashamed of myself.

Obviously, I was ashamed because I was hiding in the pantry, eating things that I thought was bad.

I didn’t want anyone to see that I was eating them.

And I would beat myself up with the worst self-talk you have ever heard.

I would be so embarrassed if someone could jump into my head and see the things that I was telling to myself.

I would have literally given my right arm to figure this out.

I was afraid of hiring someone to help me.

I was afraid of the cost.

And I was afraid that a coach would judge me and scold me just like I was judging and scolding myself.

So what did I do?

I spent another couple of years trying to figure it out on my own.

I was Googling everything.

I was watching documentaries, and I was reading books, and I was watching every single free webinar I could get my hands on.

And I became even more confused.

There was so much contradictory information out there.

And it made me even more scared of food.

I remember watching a documentary on sugar and how they were saying that sugar is the new smoking.

And I was like, oh my gosh, this is so bad for me.

Why do I want it?

And it just made the food so powerful in my mind.

The food held so much power, and I was so powerless.

Finally, that was it.

I had enough, and I took a leap of faith, and I invested in myself, and I hired my first coach, and then I hired a second coach, and then I hired a third coach.

I fell in love with coaching because it really helped to get down deep under the surface of what was really going on.

The Googling and the documentaries and the reading books and all the webinars only hit what was on the surface.

They really only focused on the food, and my problem wasn’t with the food.

So I really, really wanted to master this topic.

I really wanted to create peace with food.

I wanted to create peace also in my head and in my body and with my lifestyle and my habits, and especially with myself.

And can I just tell you, it was worth every single penny.

It was the best investment I could have ever invested in.

I was totally worth it.

And my coaches, they were on my team.

There was no judgment whatsoever.

There was only compassion and empathy and love.

And the thing is, they were able to see what was going on, things that I never in a million years would have ever been able to figure out on my own.

Or, okay, if I did, it would have taken me who knows how many more years of Googling and reading and watching every free webinar out there.

I’ve come a really, really long way.

This was, let’s see, 2017 when I hired my first coach.

And so here we are, 2024, and I am in no way done.

I still have to focus on it, and I still have to work on it.

But I think that’s just how it is.

Self-improvement is a journey.

It’s not a destination.

We will never arrive and stay there.

We have to continue working on it daily.

It just gets easier as we go.

And that’s where I am right now.

And that’s what I want for you too.

So creating a piece of food.

Let’s talk about that.

There is a reason that I chose the word create because for the longest time, I was hoping that it would just happen.

I was hoping that another diet would do it or a program.

I even remember praying and asking God to just change the way that I thought about food and the way that I wanted food.

I really, really truly wanted to just fall asleep and then wake up the next day, a completely changed woman.

And it never happened that way.

It didn’t happen that way.

It was something that I had to create and co-create with him.

And I’m guessing that it’s probably that way for you too.

If you are looking for something new to motivate you to create peace with food, I am going to recommend coaching.

And I would love to be your coach.

The thing that I love about coaching is it’s going to help you find out what’s making you feel so out of control around food.

Now, I’m going to give you a few suggestions today of things to look for.

But working with a coach is really going to help you figure out what it is for you and create the peace that you seek.

Can you imagine choosing what you want to eat, not what some diet told you you had to eat, and eating it in a way that leaves you feeling content and happy instead of guilty and ashamed?

Can you imagine eating in a way that works for your body and it leaves you feeling energized instead of sick and worried that the dang button of your gene might bust off at any second?

That’s how it was with me.

Maybe that’s how it is with you.

But I promise there is a way to fill in control and to create peace with food.

If this is what you want, consider this your sign.

Maybe it’s time.

Head to my website, ajoyfulyou.com forward slash work with me, and I’ll see you there.

Let’s get going on this.

All right, let’s dig in to creating peace with food.

I’m going to offer you, I have four or five suggestions of things for you to focus on that will help you create peace with food.

And the first thing is to address the way that we think about food.

So in my coaching program, I teach a concept called good, better, best.

This is all focused around food.

I want you to notice that there are no bad foods.

That’s because only bad foods are foods that don’t taste good, are rotten, are moldy, and are gross.

Every other food, including chips and candy and cookies and donuts and Cheetos, etc, etc, etc, are good.

There are no bad foods.

Now we’ve all been taught that we need to blacklist certain foods.

And if making certain foods off limits works for you, then by all means, keep that.

But I’m guessing it probably doesn’t.

I know for myself, I have never been able to keep up with a blacklist of foods.

It’s like as soon as I put a food on the no-no list, I just want it more.

It doesn’t bring me peace.

It doesn’t make it so that I don’t want it.

It just stirs up a whole lot of drama and a whole lot of thoughts in my head, and I can’t stop thinking about it.

And then I just tend to overeat other quote unquote good foods in an attempt to not eat my quote unquote bad foods.

I have found that by thinking of all foods as just food, it’s just food.

And there is no good food, there is no bad food, and there is no food that is off limits.

I can have every single food, any food that I want.

So what we have to do is we have to find the stories that we have around food.

And the thing about stories is that they are all optional.

You can write whatever story you want.

So find the stories about food that are going to serve you best to achieve your goal, whatever that is for you.

Now the next thing that will help create a piece of food is to decide what role you want food to play in your life.

So of course, one of the roles for food is going to be fuel.

But what else do you want to use it for?

What other roles is it playing in your life right now?

Now for me, food has been my best friend.

It’s been something to keep me company or to cheer me up.

It’s been my entertainment.

It’s been something to do when I felt bored.

It’s also played the role of an escape for me.

When life got too hard to handle, food was there.

It like literally transported me somewhere else.

It took me out of my misery and my woes for a brief moment.

So there are a lot of roles that food plays.

And I used to teach that the only role food should play is fuel.

But I have changed my mind on that.

That is diet thinking, and I no longer believe that, and I no longer teach that.

I think that a better way for us to think about food is to decide what role do I want it to play in my life.

It can be comfort if you want it to be.

It can be used for celebration or connection.

I do think that food was designed to help us not just physically, but emotionally as well.

But creating peace with food looks like you deciding what role you want it to play based on the goal that you have.

If you want to lose weight, it might not be serving you to use food for entertainment.

But the thing is, you get to decide.

And if you want to come and get more help with me through coaching, I can help you make those decisions.

We can see what role food plays for you right now, and what role you want it to play, and then how to act accordingly.

Now, the next thing to understand when it comes to creating peace with food is what to do with cravings and urges.

This is a big one.

The first thing that I want you to understand is that cravings and urges aren’t the same thing, and they need to be treated differently.

Cravings come from our biology, and urges come from our psychology or our thinking.

I think when we talk about filling out a control around food, this is one of the big things that we are talking about.

It’s all of these urges.

I know for me, whenever I try to eat less sugar or less food, I get cravings and urges.

And knowing what to do when you get these is the key.

It’s key right here.

It’s a big factor in creating a piece of food.

Now, most of us, what we do is we try to white-knuckle through using willpower to say no.

And sometimes it works, and other times it doesn’t.

But it feels like a battle, and it takes so much effort, especially mental effort, to keep white-knuckling and willpowering through.

And it’s exhausting.

Like we talked about last week, willpower is finite.

We only have so much.

But sometimes a craving is your body actually needing something.

And if you know what that is, and you can give it to your body, then your craving will go away.

It will diminish.

This is things like knowing hormone balance and blood sugar regulation and overall nutrition.

Those are things that we need to focus on.

I know for me, I was afraid of cravings and I was afraid of urges.

I hated them.

They were out to destroy me and push me off the wagon.

And I spent a lot of time fighting them.

But once I learned why they were there, what was going on in my body or what was going on in my head, and then what to do with them, it made it so much easier to manage them.

Now, the last thing that I want to think about when it comes to creating peace with food is letting go of the all or nothing mindset that we have.

We tend to think in black and white.

Either I’ve been really good or I’ve been really bad and I’ve fallen off the wagon.

I don’t find either of these very useful when it comes to creating peace with food.

One of the tools that I use and teach my clients to use is a doable 24-hour plan.

This is you just make a list of what you want to eat for the day, and making a plan helps you 1.

decide what role food is going to play in your life that day.

It also helps you to stop thinking about food all of the time because you have a plan in place.

So, you think about it once in the morning when you’re making your plan, and then you’re done.

But what happens is sometimes we don’t follow our plan, or we have a lot of drama around our plan, and we label ourselves as bad because we didn’t eat on plan, or we label ourselves as good because we did eat on plan.

And if we eat on plan, then we celebrate and reward ourselves for being good, and if we’ve been bad, then we either eat because we’re feeling bad, and we want some comfort, or we punish ourselves and we say, Oh, nope, I don’t deserve this ice cream that’s already on my plan, or I don’t deserve to eat birthday cake at my daughter’s birthday party tonight.

We punish ourselves.

But the plan is just a tool.

It’s not there to cast judgment on you.

It’s not there to label you good or bad.

This really messes with your psyche.

So we need to clean all of this up.

There is no wagon to fall off of.

You’re going to have good and bad days.

You’re going to even have good and bad moments throughout the day.

And that’s okay.

Having a healthy perspective on that and being in it for the long game, like we talked about, there is no end destination where everything is perfect and you eat perfect.

It’s a process.

It’s a practice.

And thinking about it this way is going to serve you and it’s going to help you create peace with food.

You have everything you need to create peace with food.

It’s already inside of you.

You just need to tap into it.

And this is what we do in coaching all the time.

And you are invited to try coaching with me any time you want.

You can learn more about that on my website, ajoyfulyou.com.

But I promise you, it is possible to create peace with food.

There is a huge amount of relief available to you.

You don’t have to keep struggling and fighting and putting money into doctor’s visits because your health is bad.

These tools will help you get there.

These tools will help you reach your goal, whatever that is for you.

Thanks for joining me today, and I will see you next time.

Thank you for listening to The Joyful You Podcast.

If you’d like additional support, click the link in the show notes, and let’s chat about how we can work together to get you to your goal.

If this episode was helpful to you, make sure to subscribe and please share it.

The most helpful thing you can do in return is to go leave a review.

If you want to hang out on social media, you can find me on Instagram at A Joyful You or on my website, ajoyfulyou.com.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS