Food Freedom
What does Food Freedom even mean and how do you achieve this? I get how fixated on your problems with food you can get. I get how much food can feel like a horrible burden and at the same time, your best friend.
The thing is, your relationship with food is a byproduct of your relationship with your emotionality. Your behaviour with food is a symptom of something deeper. It’s a solution for a problem. Food is not your issue though, although it may seem like it’s the thing that causes you the most suffering right now.
There’s a whole other world just below the surface, that food is covering up. I help you peel back the layers to uncover that world. One layer at a time your self awareness begins to increase.
One layer at a time your understanding of who you really are begins to unfold. One layer at a time you start to come home to your body. One layer at a time you start to accept and even love the parts of you you’ve denied and hid from the world.
One layer at a time you begin to feel. You begin to integrate and you begin to heal. As you learn to feel the emotional pain you’ve pushed down, you begin to have more access to joy. You feel lightness in your body.
You start to trust yourself and the Universe. You start to believe that you are worthy and you learn to meet your needs internally and also ask for support from those closest to you. You become empowered in your own life. And then you realize food is no longer an issue. You trust yourself around food and you make choices that feel best to you. No more control and restriction. No more binge eating.
Your mind is no longer consumed by food and you experience Food Freedom without even talking about food!
“Go to the heart of your pain, and you won’t find more pain, but freedom that doesn’t require the absence of pain.”
Robert Augustus Masters
Binge eating is an attempt to regulate your inner state through an external behaviour.
Like any compulsive behaviour or addiction, it serves a purpose. Therefore continuing to just work on the behaviour level by trying different diets, hiring a Nutritionist or personal trainer or counting calories/macros will not work. I know it’s tempting to continue to look outside of yourself for the solution. Maybe it’s all you know. Maybe you don’t even realize there’s another option. I didn’t either for a long time. I stayed stuck and continued to struggle as I focused on food, exercise and physical health.
I thought I just needed to try harder. I thought I just needed more motivation or accountability. That couldn’t be farther from the truth friends. Nothing outside of you will help you regulate your internal environment. Going within and unearthing what’s subconsciously driving you to turn to food is what creates real, lasting change. Learning to change your relationship with these parts of yourself is where the magic happens.
To do this you need to come back home to your body. On the journey back home you get to learn about all parts of you that prevent you from being in your body. The parts of you that have developed to keep you safe from feeling emotional pain. This journey is about compassion. It’s about understanding how these parts served you. It’s about including them, but no longer letting them in the driver’s seat. It’s about self-trust, self-worth, self-sabotage, true self-love, internal self-soothing and so on.
You see the theme? Self. It starts within the self. Who you think you currently are, is layered with inherited beliefs, masks, borrowed identities, fear and wounding. Through all of that, you find your authentic self. I like to call this the Illuminated Womxn Journey. The journey through the darkness and within the shadows leads to the light. The place where shadow and light intersect (much like the moon and sun in my logo), is where healing occurs. Once the shadow parts are illuminated, it doesn’t mean you’ll never meet darkness again, as that’s a part of the duality of life. What it does mean though, is you’ll always have access to that light at your core to guide you, even through the darkest of shadows. To learn more about the Illuminated Womxn Journey check out the Work With Me page.
“Numbing vulnerability is especially debilitating because it doesn’t just deaden the pain of our difficult experiences; numbing vulnerability also dulls our experiences of love, joy, belonging, creativity, and empathy. We can’t selectively numb emotion. Numb the dark and you numb the light.”
Brene Brown
