8 Steps to Food Freedom: Make Peace With Food

Making Peace With Food is the 5th step to food freedom. It’s all about freeing yourself from food rules and restrictions. It’s about giving yourself unconditional permission to eat anything at anytime WITHOUT GUILT.

Unconditional permission:

This means eating what you want, when you want and in the amounts you want without punishing yourself with “counteracting” behaviors. When you know whatever food you want will always be available, it loses power over you.

Making peace with food is about learning to have the same emotional response regardless of what you eat so that you can truly listen to and honor your body’s bio-individual needs. Giving yourself unconditional permission to eat what you want ultimately results in variety and balanced food choices. You’ll want to feel good and feeling good comes with listening to YOUR individual needs.

Why Foods are Not “Good” or “Bad”

Foods are not inherently healthy or unhealthy and you are not “good” or “bad” for eating certain foods. For example, if you were really hungry and craving something heavier and warm with a salty flavor, an orange really wouldn’t be a “healthy” choice because it would be denying your needs. In that case, a burger would actually be a better option.

Let go of your food rules:

A big part of making peace with food is letting go of your food rules. Think about all of the rules you have created for yourself. Is there one that might feel okay breaking? Can you experiment with allowing yourself to break this rule? Try to have compassion for whatever comes up for you. Notice how you feel before and after. Was it liberating? Was its scary? Are you ready to tackle another one of your rules? See if you can begin conquering your food rules 1 at a time at a pace that feels comfortable and safe for you.

Over time, you’ll start to become much more aware of your body’s true individual needs. The more you honor those needs, the more your body trusts you. And when you can develop that sense of trust between your mind and body, that’s when you can truly feel free around food and achieve optimal health and well-being.

Envision a new relationship with food

When you are struggling with a certain food situation, see if you can visualize the situation playing out perfectly in sync with your vision for your ideal relationship with food. Close your eyes and really picture it. What does it look like? How do you feel? Imagine yourself navigating the situation with confidence, ease and pleasure. Think about how good it will feel to listen to and trust your body.

Then when that situation arises, see if you can play out that vision. Afterwards, notice how you feel about the experience. Was it better than allowing your fear to run the show? Do you instead feel free and confident?

For example, if you are nervous about going to a friends potluck party because you’re worried you’ll get “out of control”, take a second to picture what you want the experience to look like instead. Maybe you walk in and are so excited to see your friends. You aren’t obsessing over the food so you hang out and chat with your friends for a little while, and sip on some wine. You start to gently notice you are getting hungry so you head to the food table. You feel free and at ease. You choose the foods that will taste good and make you feel good without too much thought. You savor and enjoy every bite and you stop eating when you’re perfectly comfortable. Then you go back to chatting with and enjoying the time with your friends. You leave feeling happy, confident and satisfied.

The more you do this, the easier it will become. It will feel so good to have positive food experiences that you’ll keep adopting new beliefs and behaviors that allow you to do that. Eventually, it will feel natural and you won’t even have to think twice about it.