The Food Freedom Life

07/13/2023

Are you afraid to keep foods in the house of out fear of losing control? Restricting ourselves from certain foods can intensify our desire for them. Let's challenge the idea of forbidden foods and gradually reintroduce them into our lives. It's time to break free from the cycle of restriction and embrace abundance! Learn how in this blog post 🙌🏻

10/14/2022

10/14/2022

04/28/2022

“I need to lose weight, why would I let myself gain it?”

We talked about this in group coaching on Tuesday night- the idea that even though you may not be ‘underweight’ or you may not need to gain weight for your body to be medically stable,

you may need to gain weight to heal your mind. And, even if you’re not ‘underweight’ you very well still can be under eating. It see it all the time.

Especially if you don’t ‘look sick’ (which is a false concept in the first place when it comes to eating disorders and disordered eating) and especially when you’ve gained weight already from binge/emotional/overeating/ED recovery, it is so hard to wrap your head around the idea that you might still need to gain weight.

But hear me out.

Even though you’re not physically at risk because of being at a low weight, mentally you’re in a place that’s incredibly unhealthy.

Beating yourself up for eating, losing control with food and shaming yourself for it, constantly thinking about what you’ll eat next or if it’s the right thing or the right amount or how it’ll effect your body… that is a sickness that needs to be healed.

I’m not saying you’re going to gain weight- in fact, I don’t know what your body is going to do. But what I do know is that allowing yourself to eat through the guidance of a professional and finding freedom with food and body image through this regardless of your weight heals your mind and your body. You deserve this and so much more.

I’m currently accepting clients for my next coaching group starting in June. If this at all resonated with you, then you’d be a great fit for the program! DM me or click the link in my bio for more info :)

                   

03/02/2022

Do you ever think… “I’m not dieting, but still bingeing- what’s up with that?!”

There are 2 main reasons that people confuse binge eating (eating in reaction to dieting or diet mentality) with emotional eating (eating for pleasure, soothing or comfort).

1️⃣ Your will power (and your ability to diet or resist food) diminishes when we're stressed or managing difficult feelings.

👉🏻 If you're using will power to hold yourself back from eating, you’re more likely to “crack” or “fall off the wagon” when difficult feelings come up.

The diet mentality is the real culprit here

2️⃣ You're struggling with diet-mentality around your emotional eating choices.

If you judge your emotional eating as wrong or bad, or if your emotional eating urges come in conflict with what you think you’re “supposed” to eat— you’re almost guaranteed to fall-off-the-wagon when you “slip” at the hands of an emotional urge.

In other words, emotional eating turns into a binge when you have diet-mentality around it — when you judge your emotional eating as “not okay” or deem yourself “off the wagon."

This is why giving *permission* of emotional eating behaviours is SO critical to long-term binge eating recovery.

If want to get to the bottom of why you’re binge & emotional eating so you can make food feel EASY and finally find peace with it so you can feel better and know you’re supporting your body long term, click the link in my bio to apply for coaching ✨

                                                         

02/28/2022

Swipe ➡️ to find out if you’re at diet rock bottom

Being at diet rock bottom looks a little different for everyone. Most often, it feels like:

Failure.

Defeat.

Shame.

Your body isn’t doing what you want it to do (lose weight long-term)

You don’t trust yourself around food (eating has so much baggage)

You have so many areas of your life ‘together’… so why can’t food be the same?

Food, eating, health is not something you can discipline your way into managing forever. At a certain point, you hit a wall. That may be where you’re at now.

Even if you’ve been trying intuitive eating, you can still be at diet rock bottom if you’re not addressing all of the pieces of healing that you need to in order to truly move forward.

I see clients who have been working at intuitive eating for MONTHS and they can still be at diet rock bottom 😣

My goal as a dietitian and a coach is to help you address why you’re stuck + give you tangible steps to take so you can start to feel more at peace with food and more accepting of your body. All so you can open up your mental energy to live life without food and body anxiety so you can go on all the girls trips, try all the best restaurants in your area, say yes to new experiences and live in the moment again.

I currently have 3 client spots open for March! If you’re ready to finally be free from diet rock bottom, click the link in my bio to apply for coaching ✨


           

02/17/2022

What are you unlearning in food freedom?

Yes, get excited about learning how to listen to your body

About feeling more in control around eating

About being able to honour your fullness

About no longer bingeing

About understanding your emotional eating

But don’t forget the hard work of unlearning old beliefs and patterns that are no longer serving you as well.

Both are important to get you to a place of being at peace with food and feeling at home in your body

Learn lots, but unlearn more ✨

02/08/2022

How do you know when you’re hungry? 😐

When you’ve been restricting, hunger and fullness become extreme sensations.

You only know you’re hungry when you’re STARVING

And you can’t stop eating until you’re so full.

The more subtle signs of hunger (and fullness) become lost, which can make you trust your body even less.

And yes, thinking about food is a sign of hunger!

With intuitive eating, you’ll learn how to get back in tune with your body’s subtle cues so you can feel more trusting of your body and at peace with food for good 🙌🏻

I’m here to support you through this whenever you’re ready ❤️ DM or link in bio for more info!

                 

02/07/2022

Your brain is lying to you.

When it tells you that you just need to try harder.

That you have no willpower.

That this isn’t a problem.

Binge eating, disordered eating, anything that doesn’t feel ‘good’ when it comes to food… isn’t normal. And it’s not your fault. You don’t have to live with it forever.

You’re a smart, driven, high achieving person- yet you struggle with food. That’s not a coincidence. The way you approach reaching other goals is working against you with food, because food can’t be all-or-nothing.

That’s not your fault; that’s what you’ve been told to do your whole life. Try harder, eat less, eat this not that, cut that out, swap this… it’s sabotaging you.

Food and exercise are not a math equation.

It’s time to change gears and work on healing your relationship with food. Your body. Yourself. You need a different strategy. It’s time to try something new ❤️ and I’m here to support you every step of the way.

                                                         

01/26/2022

Don’t even get me started on Noom 🙄

What else would you add to the list that hasn’t helped with binge eating?

                           

01/18/2022

You put in the work, you lost the weight, now you’re regaining it.

This can feel like a major failure.
A message that has been conditioned into you by our culture

This can make you feel awful about your body and how it looks (again, something that’s likely been taught to you)

It can bring up feelings of wanting to restrict again, to go back to old patterns (that ultimately weren’t sustainable)

It’s at this point where you have to choose your path: restriction or healing

Will you allow yourself to move through this? To be where you’re at? To push through those thoughts of restricting in a way you never have before?

If you’re reading this, it’s because you’ve never truly gone down the healing path; you’ve always chosen restriction. And that’s okay! You likely weren’t ready for anything else.

Let me tell you, though. What’s on the other side- peace with food, flow with movement, worth separate from weight, is waiting for you. Whenever you’re ready.

I’m here to support you every step of the way ❤️

                                                         

01/11/2022

Do your days of eating look VERY different from your evening eating?

You’re ‘good’ all day, and you eat what you planned

You have your salad, you have your protein bar, you drink your water

But as soon as you’re done work, or as soon as dinner is done, you cave into food

You eat. You’re not satisfied. You eat some more. Still not satisfied. Eat. Way too full. Guilt.

This same pattern plays out on the weekend - you’re ‘good’ during the week but the weekends feel like you’re constantly going overboard

The problem here isn’t you. It’s not a lack of control around food.

It’s that your body is screaming at you for MORE. Your body doesn’t like eating like a bird all day, so it fights back- which inevitably leads to out of control nighttime eating and emotional eating, which then makes you restrict more during the day.

It’s a vicious cycle.

To fix this, you need to break out of this pattern of restricting during the day, yes, even if you don’t ‘feel hungry.’ Your body is hungry! Until you start to honour that, you’re always going to feel out of control.

When you break this cycle, you can finally find peace with food.

2022 is the year of breaking out of food patterns that don’t feel good, who’s with me?

           

01/10/2022

Dieting can be a BIG distraction. Do you agree? 👇🏻

Disclaimer: I’m not saying that everyone who goes on a diet struggles with what is hiding beneath the surface of the iceberg- but lots of people do. You might be one of those people. Honestly, I was too.

👉🏻 Throwing all of your energy into a diet that promises health, happiness, beauty, and success seems like a fantastic way to ‘become your best self.’ It might even make you feel that way for a while- getting compliments, reaching goals, feeling like you have a purpose. It can be pretty great.

😣We know that dieting is the #1 predictor of weight gain.
😣We know that 95% of people who go on diets aren’t able to maintain it.

Nearly all of my clients say they “feel I have pretty much every area of my life together, except for this” (this being the way they feel consumed by food/weight/their bodies).

They’re focusing on the wrong things- they’re slapping band-aids on bullet wounds. And it’s not their fault! It’s not your fault either. You’ve been mislead that this is the fix.

👉🏻 Facing the hard stuff is…hard. So, we put band-aids on our bullet wounds. When we face hardships that seem too challenging to overcome, we have a habit of avoiding them by turning to other methods to heal the pain.

We all have our own band-aids.
❌Dieting is one of them.
❌Food can be another.

Instead of looking inwards for a cure, we try to find material solutions to fix the problem- like changing our bodies. By doing this, we make the issue much worse 😰 When our bodies get smarter and dieting gets harder, the weight comes back on and binge eating or other disordered tendencies can develop. Body image ends up worse than when you started- and the cycle continues 🔄

If a band-aid works at all, it is only a sub-par, temporary fix. A wound needs attention and recovery. Your relationships with food, yourself, and body image fit into this category: it’s time to stop fixing your bullet wounds with band-aids.

01/05/2022

Who else was ready for 2021 to end and move into a new year?🙋🏻‍♀️

If you’re feeling pressure with the messaging around ‘New Year, new me,’ you’re not alone- social media, friends, and family can be a lot.

The ‘getting back on track’ mentality implies that relaxing over the holidays is wrong (which it’s not) and so it’s often a problematic message that can make you feel guilty about eating/resting/etc which are totally normal & healthy things to do!

If you’re getting caught up in the ‘I should do that too…’ way of thinking, reflect on past years:

👉🏻Have you had this mentality in the past?
👉🏻Has it served you?
👉🏻Has it been sustainable?

It can be tempting or even unconscious to get swept away in this ‘I must change everything now’ mentality but YOUR previous experience with it is the best way to prevent getting caught up in it again.

Eyes on your own plate and on your own life.

Other people are on their own journey and who knows what their ‘getting back on track’ actually looks like, how long it actually lasts, if it’s actually healthy etc.

All this said, not all of this New Year mentality is harmful - it can be fun and refreshing to look at the new year and just think about what you could do with it.

For this, start by reflecting on how YOU feel:

🌈How’s your energy? mood?
🌈How organized do you feel?
🌈How fulfilled do you feel?
🌈What do you want out of life?

Ask yourself these questions to gather info on where you’re at- with food, your body image but also just you as an individual! What can you add in? What would make your life feel more full and happy?

Importantly, whatever it is you’re adding, remember these things must be sustainable, must not be all or nothing, and must fit in with your life.

For these reasons, remember they’re not going anywhere- at the end of the day, a new year is just another day. Truly, it’s actually nothing special. There’s no urgency to do it all right now - focus on small baby steps and have fun with it.

New Year, same you, but more at peace with food and your body ✨

12/20/2021

Do you want lose weight AND at the same time you recognize the negative effects of dieting?

You know that every time you’ve tried to lose weight in the past you’ve:

❌Been stuck in the restrict-binge cycle
❌Still don’t feel confident in your body
❌Missed out on experiences with friends
❌Obsessively thought about food and your body
❌Felt unhappy with yourself

But while all these are true, you’re struggling to accept the body you have now because your clothes aren’t fitting the same, you feel out of breath going up the stairs, your Mom commented on your body changing and there’s a little voice in your head telling you “all your problems would be solved if you just lost weight.”

So how can we focus making you FEEL really good, without deepening the binge cycle by focusing on weight loss?

Let’s add in:
✅Movement that feels good that you enjoy
✅Nourishing foods that give you energy
✅Advocating for yourself around food/weight comments
✅Clothes that fit your here and now body

All of these things will ultimately help you FEEL better in your body without the negative effects of pursuing weight loss. Will you lose weight as a result of doing these things? Maybe, I couldn’t say for sure. What I do know, is that it will help regardless and be much more sustainable.

If you’re ready to try a different approach to food, your body, movement, and health so you can make sustainable changes to your life and mental health that feel more supportive, I have just a few spots left for group coaching starting Jan. 11! Link in bio to book a free 30-minute consultation to see if it’s a good fit 🌈