All posts by Lindsay

What is your “I-can’t-stop-once-I-pop” food?

Sweets drive you crazy?

Can’t have one bite of ice cream without eating the whole pint?

Maybe it’s chips? Peanut Butter? Kentucky Fried Chicken? Feel free to get weird.

And let me tell you a little something about your favorite “addictive” foods.

The only time you will ever feel “out of control” around a specific food, is when you’re trying to control it to begin with.

Somewhere, somehow, you are judging, shaming, or limiting yourself around that food. You are calling it “bad.” You are wishing you didn’t want it. You are worrying you will lose control, gain weight, get caught.

You are handing that food power over you, by fearing it.

If you don’t believe me, try naming one food that “drives you crazy,” that you allow yourself to eat with complete abandon. No shame, no guilt, no fear of losing control. Just letting that food be a part of your life, like it was when you were a kid. Like it’s No. Big. Deal.

I bet you can’t.

The only answer to fear around food, is allowance, more allowance, and deeper still allowance. If you are a veteran of this work, you may not even be conscious of all the ways in which you are still restricting yourself, but let your “lack of control” remind you. Lack of Control = Lack of Allowance = Binge Waiting To Happen.

Lean into your lack of control, and be surprised by the grace that lifts you up. 

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STEP ONE: Radical Forgiveness

Forgiveness is the first step to changing your relationship with food and your body permanently.

Forgive yourself for putting your body through all that you’ve put her through up until this point — whether that be bingeing, starving, or calling her fat until she could no longer imagine another way to feel.

Forgive yourself for “not getting it” until now (if now), and for continuing to be human and imperfect in your relationship with food.

 

Forgive yourself for polishing off whatever bag of food you polished off last night in a state of chaos, confusion, and self-loathing. You were doing the best that you could to take care of yourself in that moment, with the tools that you’ve been taught up until this point.

Forgive yourself and practice new tools, gentle tools, loving tools; knowing that they will take time to master. Like learning a new language, you will forget words, and re-learn them the hard way — by “messing up” and asking for help.

Embrace your “mistakes” as the teachers that they are. When we judge, we miss the lesson.

(Feel free to share that last part, it’s my favorite).

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