3 Essential Ingredients For Your Journey to Peace with Food
This Summer, my in-law’s visited us and we went to Maine for a few days. I’m obsessed with lighthouses, so we found a couple to visit. There was one that we went to that was at the end of a breakwater. This breakwater was made of giant slabs of granite pushed together to make a walkway that went almost a mile out into the ocean. I didn’t know it was that long going into it, and it was really windy, cold, and about to rain.
When we first started off it felt completely unfamiliar as I was trying to get comfortable, find my footing, and settle in. I just kept going, one foot in front of the other. A couple times I wondered if we should turn around, as it was taking way longer than anticipated, and it felt like the lighthouse was still so far away.
I thought it was so similar to what my journey to peace with food looked like in the past. If you’ve been struggling with food for a while, you might also find yourself wanting to give up, getting impatient, and feeling like you’re so far away from peace.
Eventually we made it to the lighthouse, in awe of how far we walked in super windy conditions. It was all worth it, and I was so happy that we kept moving forward.
Here are three essential ingredients to your journey to peace with food, courtesy of my trip to the lighthouse.
Ingredient 1: Curiosity.
We all like when things feel easy and effortless. We love when things feel natural. The thing is that when you’re on your journey to peace with food, the truth is that very few things feel natural. In fact, most things on your journey are going to feel unfamiliar because they’re new. You're going to be breaking patterns, implementing new things, and rewiring old thoughts.
It’s a good thing that things feel unfamiliar.
The things that feel familiar when you’re struggling with food may in fact be the binge and restrict cycle, counting calories and dieting- which are the very things you are working to move away from.
When you’re implementing things that feel unfamiliar and new, it can be easy to default to judgement and blame yourself. When you aren’t immediately an expert or immediately comfortable, you might make a judgement about yourself.
And judgement just doesn’t feel good. You're likely to feel down about yourself, lower on energy and less likely to implement the practices of peace with food.
When you approach circumstances, feelings or experiences from a place of curiosity, you’re likely to keep moving forward. As long as you keep moving forward, you absolutely will get to the peaceful relationship with food you desire.
Ingredient 2: Consistent Action
Action creates clarity. The more action you take, the more practice you get, and the better you will be at Intuitive Eating.
This is true because part of the process of finding peace with food is learning to nourish yourself based on your body’s cues- and those are unique to you.
The more you practice, the better you will be. If you make a wrong choice, you now have more feedback on what your body doesn’t like. If you make a great choice, you now have more feedback on what makes your body feel really good.
The more feedback you get, the better the choices you can make in the future about what works for your body.
A huge part of finding peace with food is building trust in your body and in yourself. I know that when you’re struggling with food, you’re used to losing control around food, feeling terrible, and having to fight with your body and your cravings.
Taking the steps to build trust can feel really scary.
This is where consistent action is really important because the Peace with Food Framework is created to increase body trust. The more practice you get and the more action you take, the faster this will come.
Ingredient 3: Support
We all get in our own way. Our brains are wired to keep us safe, and what helps our brains feel safe is doing the same thing over and over again.
That means that when you start your journey to peace with food, your subconscious beliefs are going to be loud.
You’re going to want to go back on your diet.
You're going to have the urge to count your calories.
You're going to wonder if peace with food is even possible for you.
And this will show up in old habits and behaviors that are no longer serving you and will keep you at war with food.
That’s why it’s so important to have support. We all need support.
We all need a system to make sure we’re taking the right steps in the right order.
We need someone to cheer us on.
And we need someone to hold us accountable so we can keep moving forward no matter what.
Because the life that you get when you’re on the other side is so worth it.
That’s why I created the Peace with Food Framework. It’s a process that combines both Intuitive Eating and Transformational Coaching so that you can feel at peace with food as quickly as possible.
This means that you not only learn the behaviors to implement, but you also get the mindset work, so that you can create habits that last and move forward with ease.
Your life is too important to spend it worrying about the calories in your dessert or trapped in your head with guilt.
To get started on your journey, book your initial session here. We’ll create clarity on what peace with food looks like for your life, what’s keeping you stuck, and we’ll start your journey together.
I’m cheering you on!
xo,
Melissa