REPLAY: 6 Mistakes You May Be Making When Trying To Have Food Freedom

March 15, 2023

Welcome to The Balanced Dietitian Podcast! Welcome back to the podcast. I am so happy you are here with me this week.

This week we’re running a replay of a solo episode I did a couple of years ago about 6 reasons why food freedom or healing your relationship with food has not worked in the past.

In this episode, we discuss:

[02:15] Reason #1: You are still restricting

[03:21] Reason #2: You are just not eating enough

[04:32] Reason #3: You have not addressed your internalized fat phobia

[06:07] Reason #4: You are still listening to external sources to tell us what we need

[07:50] Reason #5: You are doing mindless eating

[10:33] Reason #6: You try to add more control around food

[02:15] Reason #1: You are still restricting

The first reason why food freedom is not working for you is that you are still restricted and this can be a physical restriction or psychological restriction. If you want to learn more about the difference between the restrictions, you can definitely go listen to the podcast on the different types of restrictions where we really dive deeper into the differences but it basically means that you are still restricted at some levels.

[03:21] Reason #2: You are just not eating enough

The second part is that you’re just not eating enough and this part is really important too. Making sure we have enough is always the first step. We have this idea of how little our body needs and we were convinced by diet culture that we need to hold calories. But actually, our bodies are so extensive and we do need food and calories.

[04:32] Reason #3: You have not addressed your internalized fat phobia

The third reason why food freedom may not have worked for you is that you have not addressed your internalized fat phobia. This one is a big one, but it is really important for us to talk about this. If you still believe that a larger body is not a good body. If you still have thoughts about fat bodies not being adequate and still striving for this ideal body it is gonna make it extremely hard for you to have complete food freedom around food.

[06:07] Reason #4: You are still listening to external sources to tell us what we need

The next step if you’re finding that it is just not for you is that you are not listening to your body and you are still trying to listen to external sources to tell us what you need. It could be someone you follow on Instagram, a calorie counter like My Fitness Pal, or any outside influence. This happens when you are not relying on your body and not connecting to your body and the process. That again, is not ideal in terms of finding food freedom, because we’re not able to connect to our bodies and that is extremely important.

[07:50] Reason #5: You are doing mindless eating

The fifth reason why food freedom may not be working for you is that you are just eating food you don’t like or just doing the behavior to get it over with. This is what I call mindless eating and this is where food doesn’t bring us satisfaction or we’re eating foods that are not enjoyable for us. That may lead us to want to look for pleasure in other types of foods. We love variety and having pleasure in the foods that we eat is really important. So make sure that you’re actually enjoying the foods that you’re having and that you’re enjoying the experience of eating.

[10:33] Reason #6: You try to add more control around food

The last piece is we try to add more control around food in order to have food freedom. This has a big part to do with not trusting ourselves around food. We don’t give ourselves full permission to eat foods that feel good to us so we add more restrictions and make more rules. So basically, we’re adding conditions to the freedom that we have around food and this is definitely something that keeps us stuck. Because the more that we have food rules, the more that we feel controlled by food. We really need to work on letting go of all food rules and then learning gentle nutrition.