Do you feel that you've made peace with food, but are still struggling to make peace with your body? Have you gained weight on your anti-diet, intuitive eating journey, and are now trying to work through your emotions related to this weight gain? Are you feeling a loss from letting go of dieting? Listen now for some ways to get started on body peace and diet mourning.

Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds.

Key Points:

• National Dieting Month has reached its end! CHEERS!
• Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast and leave a review!! It really helps people who need to break free from dieting find the podcast and begin their journey to find food peace. Thank you to everyone who has left a review so far!
• For those of you early on in your intuitive eating journey, this letter writer lets us know that part of intuitive eating is learning that eating past fullness is uncomfortable, and therefore it just isn't something we usually do when we have a healthy relationship with food. Sometimes we eat past fullness to be sure, it happens! But that isn't the norm, and it doesn't fill us with guilt anymore when we do eat past fullness.
• Recovery takes time... it's a marathon, not a sprint! Connecting to your body can feel unsafe or uncomfortable in early recovery, so be patient when trying to tap into your intuition.
• Healthy eating includes flexibility!!
• The only way to learn how to rely on your own hunger, fullness, and satiety cues is trial and error.
• Intuitive eating = mindful eating = attuned eating.
• You are allowed to eat things JUST BECAUSE. Unconditional permission to eat is a super important part of intuitive eating, but it can be the scariest!
• Sometimes through intuitive eating we find that foods we were obsessed with during our disordered days are foods that we actually don't even like.
• There is often a mourning process when we let go of dieting because dieting sells us the lie of a perfect, happy life. But don't avoid that grief! Feel what you're experiencing, and remember that this feeling won't last forever.
• Seek out leaders in the body acceptance community to help you work through this grief.
• The next step is embracing the social justice aspect of diets, and fighting for marginalized groups in the body peace movement.

Show Notes:

• Link to subscribe to the weekly FREE Food Peace Newsletter. It is sent out every Tuesday morning and no spam EVER. By signing up, I will also send you Love Food's Season 1's Food Peace Syllabus.
• Intuitive Eating, 3rd ed. by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch
• Body Respect by Linda Bacon and Lucy Aphramor
• Dietland by Sarai Walker
• Dr. Deah's Calmanac by Deah Anne Schwartz <--- This week's Food Peace Syllabus addition
• Eating Disorder Dietitians
• Julie Dillon RD blog

Do you have a complicated relationship with food? I want to help! Send your Dear Food letter to LoveFoodPodcast@gmail.com. 

Click here to leave me a review in iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue!

Thank you for listening to the Love, Food series. Give me feedback via Twitter @EatingPermitRD.

This episode is sponsored by my friends at Green Mountain at Fox Run.

Free 4-Week Email Course: #BeHerNow

It’s time to STOP putting your life on hold until you lose weight and START living the life you desire and deserve today! Register for our free 4-week #BeHerNow online course to learn how to transform your thoughts and behaviors so that the real you shines through...paving the way to a fuller, richer life. Explore how to shift your focus from weight to well-being, how to make lasting change from the inside out, and how to identify and realize what you really want and need. Registration for this series closes on Wednesday, February 1, so sign up today to receive the first email in the series on Thursday, February 2.

TAKE TIME TO INVEST IN YOU.

It’s time to shine the light on yourself and make YOURSELF the priority. Here at Green Mountain at Fox Run, we’re all about embracing and supporting yourself through self-care. Through powerful tools such as mindfulness techniques, stress management skills, and movement that is customized to your body and fitness level, you’ll learn to practice self-care in your daily life. Visit https://www.fitwoman.com/for more information.

What are you waiting to do, see, experience until you have an acceptable body???

Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds.

I hope you enjoy this bonus episode exploring this common barrier to healing body image and the exciting new show This Is Us with Shiri Macri. Shiri is the lead therapist at the Women's Center for Binge and Emotional Center at Green Mountain at Fox Run.

Key points:

• Shiri Macri at Green Mountain at Fox Run
• This Is Us on NBC and the character Kate
• "I can't stop binge eating" Love Food podcast ep 20 with Kari Anderson where she discusses the function of emotional eating and how important it is to honor this relationship to heal.
• This Is Us: It’s Not About the Weight…or is it?
• The Return of This Is Us: How Eating & Weight Struggles Start
• This is Us: Kate Goes to an “Immersive Weight Retreat”

How cools does #BeHerNow sound? I just signed up and would love to hear your experiences. I think it will help your relationship with food. Sign up here or scroll below for more details.

Have you finally settled into intuitive eating and experiencing more food peace? Yet, do you have trouble talking to close family who are still engaged in dieting? Or, feel conflicted with friends in their pursuit of weight loss when you have finally embraced your innate wisdom? 

Are you having trouble supporting friends and family who are still on the diet track without pushing them away? 

Listen now for some ideas and solutions on how to tackle this difficult issue.

Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds.

Key Points:

• It's still January, which means it's still National Dieting Month! Find some respite from diet talk with my hashtag, #foodpeace, or email me at LoveFoodPodcast@gmail.com.
• Intuitive eating and healing our relationship to food and our body is a long, difficult process, but it's worth it!
• Intuitive eating: a way to relate to food that rejects diets and encourages people to connect to their internal body cues in order to know when to eat and what to eat.
  • 3 Components: Unconditional permission to eat, to rely on your own hunger and fullness cues, and eating for physical rather than emotional reasons.
  • It may sound simple, but it's not easy!
• NPR's #SoAnyway Project: helped to guide people through political discourse with friends and family over the holidays after the 2016 Presidential election by giving alternative conversation starters and topics to focus on.
  • Take a page out of their book! Have a bunch of topics ready as conversation changers for when diet talk comes up and you just want to avoid and redirect.
• Barbara Spanjers, Marriage and Family Therapist, joins for more insight and therapeutic guidance to help navigate this further.
• When you start to heal your own relationship to food it is really hard to ignore the diet talk all around you!
• Diet talk is everywhere in our society, it often is a bonding mechanism for women, and it frequently comes from the people we love... so how do we set those difficult boundaries? How do we find the balance between maintaining our relationships, not alienating those that think differently then we do, and not compromising our own recovery?
• When people are discussing their diet plans, IT'S NOT ABOUT YOU! This is something super key to remember when these conversations are happening around you. It's not about you, it's about them, and approaching them with compassion rather than thinking they are making snide suggestions about you and your anti-diet decisions can be extremely helpful!
• Barbara's Stranger Things analogy: When you heal your relationship with food, you enter a place that others can't even comprehend! You may feel like they're trying to drag you back down, but really it's that they can't see what you can see. You are living in a completely different universe.
• Changing the subject and shifting it is totally an option! Approach conversation topics with self-compassion and radical self-love, and see what happens!
  • For example, if someone says, "Wow, I'm just so fat," you can respond with, "Oh, well I love you just the way you are!" You stop the diet talk in its tracks, meet your friend or family member with love and compassion, and maybe even begin to challenge their negative self-talk.
• People with different ways of living can still have loving relationships.
• Cognitive dissonance: when two opposing thoughts occupy one person's mind, causing tension.
• The more you try to teach someone an alternative perspective, the more people dig in their heels and cling to their beliefs. If we can understand this reaction more, we can approach friends and family with our alternative point of view in a more effective way.
• Compassion is key!

Show Notes:

• Link to subscribe to the weekly FREE Food Peace Newsletter. It is sent out every Tuesday morning and no spam EVER. By signing up, I will also send you Love Food's Season 1's Food Peace Syllabus.
• Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch
• Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me) by Elliot Aronson and Carol Tavris --> This week's Food Peace Syllabus addition #1
• Mindsight by Daniel Siegal --> This week's Food Peace Syllabus addition #2
• Barbara's website
• Eating Disorder Dietitians
• Julie Dillon RD blog

Do you have a complicated relationship with food? I want to help! Send your Dear Food letter to LoveFoodPodcast@gmail.com. 

Click here to leave me a review in iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue!

Thank you for listening to the Love, Food series. Give me feedback via Twitter @EatingPermitRD.

This episode is sponsored by my friends at Green Mountain at Fox Run.

Free 4-Week Email Course: #BeHerNow

It’s time to STOP putting your life on hold until you lose weight and START living the life you desire and deserve today! Register for our free 4-week #BeHerNow online course to learn how to transform your thoughts and behaviors so that the real you shines through...paving the way to a fuller, richer life. Explore how to shift your focus from weight to well-being, how to make lasting change from the inside out, and how to identify and realize what you really want and need. Registration for this series closes on Wednesday, February 1, so sign up today to receive the first email in the series on Thursday, February 2.

TAKE TIME TO INVEST IN YOU.

It’s time to shine the light on yourself and make YOURSELF the priority. Here at Green Mountain at Fox Run, we’re all about embracing and supporting yourself through self-care. Through powerful tools such as mindfulness techniques, stress management skills, and movement that is customized to your body and fitness level, you’ll learn to practice self-care in your daily life. Visit https://www.fitwoman.com/for more information.

Do you have a history of addiction to substances, and also have a difficult relationship to food? Have you ever been involved in a 12-step program? Are you trying to experience connection and joy with your body and others, and attempting to reach out to support groups for help, but find them to be a hotbed of diet culture rather than a healing place that cultivates self-acceptance? Listen now as we break it all down, and help you find food peace.

Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds.

Key Points:

• The pursuit of weight loss will only keep us from connecting with our body and others, and keep giving food power over our lives.
• Have you worked with a support group that you like? If you have, let me know by shooting me an email at LoveFoodPodcast@gmail.com!
• Love, Food is one year old, and I'm not stopping anytime soon!! Leave a rating and review on iTunes to push us up in the rankings, help other people find the show who need support around food, and make my day!
• Overeaters Anonymous: Good? Bad? Useful? Does abstinence from "trigger foods" work? Is using food to cope with emotions the same as using drugs or alcohol? Are OA's original intentions reflected in the current programs?
  • No matter what our personal opinion, anyone who has improved their relationship to food through the program is valid and their stories are their own!
• You are not alone! Many people who deal with addiction to substances also deal with difficult relationships to food.
• OA and abstinence: Many people who went to OA wanted to find abstinence from dieting, but instead were told to be abstinent from certain food groups (e.g. sugar, flours).
• "The pursuit of weight loss is part of that powerlessness that we feel over food." - Julie
• When we pursue weight loss, we inevitably focus heavily on food choice and become obsessional. But this isn't a failure, and this doesn't mean you are addicted to food! Instead, it is our body's way of making sure we don't starve it. Once we have unconditional permission to eat, the addictive feeling of food tends to dissipate, and the feeling of being powerless around food becomes less of an issue.
• The spiritual component and group support of OA can be super beneficial and healing for some people.
• Eating Disorder Anonymous (EDA): no abstinence required, but also incorporates the group support and spiritual components that many people find fulfilling in OA! There are also other dietitians out there who provide group support through online intuitive eating and eating disorder communities.
• Tapping into our wisdom and allowing it to guide you is so key to figuring out if certain things are right for you in your path to recovery!
• Trust your instincts!!

Show Notes:

• Link to subscribe to the weekly FREE Food Peace Newsletter. It is sent out every Tuesday morning and no spam EVER. By signing up, I will also send you Love Food's Season 1's Food Peace Syllabus.
• Love, Food episode with Marci Evans
• Marci's work on food addiction
• Eating Disorder Anonymous
• Erica Leon's virtual Intuitive Eating Support Group
• Christy Harrison's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals course (with Facebook group support)
• Glenys Oyston's online course and group coaching
• Paige Smathers' online course
• Ginella Testa's blog post (this week's letter writer)!
• Eating Disorder Dietitians
• Julie Dillon RD blog

Do you have a complicated relationship with food? I want to help! Send your Dear Food letter to LoveFoodPodcast@gmail.com. 

Click here to leave me a review in iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue!

Thank you for listening to the Love, Food series. Give me feedback via Twitter @EatingPermitRD.

This episode is sponsored by my friends at Green Mountain at Fox Run.
A special promotion for Love Food listeners:
Join Green Mountain at Fox Run for their Binge & Emotional Eating Weekend Intensive (January 20-22, 2017). Participants will explore personal barriers and how to counter them with evidence-based strategies to prevent eating in response to stress and emotions. For more information or to register, please visit https://www.fitwoman.com/therapy-services-eating-disorder/offerings/binge-eating-intensive-weekend/.

TAKE TIME TO INVEST IN YOU.

It’s time to shine the light on yourself and make YOURSELF the priority. Here at Green Mountain at Fox Run, we’re all about embracing and supporting yourself through self-care. Through powerful tools such as mindfulness techniques, stress management skills, and movement that is customized to your body and fitness level, you’ll learn to practice self-care in your daily life. Visit https://www.fitwoman.com/ for more information.

Ring in the new year a NEW way: without body hate and painful diets. This bonus episode is a part of my #FoodPeace series supporting your way of life promoting health without diets.

Do you struggle with perfectionism? Have you tried to ditch the diet, but still find yourself obsessing over eating "right?" Do you have a hard time letting go of the weight loss goal, even if you are far into your intuitive eating journey? Does food feel like an all or nothing experience for you, either eating for pleasure or restricting for weight loss? Listen now for some advice on how to work through these issues.

Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds.

Key Points:

• It's National Dieting Month! Be sure to listen in on all the bonus episodes this month to help you avoid the excessive diet talk and fat-shaming gym membership chit chat!
• Sometimes we can go into certain food restrictions, such as vegetarianism and veganism, with the best of intentions, but they can quickly spiral out of control and feel obsessive.
• Weight loss is seductive!
• How do we relate to food in a neutral, balanced way, rather than one that feels like an all-or-nothing, binge restrict cycle?
• Perfectionism can stand in the way of feeling safe with food and trusting your body.
• Rebecca Scritchfield joins for some more insight on this topic, and a conversation on body kindness!
• Diet culture is toxic!! We all need some love and compassion when trying to tackle it.
• If we're trying to put ourselves first, embrace self-care, and embody self-acceptance but we have not yet fully accepted our bodies just as they are, this can lead to a common but difficult tug of war: to diet, or to drop the diet and plunge headfirst into body acceptance.
• "Fears and anxieties can lead to desperate decisions and actions." - Rebecca
• How do we strive for a healthier, happier life in a holistic sense, rather than one that focuses on our size or shape?
• Feeling stuck between dieting and self-acceptance is draining... how do we break out of that? Rebecca weighs in!
  • Acceptance even in the face of anxiety and discomfort.
  • Space to reflect and engage in compassionate and rational thinking.
• "Perfectionism means unachievable!" - Rebecca
  • We must be able to question why we are holding ourselves accountable to something that we know no one else can achieve.
  • Practice setting up boundaries around perfectionism and asserting that it does not work for you!
  • STOP allowing it to control your choices.
• Can we accept ourselves and love ourselves, but still hold weight loss as a goal?
  • If we sit with that desire, but choose not to pursue specific, unhelpful weight loss goals, and instead just bring those feelings along for the ride, eventually that desire will work itself out in favor of self-care and self-love.
  • Take the action that you would take if you were ALREADY the person you "want" to be, and take steps to enjoy life!
  • Eventually, the weight loss goal becomes less important just by doing the things that help you to love yourself more.
• Diet culture is everywhere, and NOT engaging in diet culture is a huge job!
• Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
• Rebecca's new book, Body Kindness!!
  • Guidance and flexible tips to engage in self-care in all aspects of your life.
  • Discussing the benefit of both good AND bad emotions!!
  • How to we set up sustainable, good goals?
  • The benefits of connection, compassion, and kindness... how do we engage in a meaningful life NOW?
  • A special discount for Love Food listeners available for a limited time: order Body Kindness and get 25% off with the code KIND at this link https://www.workman.com/products/body-kindness

Show Notes:

• Link to subscribe to the weekly FREE Food Peace Newsletter. It is sent out every Tuesday morning and no spam EVER. By signing up, I will also send you Love Food's Season 1's Food Peace Syllabus.
• Body of Truth by Harriet Brown --> This week's Food Peace Syllabus addition #1
• Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach --> This week's Food Peace Syllabus addition #2
• The Happiness Trap by Dr. Russ Harris --> This week's Food Peace Syllabus addition #3
• ACT Made Simple by Dr. Russ Harris --> This week's Food Peace Syllabus addition #4
• Rebecca's new book, Body Kindness: She has a special limited time offer for Love Food listeners and subscribers of my newsletter (hooray!): 
  Order Body Kindness and get 25% off with the code KIND at this link https://www.workman.com/products/body-kindness.
• Body Kindness Get Started Training!!
• Rebecca's main website
• Brené Brown
• Eating Disorder Dietitians
• Julie Dillon RD blog

Do you have a complicated relationship with food? I want to help! Send your Dear Food letter to LoveFoodPodcast@gmail.com. 

Click here to leave me a review in iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue!

Thank you for listening to the Love, Food series. Give me feedback via Twitter @EatingPermitRD.

This episode is sponsored by my friends at Green Mountain at Fox Run.
A special promotion for Love Food listeners:
Join Green Mountain at Fox Run for their Binge & Emotional Eating Weekend Intensive (January 20-22, 2017). Participants will explore personal barriers and how to counter them with evidence-based strategies to prevent eating in response to stress and emotions. For more information or to register, please visit https://www.fitwoman.com/therapy-services-eating-disorder/offerings/binge-eating-intensive-weekend/.

TAKE TIME TO INVEST IN YOU.

It’s time to shine the light on yourself and make YOURSELF the priority. Here at Green Mountain at Fox Run, we’re all about embracing and supporting yourself through self-care. Through powerful tools such as mindfulness techniques, stress management skills, and movement that is customized to your body and fitness level, you’ll learn to practice self-care in your daily life. Visit https://www.fitwoman.com/ for more information.

Ring in the new year a NEW way: without body hate and painful diets. This bonus episode is a part of my #FoodPeace series supporting your way of life promoting health without diets.

Have you hit diet rock bottom? Do you feel ready for self-love and food peace, but still feel like food is your number one enemy? Are you just plain scared of food, and terrified to abandon the diet mentality and finally embrace health at every size? Listen now for some tips on how to move forward.

Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds.

Key Points:

• Reflections on National Dieting Month (January), my hashtag project, #foodpeace, and my weekly Food Peace Newsletter!
• Diet rock bottom: the understanding that diets don't work! ... but it can be a tough and lonely place.
• The New Year shenanigans: dieting and "self-improvement" can run rampant during this time of the year, and it can easily suck you back into the diet mentality.
• Dieting is seductive because it shows the world that you "have your shit together," especially if you "succeed" in losing the weight. It makes you feel in control of your life... but this is a sham! It's a fantasy. Dieting is not sustainable, and weight loss is not sustainable.
• How do you define "healthy" for you? Does it include yo-yo dieting, food and weight obsession, or social isolation? These habits do not promote lifelong health, happiness, or wellbeing. We need to redefine what healthy living means, and that definition may be very different from the definition we've been fed our whole lives.
  • My definition of healthy living: Living a life that's connecting to others, to experiences, to challenges, and to joy; engaging in kind, intuitive choices; choosing self-compassion.
• "There's no way a long-term solution to health includes ignoring or punishing your hunger." - Julie
• Self-compassion is key when reflecting back on any of our food choices. When healing from diet culture, we're going to make mistakes... LOTS of them. We must approach these with compassion and understand that it's a part of the process.
• Our world is one that promotes dieting as normal eating.
• Recovery from dieting is going to take about a year or more, and the involvement of any kind of eating disorder will lengthen this process considerably, so give yourself the time to heal!
• Choosing not to diet is NEVER the same as letting yourself go!!! It is letting yourself BE. It is giving yourself the opportunity to experience joy, compassion, and wellbeing.
• Food is not the enemy. Instead, it should promote nourishment, health, connection, and peace.

Show Notes:

• Link to subscribe to the weekly FREE Food Peace Newsletter. It is sent out every Tuesday morning and no spam EVER. By signing up, I will also send you Love Food's Season 1's Food Peace Syllabus.
• Eating Disorder Dietitians
• Julie Dillon RD blog

Do you have a complicated relationship with food? I want to help! Send your Dear Food letter to LoveFoodPodcast@gmail.com. 

Click here to leave me a review in iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue!

Thank you for listening to the Love, Food series. Give me feedback via Twitter @EatingPermitRD.

This episode is sponsored by my friends at Green Mountain at Fox Run.
A special promotion for Love Food listeners:
Join Green Mountain at Fox Run for their Binge & Emotional Eating Weekend Intensive (January 20-22, 2017). Participants will explore personal barriers and how to counter them with evidence-based strategies to prevent eating in response to stress and emotions. For more information or to register, please visit https://www.fitwoman.com/therapy-services-eating-disorder/offerings/binge-eating-intensive-weekend/.

TAKE TIME TO INVEST IN YOU.

It’s time to shine the light on yourself and make YOURSELF the priority. Here at Green Mountain at Fox Run, we’re all about embracing and supporting yourself through self-care. Through powerful tools such as mindfulness techniques, stress management skills, and movement that is customized to your body and fitness level, you’ll learn to practice self-care in your daily life. Visit https://www.fitwoman.com/ for more information.

Ring in the new year a NEW way: without body hate and painful diets. This bonus episode is a part of my #FoodPeace series supporting your way of life promoting health without diets.