Ep: #50 - Ending Guilt & Shame Around Food
Faye Casement 
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Hello Hello Hello and Welcome to episode number 50 of the Wellness 4 Women Show
Ending Guild & Shame Around Food.
How fantastic would it feel if you could relinquish guilt and shame over food?
If you could stop feeling like food is your enemy and that you can trust yourself around it?
I'll go one better. How would it feel if you realised your difficulties in losing weight so far were not because you weren't disciplined or strong enough but that you just needed to learn how to find true food and life freedom?
Millions of women on this planet have a complicated relationship with food.
We can simultaneously love it as in the taste and can feel genuine joy and satisfaction from it.
However, after years of dieting and being bombarded with messages from the diet industry we can also fear it and hate how we can feel after eating and this usually comes down to guilt or shame when we have eaten something that we think is maybe 'off plan', 'not healthy' or 'bad'
How much joy would you have if you could break out of the diet cycle?
The diet cycle being periods of restriction, overeating, guilt and then back to restriction again?
What if you could finally find peace with food and yourself in the process.
I want to help you get there and to find food freedom.
Coming up in today's show I am going to talk you through tips that helped me to find food freedom and how I was able to reduce the guilt, shame and judgement I had about food and my weight loss.
Let me know what your takeaways are from this episode in the Wellness 4 Women Group? Leave a #gem plus your comment. Likewise got a question the Wellness 4 Women Facebook Group is the place to be for community and support.
Super quick intro as usual for those new to my world, I am Faye Casement. I help women just like you find food and life freedom by putting together the pieces... just like a jigsaw for lasting weight management success. Reach out to me on any of my socials, links are in the description.
So a little bit more info about me.
"Hello, I am Faye and I was a yo-yo dietier".
I can confidently say "was" as I know that I am not going back to the way I was. I have been changed for good! (Cue... music from Wicked! Love that musical)
I had for years, struggled with my weight and self-esteem.
I had years of failed diets and 'wishing I was thin' under my belt.
Years of 'shoudling' all over myself as far as food was concerned.
Years of judging food as good or bad. Years of agonising over whether I should or should not eat something. Only to then worry on the other side if I had overeaten and that it was going to show a gain on the scale.
I would then also have periods of time where weight loss was just too demanding and complex for me to cope with so I would tell myself it didn't matter, how I was destined to be 'larger' because it is in my genes.
This led to me having a poor relationship with food, myself and weight loss and everything seemed so HARD!
Having a poor relationship with food can be a vicious circle. Never getting anywhere. Flip-flopping from one extreme to the other.
But it doesn't need to be this way and as it turns out it doesn't have to be as hard as you might think.
So today I will share with you a few tips that have helped me in my journey to food freedom and a healthy relationship with food:
1. Eat With Intent
As I just said there are large parts of my life where I didn't think about food, weight or weight loss. I just ate, what I wanted, when I wanted, and sometimes for the sake of it. It was no wonder really that I ended up occupying a body I did not want as I overate regularly and consumed more than my body physically needed.
I have learnt not to judge myself for this as I didn't know any better at the time and did not have the tools to see what was actually going on, it just kind of happened.
It might sound crazy or an excuse to some but I just didn't know to connect the dots or how.
It was starting to eat with and learning how to intent that changed this.
Not one 'diet' I had been on ever helped me to look at WHY I ate until my mentor did and this is what I offer to you now.
Why and how you overeat are far more important to lasting change and food freedom than what.
I'll repeat that.
Why and how you overeat are far more important than what.
I had so much shame over WHAT I was eating but really that was not the problem that needed solving.
2. Listen to your body’s hunger & fullness cues
Part of eating with intent is focusing on trying to eat because you physically need to and to your physical needs. You do this by learning to distinguish between being physically hungry or eating/hunger for other reasons.
You may want to check out episode xxx the 5 Es of Eating as I cover all the reasons we eat.
Eating with intent to satisfy your bodies needs, like it was designed and built is how I lost over 70lb. Once I got a handle on when, where and why I was overeating I was able to focus on changing that and that is when the weight started to drop as I developed a healthier relationship with food, my life and myself.
3. Stop the war! The war with food
Food is neither good or bad, it just is. Judging food as “good” or “bad” - and labeling in this way is what leads to guilt, shame & anxiety and leads to a negative and sometimes unhealthy food relationship.
It is ok to like and enjoy food.
It is ok to like and enjoy food that may not be as nutritionally amazing as others.
Now scientifically, some foods are nutritionally more fitting for your body than others.
But your mindset and your thoughts about food will define how you show up around food.
Think vegetables are boring... you will not eat them.
Think doughnuts are 'bad'... you will feel shame if you eat them and likely try to restrict them leading to cravings and binges.
If you want to do an exercise to see what your relationship with food is like drop me a 'freedom' and I will send you a link to the new membership waitlist as there is an awesome resource to get you started on your way to food freedom.
4. Be mindful, especially of emotional eating
For many of us, food has been a crutch. It has been there for us in good times and bad. We have celebrated with it, passed the time with it, and used it to make us feel better when we were sad.
It is ok to enjoy food and to take pleasure in it but for many of us it has gone beyond to a place that does not serve us and it has impacted our relationship with food and how we handle life's ups and downs.
To find true food and life freedom we have to look at what happens before we eat. Linking back to the why.
5. Trust you can trust yourself
After years of not trusting myself around food, I had to learn to trust myself again. To trust I could make food choices and show up around food how I wanted. This actually started with giving myself permission – unconditional permission to eat what I wanted without judgment or deprivation.
It was a huge help with my cravings and urges. You may be surprised that once you give yourself permission, the desire for those "off-limits" foods diminishes significantly.
6. Talking to others
The thing about shame and guilt is that we can feel so shameful and so guilty that we keep it locked inside and let it eat away at us. What does this do? It makes us feel sad. What have we typically done when we feel sad? Eaten! And so the vicious cycle continues.
Talking to others, realising you are not alone that others do the same, have done the same, and are working on the same is bloody powerful.
We all have a tendency to think it is only us, everyone else has it together and get into the 'what is wrong with mes'!
But there is nothing wrong with you or me. We are perfectly imperfect just the way we are.
Does that sometimes feel less than stellar? 100%. But a problem shared truly is a problem halved so use the power of others to move forward.
ROUND-UP
Food freedom and releasing guilt and judgment is possible if you want it.
The tips I've shared today will help get you started on your journey.
Will you be or do you have to be perfect?
No.
Just today, for example, I was having a difficult day at work. I felt sad. I ended up eating biscuits. This was an overeat as I was not hungry. I was trying to make myself feel better. Did the biscuits really solve my upset no. But I did not judge myself for the overeat these things will happen but I can keep working on it and recognise that the real issue was how I got to the biscuits not the biscuits themself.
Remembering that eating is an action. You have to have an emotion and you have to have a thought before you get to the doing.
But you can keep working on it.
You can keep working on having the relationship with food, yourself, and if you want it weight management that you desire for long terms success.
You do not have to feel deprived, restricted, or miserable in the process.
As usual, want to really make sure you are getting the benefit out of these videos then don't forget to leave your #gems in the Wellness 4 Women Group.
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Find out how you can work with me HERE
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Categories: : Weight loss
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