HEALING MY RELATIONSHIP WITH FOOD

HEALING MY RELATIONSHIP WITH FOOD

I spent at least 10 years trying to heal my obsessive, over controlling relationship with food. I tried endless strategies, but I was always addressing the “problem” at a surface level and did not address the root cause. 

It wasn’t until I finally healed my relationship with MYSELF, when I learnt to LOVE MYSELF that I finally healed my never ending poor relationship with food. 

From the moment I hit high school I remember the feelings of not “being good enough”, “pretty enough”, “popular enough”, “skinny enough”,  started to creep into my internal self talk. I literally thought my physical appearance represented my worth in the world. 

I was constantly comparing myself to the other girls in my grade, and constantly felt second best. 

This pattern of comparison and feelings of not being “good enough”  I carried on through my life for another 17 years. Throughout these years I formed a very unhealthy, unhelpful and obsessive relationship with food and exercise. 

This became particularly bad when I started my journey of female body building when I was 21. A journey I begun because I hoped and thought that if I lost weight I would “be good enough” and I would be “popular”, “liked” and “loved”.

Food was constantly on my mind, I mean constantly, consuming most of my energy and thought capacity. I would freak out when it came to meal times, especially if I was to eat out (which I rarely did as it caused me so much stress) or if someone else was cooking food for me. Basically if I didn’t have control over my meals I suffered from anxiety. I literally looked at food and thought “will this make me fat”? That was the thought pattern that ran through my mind at every meal time!!

I was scared of carbs, I was scared to eat “too much”, I was scared to eat anything really!! If I did eat ‘too much” or “bad food” I would punish myself with under eating the next day and trained twice as much or twice as hard. Sound familiar to any of you reading this? If it does, honestly you are not alone. 

I though with my “healthy” eating choices I was being “healthy” and caring and nurturing my body from due to self love, when in fact I was doing the complete opposite. I was punishing myself daily, due to my deeper feelings of “self hate”, “low self worth” and lack of love for myself. 

I was severely under eating, I was restricting myself from getting a variety of nutrients in my diet and the right amount of calories to allow my body to function optimally. I literally forgot why we eat. I forgot the biological functioning around food and simply saw food as a way to either reduce or put on body fat….. my mindset around food and more importantly my self image was (excuse my language) F#CKED.

So how did I overcome this?

I tried many, many, many ways to resolve my obsession with food, including macro counting and tracking my body composition, reverse dieting, paleo, cutting out grains, intermittent fasting, seeing gut health specialists, nutritionists etc… all of this was SLOWLY getting my health back on track, but my mindset and relationship with food was still not ok. 

I was still obsessing over every meal choice making sure it was in perfect alignment with the “nutrition plan” I was on and still obsessing over my body weight and shape of my body, basically every waking moment. I was questioning every meal choice and wondering “will this make me fat?” Despite gaining professional nutritional advice I still could not escape the constant negative self talk going on in my head. 

Why? because food was not the problem! My obsession with food was a result of my lack of self identity, my lack of self worth, my lack of self love!!

At the time I did not put two and two together, but 3 years ago I when I started my self development and spiritual journey I started healing myself and also my relationship with food. 

I started my journey of delving deep into my subconscious mind, to unwrap the root causes of so much of my negative internal self talk, negative self believes and unhelpful habits that I had formed because of those e.g. my obsession with food and exercise… essentially the obsession with looking a certain way, to fit the societal mould of “hot”, “attractive” in order to feel worthy of love. 

Through using a variety of NLP techniques, spiritual and yogic practises I started to strip back my layers of social conditioning that were not serving me purpose. 

I removed MOST (personal and spiritual development is a continual journey so I am sure I still have more to go) of my unhelpful internal self talk, beliefs, thought patterns and habits and started to finally LOVE MYSELF again!!!

I started to recreate my “template” of my life and who I am, the world around me and where I sit in all of this. I started to truely believe, “I am good enough” and  “I am worthy of love”. 

With all of my heart I can say now say that I honestly believe this and the feeling is liberating as FK!!

Last year after I did my NLP course and my yoga teachers course, suddenly all efforts to try and “control” and obsess over my food and body weight had gone. I can not pin point the exact time this happened, but I remember suddenly realising “holy shit, I am not obsessing and stressing about food, I am loving my body, nourishing and respecting my body” and that was a damn good day!!

I now look at food as a nourishing source of fuel and energy for my body! I look at food as something that I give myself due to self love. I fuel my body with vibrational energetic foods from the earth, foods that will nourish my mind, body and soul. I eat foods that will make me feel energised and support my lifestyle. I eat when I am hungry, I stop when I am full, I eat chocolate if I want to eat chocolate and there is no feelings of guilt associated. 

Oh and now that I am vegetarian (this also happened without effort, my body just did not want meat anymore as my own personal and spiritual journey progressed) I am definitely NOT scared of carbs anymore.

Even though I now choose to not eat meat or dairy anymore I do not label myself anything. I simply eat the way that I FEEL the best. I eat the way that allows me to live a loving and fulfilled life daily. 

I NOW EAT OUT OF A COMPLETE SENSE OF LOVE AND WELLBEING FOR MYSELF. 

As soon as I let go of my obsession, guilt and anxiety associated with food, eating and my physical appearance, I have never felt better. My energy is high, my moods are more consistent and I feel amazing all round! 

By connecting back to my sense of self, connecting back to my self identity and remembering “who I am”, I can connect to my intuition. As your intuition is your inner guidance and inner knowing it can guide you in ALL areas of life, including your eating habits. I can now return back to intuitively eating, which is a skill we were all born with, but a skill that we have lost through social conditioning. 

If you resonate with or can relate to any of this, firstly your are NOT ALONE.  I encourage you to LOOK DEEPER, look past your food obsession and look underneath  all of that surface level thoughts and behaviours. 

Look deeper and ask yourself. 

Why is this obsession present in your life? What are you trying to control? Is it serving you purpose some how? What are your thought patterns about YOURSELF that are linked to your unhelpful habits?

Questioning and becoming aware is the first step to healing.

I ask you to HEAL YOURSELF and learn to REALLY TRUELY LOVE YOURSELF and I promise that this will have a ripple affect on ALL areas of your life including your relationship with food and exercise. 

If you would like to find out more about starting your healing journey, or how I can facilitate this please don’t hesitate to message me on my CONTACT page. 

With love & light,

Mandy xxx