What Food Freedom Is and Isn't

Finding true food freedom is a nuanced discussion that has roots in many important conversations. The patriarchy, race, gender, body autonomy, and diet culture are just a few of the systems involved in bringing awareness to the food you are eating and how you are treating your body.

Key Takeaways

If You Want To Find Food Freedom You Should:

1. Lean into your bodies wisdom and give yourself permission to shake off diet and exercise extremes
2. Relearn how to connect with yourself and what you enjoy through mindful eating
3. Question the voices of the food police and start embracing nutrition from a non-diet perspective
4. Focus on health-promoting behaviors instead of intentional weight loss

Listening To Your Body’s Signals

I want you to feel the freedom to question what we have been taught about the ‘right way to eat’. Mindful eating is a great place to start, and it can help you relearn how to connect with yourself and what you enjoy. Nutrition from a non-diet perspective may seem like a strange concept, but it is only by raising your awareness and opening the door that you can stop pursuing perfection and start listening to your body’s signals.

What Is Food Freedom?

Food freedom does not mean restricting yourself, going back to eating ‘regularly’, and then if you begin to feel yourself ‘falling off the wagon’ or ‘losing control’, that the solution is to go back to the restriction. 

Food freedom is embracing the freedom to eat foods that make you feel good, that are enjoyable and satisfying, and are without unnecessary restriction. Food freedom means eating in a way that enhances your life, and that is helpful to your mind, and body, and emotions, and spirit, and culture.

Health Over Perfection

Young girls should not be growing up in a diet culture, fatphobic world. You are inherently worthy and valuable no matter what, and we deserve better than a lifetime of hating our bodies and thinking we are worthless because we don’t fit the mold. 

Instead of focusing on intentional weight loss, I challenge you to focus on embracing health-promoting behaviors. The pursuit of perfection isn’t getting you anywhere, and it is time to stop denying our own magic just because we don’t fit the mold diet culture has laid out for us.

What conversations are you excited to have in 2021? Share your thoughts with me in the comments on the episode page.

 

In This Episode

• Defining what I mean by ‘food freedom’ and the importance of nuance when discussing it (6:31)
• The role of intuitive eating and mindful eating when incorporating food freedom (10:37)
• Why food freedom is not an individualist pursuit and instead is about the larger community (14:50)
• Breaking down the reason why I do this work and why I feel it is so important (19:25)
• The problem with intentional weight loss and the complex world of body autonomy (27:15)

 

Quotes

“The freedom to eat foods that make you feel good, foods that are enjoyable and satisfying, the freedom to eat without extremes, the freedom to eat without unnecessary restriction, the freedom to eat in a way that is enhancing to your life and not detracting from your life, the freedom to eat in a way that is helpful to your mind and your body and your emotions and your spirit and your culture, the freedom to eat foods that are important from your culture… that’s what I mean by food freedom.” (9:31)

“No matter what body you are in, no matter your health status, no matter your size, no matter your ability or disability, you f*cking deserve respect, and you need to give other people respect in return.” (12:25)

“Can we individually think about our food behaviors and practices and what we eat, while also holding that there is also a larger context? That is going to be really important going forward.” (15:18)

“We only get one shot at this life, as we are right now, and to live with such dissatisfaction of our own magic, and our own gifts and talents and worthiness because we don’t have perfect bodies, crushed me. And at that moment I said, ‘you know what, this has to change’.” (25:52)

“If I am critical on this podcast of diet culture and the influence of the patriarchy on how we live our lives, especially as women, it is not a criticism of you as an individual.” (29:53)

 

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