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While the idea of no more diets and finally ditching the all or nothing mentality around food can feel exciting in theory - in practice it can feel like there’s nothing but chaos on the other side. So in this episode I’m breaking down what food freedom actually looks like day to day.

Not a “perfectly balanced” diet, not losing control, not giving up on yourself but finding genuine neutrality around food and a path to more mindful eating. Where you finally get to listen (and respond) to what your body actually needs.

This is the practical companion to last week’s episode (see details below) where I share the exact steps I’d take if I was starting this journey today.

Including:

• Why nervous system work is the foundation that makes this shift possible.
• How to create space between the emotional eating urge and the reaction
• How to start moving away from the diet mindset without having to throw out the whole rulebook overnight

NEXT:

• Listen to Episode 248 - What 18 years of dieting taught me about my body (and how I finally found food freedom)
• Follow me on instagram
• Share this with a friend who needs to hear it

Welcome to the Busy Woman's Guide to Wellbeing, the podcast for women who are done with the hustle and are ready to feel at home in their own skin.

I'm your host, Alex Life, therapeutic and fitness coach for busy women who want to do less, live more, and feel good from the inside out.

Every week I'm going to help you to cut through the noise challenge, the should, and find new ways to live and move that actually feel like you.

Hello there.

Welcome back.

Great to have you here.

And this is a continuation of what I was talking about last week.

You don't have to listen to last week's episode first, you can listen to it later.

But I definitely would recommend that you listen to these two together as kind of companion episodes.

Because I started last week a bit about my own experience with moving out of diet culture and many years of obsessing about the scales, obsessing with my weight and that kind of thing, and how I moved into more food freedom, how I moved into that, that much improved relationship with food, but with my body as well.

So that's a really helpful companion piece to this because I think it's always helpful to have somebody's own point of view on that, somebody's own experience, because it helps us to really relate to parts of that story and relate to some of the things that, that I did, because I talked in that episode as well about some of the things that I did to start moving away from that and some of the realizations that I had that had never crossed my mind necessarily before about that particular journey.

This week, what I want to do is move into the wider context of food freedom.

So what's that actually going to look like on a day to day basis?

How can you bring more of that into your life right now?

Because we are not looking at perfection here.

We're looking for a situation where you can start a process where you're not just going to give up diets one day and go all in on freedom, food freedom the next.

That is just too flipping scary for most of us.

Right.

But we're looking for a situation where we can start to transition into that and we can do it in a way that feels safe for us, that feels nervous system safe, I suppose, so that we can do it in a way and in a timescale as well.

That feels okay for us.

And I think that's part of the worry that people have.

They think if I step into food freedom, it's just gonna be chaos.

I'm not gonna know what's going on.

And what I'm saying to you is that you don't have to do it like that.

You don't have to do it in a chaotic way.

You can do it in a way that where you' taking one step after another after another.

That is going to gradually move you towards that over the space of maybe a few weeks, maybe a few months, depending on where you are right now.

It certainly took me longer than a few weeks, but of course, every one of us is different.

So that's what I want to talk about today.

And like I say, last week I started this journey because I was fed up.

I was fed up with myself.

I was fed up with the conversations about food that would go round and round and round in my head.

And I knew that I just did not want to do it anymore.

I did not want to do it to myself anymore.

I didn't want the pressure anymore.

I didn't want the hassle of it anymore.

I just wanted to be able to just enjoy food.

I wanted to be able to eat what I wanted to eat.

I wanted to be able to understand what my body was asking for.

Signals that I had turned off for many, many years and that I had ignored for many, many years.

So that really was the driver for me.

But even so, I didn't change everything overnight.

So, for example, one of the first things I did was I stopped weighing myself.

I knew it wasn't helping me.

I knew it was keeping me on that path all the time.

I knew it wasn't doing my confidence any good.

So one of the first steps was getting rid of the scales and getting comfortable with that.

Then I stopped tracking what I was eating, for example.

So before, I'd done things like Weight Watchers online, where you're tracking your points, whatever.

I'm sure some of you have done that or you've done Slimming World or something similar to that.

And it was that constant practice of track everything, track everything, know exactly what you're doing, save your points for later, do all those kind of things.

So I stopped doing that.

But initially, I was still carrying certain rules around with me.

Chocolate was still for weekends.

I was still wary about what I ate for a while.

I was still making sure that things were low sugar and all of that kind of thing.

But over time, as I worked on that relationship with my body, as I worked on that relationship with food, I was able to start letting go of some of that.

So it was a process.

You don't have to go into this gung ho.

You don't have to give up all of the things that are giving you a sense of control right now, overnight.

All you have to do right now is make the decision, have to say to yourself, yes, I'm all in on this.

I'm going to go into this, and I'm going to go through this process.

I'm ready to do this.

And I think a lot of us prevaricate around this decision because it feels scary, because it feels like it's either one thing or.

Or it's another thing.

And what I'm saying to you is there is a process here, and that if you follow this process, it's going to feel safe, it's going to feel good, rather than scary.

So the first thing is to really make the decision.

And I think that where you are right now might be thinking, I just want a different relationship with food.

I just know that I can't keep having this conversation with myself over and over again.

You might be in a place where the stuff that used to work, it just isn't working anymore.

Feels like hard work.

You're tired of it.

You're tired of going through this process over and over and over again and doing it to yourself over and over again.

But like I say, what's on the other side might feel very scary, because diet culture for many of us is the only framework that we've had for a really, really long time.

So the flip side of that feels chaotic.

It feels like you're not in control.

It feels like you don't know how your body is going to react.

And I think a lot of women that come to me will say things like, I'm just worried that I will use this as permission to eat all of the things, and I'm just gonna pile on tons of weight, and I'm gonna feel really awful about myself at that point.

And you don't have to do it like that.

It doesn't have to be this overnight change, because I'm not here to strip away that comfort blanket.

I'm not here to tell you to stop tracking.

I'm not here to tell you to stop weighing yourself.

Yes, you're gonna have to stop doing those things at some point because they are the things that are keeping you where you are at.

But you get to do it in a way that works for you.

You get to do it at a pace that works for you.

And I think for me, there's often some other work that needs to go on underneath.

Now I did it a little bit backwards.

I was like, right, I'm going To stop tracking, I'm going to stop weighing myself.

Those are the first things that I did.

And then I started to realize, oh, there's this whole layer of subconscious work that I need to do.

There's this whole layer of dealing with all of the other stuff that's going on for me.

I was talking about it last week as our relationship with food and our body being a manifestation of the way that we do life generally.

So if we put a lot of pressure on ourselves in life, then we'll also put pressure on ourselves there.

If we have very high expectations of ourself in life, we're going to have high expectations of what we achieve with food and fitness and our body and things like that.

And so being able to deal with all of those things is going to help.

I did it back to front because I didn't have a roadmap.

I didn't have somebody to help me.

And it took me quite a while to figure all of these things out.

But.

But if I was going to do it again, that's the first thing that I would deal with.

And then I would start to give up the other stuff because it would feel a little bit less scary that way.

It would feel a little bit less unknown.

Of course, everybody's different.

And for some people, it might be that you need to make that big decision.

You might need to go, no, I'm not doing that anymore.

And this is where I'm going, that's fine.

But if this feels scary, if.

If this feels like there's chaos on the other side, I don't like the idea of that.

Then do it this way around.

Okay, so before I move into that, what is food freedom?

Because I think we all have slightly different ideas around what this is, what this is not.

And I'd say that, number one, food freedom is not about gunning for a balanced diet.

And I know that that would seem to be the aim.

You're like, yeah, but I'm doing this.

I'll have a balanced diet and I'll eat lots of vegetables and blah, blah, blah.

But inherent in that is still this idea that there's a right way and a wrong way to eat.

And I. I will hear people say things to me like, actually there was somebody on a workshop that I did the other day that sort of said this kind of thing to me, and they said, I'm doing it differently now.

I'm not denying myself treats.

I'm just being careful about not having too much.

And I thought that was really interesting because a lot of Us think that stepping into food freedom is, well, if I have food freedom, I'm going to have a more balanced diet.

I'm going to eat so much more healthily.

I will have treats, but there will be a limit.

There will be a point where there is too much.

And I, and one of the questions I asked her was, I said, well, what is too much?

And of course we don't know.

We don't know what is too much.

And so we're still left second guessing.

But that's the thing about food freedom.

It's not about still controlling everything, it's actually about listening to your body, which I'll move on to in a little bit.

Yeah, this is not a new and different way to control yourself.

This has to be a little bit about letting go of some of that.

Food freedom is also not about completely losing control.

And like I said, that's the fear for a lot of people.

It's more about feeling neutral about all foods.

It's about knowing that, yeah, we want to be eating plenty of protein, we want to be eating lots of veg, we want to be having fibre, we want to be having lots of variety.

But it's also about not demonizing processed foods and sugar.

It's about being neutral about it.

It's about knowing that you can find a place for all those things in your life without guilt, without the need for control.

So let's take an example at the weekend, me and my husband being the good middle aged people that we seem to be nowadays.

But I also didn't necessarily want like a full lunch.

And so we ended up buying this massive piece of cake that we shared and that was my lunch and that was okay.

I didn't feel the need to go home and go, well, I've now got to make sure that I have a few pieces of fruit to make up for this and to make sure that get my fiber and all of this kind of thing in it.

I was just like, great, I had a piece of cake for lunch that was fab and then moved on with the rest of my day.

So it's that it's being able to do things like that without feeling like you've lost control, without feeling guilty for it, without thinking, oh my God, I have not had the nutrients I needed to have.

We're just being neutral about food.

That is what we are looking for.

It's also not about giving up on yourself.

And again, I think this is another thing that people think about this situation where if I stop tracking everything, if I stop weighing myself, if I stop doing all of those things that have kept me in control so far, I'm giving up on myself.

It means that I don't care about my health anymore.

It means that my health inevitably is going to get worse.

I'm inevitably going to put loads of weight.

This is all going to absolutely happen to me.

It's not.

It's really not.

Yeah, sure.

If you've been keeping your weight artificially low for a really long time like I did, then, you know, you might put some weight on.

But on the reverse side of the coin, if actually you have found that your weight has fluctuated back and forward and back and forward, you might actually find a good middle ground here.

You might find that you lose a little bit of weight, but it's maintainable, but you can keep yourself there.

So this is not about you giving up on yourself.

This is not something that says you are never allowed to want to change your body again.

You are never allowed to do things that might help you to change your body.

It's about saying that you are pursuing health in a different way.

You're pursuing your wellbeing in a different way.

You are giving up on all of the diet culture that has been thrown at you over the years.

That's what you're giving up.

But what you are actually leaning into is just feeling neutral about foods, about pursuing foods that are going to make you feel good.

Because one day big slice of cake for lunch is fine, another day a salad is good and is what you want and you start to recognize those things.

And it becomes about choosing foods because you want them rather than because they're the lowest calorie option.

It becomes about eating chocolate on a Tuesday if that makes you feel good.

It's about having that slice of cake on a Sunday at the garden centre instead of lunch.

And that that is okay, that you don't have to feel guilty about that.

It's about being able to listen to what your body actually wants and needs.

That's what food freedom is about.

And that can feel very tricky at first.

And it's why I always start with nervous system work with my clients very early on in the journey, because that is always the foundational piece to that.

And this is going back to what I was saying before, is that I have figured this out for myself because I didn't have a roadmap for going from all of the control to food freedom.

So I've created that for myself.

And when I've looked back on it, what I've really realized is that the stuff that is going to set you up for success here and is going to make this actually feel good rather than scary, is the nervous system work, is making your body feel as safe as possible to make this change.

Because when our body feels threatened, this is not going to work.

And diet culture is a threatening environment.

That's why a lot of us do not necessarily get on in it.

That's why a lot of us veer from one extreme to the other all the time.

We go all or nothing in that because there's a lot of threat involved in this.

Our nervous system doesn't necessarily feel safe when we are going from one thing to another thing all the time, when we're beating ourselves up for the things that we're doing or not doing, for example.

And so our body has to feel safe in this process because what's on the other side is unknown to us.

It's something we maybe haven't had since childhood.

It's that feeling of food freedom.

So really focusing on making your body feel as safe as possible, you can't think your way to food freedom as well.

This is not a job for the head, this is a job for the body.

So one of the things that I do with my clients, for example, is we lean into somatics.

That is, what are you feeling in your body right now?

How is this feeling in your body right now?

Because our body holds a lot of knowledge, a lot of understanding, we just don't know how to access it.

And so learning how to access that is going to help you to feel as safe as possible as you go through this process, this transition.

One of the things as well that I get my clients to do is I get them to start creating space as well.

Space to ask ourselves, what's actually going on here?

What's the thought or the emotion that I am experiencing?

What's the need that's not being fulfilled?

So, for example, I will say to a client, look, next time you're there at 9 o' clock in the evening, looking in the fridge, that's your flash point where you get a bit bored.

I'm not telling you to do this, to stop doing that, but what I am asking you to do is when you're there, what's actually going on?

What's the emotion?

I'M experiencing, what is the need that I am not addressing, that is not being fulfilled.

And that is going to help you to start reconnecting with, okay, what is it that I really need?

What is it that I really want?

So you can make the best possible choice for yourself.

And sometimes that choice is still to eat the thing, eat the chocolate, eat the yogurt, eat the whatever it is that you feel like eating.

But other times it's going to be, actually, this isn't what I need right now.

And we start to get used to responding to ourselves in lots and lots and lots of different ways.

Because the thing with food is, for many of us, it has become the way that we control ourselves, but it's also become the way that we deal with emotion because we don't necessarily have other tools in the tool bag.

And when we can start to create space, we can start to create a feeling of, oh, okay, that's not actually what I needed here.

This is what I need.

So that those are the things that I would definitely start doing.

Make your body feel as safe as possible, start to create a little bit of space.

And I would also start thinking, thinking about, really, how is my life going to look when I have food freedom?

What's it going to give me?

Where is this going to open up brain space for other things in my life?

Really leaning into the positives of this, the feeling of this, the benefit of doing this, and just putting yourself back in that place as often as you need to on that journey and saying, hang on a minute, if I do this myself, how's that going to feel?

Why is this the thing that's important to me?

Why is this the thing that I want?

So.

So it's almost opening up space for you, having that conversation with yourself.

And I think that's really important because we often react.

We are reactionary beings, and a lot of the actions that we take come from a place of reaction.

We decide that we want food freedom, but we snap back tomorrow into tracking because we're reacting to the discomfort of it.

But what if we're able to respond to ourselves?

What if we feel that discomfort and instead of just reacting to it, saying, oh, my God, no, I don't want to do anymore.

I'm going to go back to tracking because that feels safe.

We're responding to ourself and saying, okay, I get it.

It's normal that I'm going to feel like this.

There is going to be some resistance here.

This is something new.

This is something I haven't experienced for a really long time.

So going back again to, okay, why am I doing this?

Why is this important to me?

Why am I on this journey and being able to really tap into that and then giving yourself that space, because that space is where that safety is.

So if you're in that space, those are the kind of things that I want you to start doing.

If you want some expert guidance on this from somebody, I. E. Me, who has been there and who has also worked with many women on discovering their own food freedom, then come and join me inside the Food Freedom Intensive.

It's a brand new way to work with me.

It's going to give you everything you need to start this journey with real confidence.

And I'm offering just five slots this month for this one to one experience.

We're going to give you clarity around what that new relationship with food, with your body is going to look like.

And then we're going to help you to bridge the gap between where you are now and that new reality.

So that ease around food becomes the default rather than a distant goal that you never get any closer to.

So you get three recorded sessions before your first one to one which are going to help you to understand your current relationship with food and start mapping out what you actually want that to look like.

So this is the prep work that's going to make that one to one session as laser focused as possible.

We then do the one to one session together where we're going to look at the stories, the beliefs that are dictating things right now and then integrating some nervous system and somatic work to help you create the right environment for those changes.

And then afterwards you're going to get three recorded sessions to help you really integrate and embody that work going forwards.

It is just 147 pounds for this experience right now.

And like I said, I'm offering just five spaces this month.

So if you would like to claim one of those spaces, just head to lifeeditcoaching.com foodfreedom if you've got any questions about it at all.

Want to know if this is the right thing for you to do right now, then just head over to Instagram and send me a DM there lifeditwithalix and I'll get right back to you.

I'll pop the link into the show notes as well.

But for now I'm gonna love you and leave you.

I'll see you back here again next time.

Thank you as always for joining me.

If this episode has hit home, share it with another woman.

Who needs to hear it and come connect with me on Instagram at Life Edit with Alex for more real talk, mindset shifts and daily inspiration.