FOOD FEAR – PART 2

Food Fear – Part 2

Yep I’ve got more to say on the subject haha 

In part 1 I touched on food fear around what we shouldn’t eat from a mostly health point of view but soo many women have fear and guilt around food when it comes to fat loss as well.

People used to fear fat, now they seem to fear bread, potatoes, and carbs in general and heaven forbid a grain of sugar passes your lips, your arse or muffin top is going to spread overnight if you listen to the noisy scare mongers out there!

When did smart women stop using their brains, when did common sense become extinct and at what point did we lose so much trust in ourselves? Again all of this is not written as a judgement but posed as a question to help you to challenge your current default thoughts around food.

For the record:
– Fat doesn’t make you fat.
– Carbs don’t make you fat.
– Sugar doesn’t make you fat.
Not matching your intake of food to your activity level (output) makes you fat. (and possibly a few other variables, but that’s a story for another day).

I remember once a long time ago, I looked up how long it takes food we have eaten to be stored as body fat. I figured if I knew the answer to that I could exercise like a crazy person during that period to try to burn off any extra or “bad” food I had eaten before it got stored. Yep I know what food fear feels like.

At the end of the day ‘ITS JUST FOOD”. That was the mantra that I used to cure my food fear.

“GET OVER IT AND GET ON WITH IT” was another one. Don’t dwell on what you’ve done in the past, learn from it and get on with it (the job at hand).

If you are trying to lose body fat then yes our dietary intake absolutely matters but like I touched on in Part 1, how we think about food plays a role in how our food is metabolised and possibly stored and it plays a huge role in our relationship with food and let me tell you if you want to be “long term lean” fixing your relationship with food is the only way to get there and stay there.

You are not a bad person for eating lots of cheese. You just like cheese obviously or you feel guilty once you start eating so then you keep eating more because “oh well fuck it”?

You are not a bad person for eating chocolate. You are possibly just not fuelling your body well so you are having cravings OR you are using food as medication at times OR you just really like chocolate!

So I am not for a minute advocating that you eat whatever you like in whatever quantities including processed junk. But I am saying to give yourself permission to eat and lose the fear around it and food. When we loosen our grip and remove the labels of good and bad and just see it as food we can start to mend our relationship with food and make eating a positive experience like its meant to be instead of a negative one.

Interestingly it can also make a piece of cheese be just that, a piece of cheese and not a whole wheel of brie or a piece of chocolate be just that, a piece of chocolate and not a whole block.

If fat loss is your goal, food is your friend.

Food is how you keep your energy and moods high – very important when sticking to a fat loss plan.

Food is how you build muscle – very important when you want a firm body and to burn fat at rest.

Food is how you keep your hormones balanced – very important when trying to lose body fat.

Food is allowed to be fun, even when trying to lose body fat. Don’t fear it, embrace it.

It is a scary thought, but when we put some faith back into ourselves, our bodies and our intuition, we really can navigate this food thing and be at ease with it, look amazing, feel amazing and get to a point where food doesn’t consume our thoughts.

I will leave you with this clause though:
– That stuff you find in a packet that has a list of numbers instead of ingredients and is coloured bright orange not because it is a carrot but because it has been manufactured in a “lab”, that isnt food!
That is entertainment.
And there are much better ways to entertain ourselves than putting that shit in our bodies.
Go explore your alternative options 🙂

I guarantee there is nothing you have thought or done around food that I havent, in fact I might share some of those distant memories with you all one day soon. It will make for interesting reading.