Leanne Vogel has a podcast called “The Keto Diet Podcast” in which she interviews guests who are keto people and this one focused on healing from toxic nutritional belief. In this particular podcast, she interviews Autumn Smith who had digestive issues and anxiety. Autumn looks at what she calls eating psychology. Eating psychology looks at why we eat what we do, rather than what we eat.
Eating issues are often not about food, it is about our relationship to food and what other issues are happening in your life. In our society, we often turn to food for our pleasure. Autumn suggests creating a pleasure inventory. Other than food, what gives you pleasure? List the top 10 ways you get pleasure in life other than food. Add several of those things into your life every week. We will be less likely to turn to food and overeat when we are finding our pleasure elsewhere.
Toxic Nutritional Belief – Food As The Enemy:
Autumn says that we often see food as an enemy – something we fight every day. This is a toxic viewpoint. We need to eat and eating should be pleasurable and enjoyed. Take your time and eat with all your senses. Smell the food, look at the way the food looks, and eat slowly. This will help you savour what you eat and you will find you are full faster.
She talks about making decisions from a place of love, rather than judgement or fear. The people who are considered the most beautiful in the world often have body image challenges. We need to accept ourselves as we are and love ourselves before we can make changes. Look at where your body image issues are coming from – chances are there is a deeper challenge than food. You can’t just “fix” your life with “fixing” your body. You need to look at the deeper issue.
Finally, Autumn looks at living an authentic life. People often say, “I’ll be happy when…” It may be they think they’ll be happy if they lose weight, get a raise, change jobs, etc. What can make you happy now? Accept and be present with where you are.
Conclusion:
This podcast was interesting because it isn’t just about food; it’s about making the decision to love yourself. For us, food was a way we found pleasure and it was a way we tried to heal what we didn’t like in our lives. Once we saw food for what it was – a delicious form of energy – and stopped using it to cope with stress and anxiety, we were on a healthier path.
Keto helped us get there buy making us focus on what we were putting in our bodies. We still enjoy food, but it isn’t our source of happiness. Does it feel good to lose weight? Of course! Did it fix all our problems? No, but it gave us the space to realize all the good things in our lives and the energy to work towards more good things!
Wendy
