Food Freedom

For yearrsss I wouldn’t allow myself to eat cereal. It was a food I “couldn’t control myself” around during the day and would inevitably consume BOWLS of it at night in seclusion. If I ran out of my own hidden stash of cereal, or refused to buy it, I’d steal my roommate but just enough so that they wouldn’t notice I took any.

This game I played left me feeling miserable, distrustful, and gave cereal so much power. No one wants to wake up for 6 am swim practice after eating a box of cereal 4 hours before, it just doesn’t feel good understandably.

What took me years to understand, is that the restriction ALWAYS comes before the binge. That late night cereal eating, inevitably led to serious feelings of shame the next day and a constant feeling of failure when I couldn’t contain my need for comfort at 2 am. That mean girl berating didn’t lead to a very compassionate mindset and kept me from understanding that my body needed food during the day to function.

Coming to terms with my loveeeeee for cereal allowed me to get curious about what I enjoyed about it so much. Instead of closing off the door and restricting, I could carefully allow my body to tell me when a bowl of cereal (let me emphasize a bowl when it sounds good not a serving size 🙄), is amazing!

Taking away the restriction, took away the foods power and allowed a relationship of enjoyment, satiation, and understanding.

Keeping boxes of my favorite cereal in the apartment feels safe and not overwhelming without a need to fixate on the numbers the nutrition label tells me. I can tune into my own body cues instead, this means letting go of the false thinking that if I eat more than a serving size suggests, I am bingeing and therefore should just go ahead and eat the whole box (that’s diet mentality talking).

What are some foods you love and have had to/would like to learn how to have a healthy relationship with?!

-Kaitlin Bolt-Lovett