Find Your Food Voice

Let's count the number of diets you've tried to manage PCOS. Don't forget to include all the lifestyle changes, gym memberships, meal cards, diet supplements, and healthy eating plans. If you are like most people with PCOS, you've tried way more times than can be counted! That is YOUR evidence that diets aren't going to give you what you need to promote long term health and healing. What can you do instead? Listen to the latest Love Food podcast episode that is a re-broadcast of a chat I did with Rachel Goodman from the More Than What You Eat podcast. Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds. Looking for more Food Peace? Want to help support the Love Food Podcast? Check out my new After the Letters Projecton Patreon. I have exclusive weekly mini-episodes for $29/month and other freebies. Find more at Patreon.com/LoveFoodPodcast This episode is brought to you by my courses: PCOS and Food Peace and Dietitians PCOS and Food Peace. You CAN make peace with food even with PCOS and I want to show you how. Show Notes: Julie Dillon RD blog Link to subscribe to the Love Food’s Food Peace Syllabus. After the Letters Project info Rachel Goodman More Than What You Eat Podcast Intuitive Eating book and website Find Eating Disorder Dietitians near you. Do you have a complicated relationship with food? I want to help! Send your Dear Food letter to LoveFoodPodcast@gmail.com.  Click here to leave me a review in iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue!Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Let's fill your Food Peace toolbox for the holidays. This episode sifts through grounding and disconnecting tools to have on standby. Remember, disconnection is your superpower, not something to be ashamed of. Listen here now for more. Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds. Looking for more Food Peace? Want to help support the Love Food Podcast? Check out my new After the Letters Projecton Patreon. I have exclusive weekly mini-episodes for $29/month and other freebies. Find more at Patreon.com/LoveFoodPodcast This episode is brought to you by my courses: PCOS and Food Peace and Dietitians PCOS and Food Peace. You CAN make peace with food even with PCOS and I want to show you how. Show Notes: Julie Dillon RD blog Link to subscribe to the Love Food’s Food Peace Syllabus. After the Letters Project info Meredith Noble's Instagram list Debra Benfield Intuitive Eating book and website Find Eating Disorder Dietitians near you. Do you have a complicated relationship with food? I want to help! Send your Dear Food letter to LoveFoodPodcast@gmail.com.  Click here to leave me a review in iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue!Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

A listener question that is so important that I take 5 episodes to answer it! When you feel that jab that leads to bad body thoughts, remember you don't need to be fixed. Practice this one thing when you feel that jab! Get a peak behind what you get by being a part of the After The Letters Project by listening now for free in your Love Food feed. Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds. Looking for more Food Peace? Want to help support the Love Food Podcast? Check out my new After the Letters Projecton Patreon. I have exclusive weekly mini-episodes for $29/month and other freebies. Find more at Patreon.com/LoveFoodPodcast This episode is brought to you by my courses: PCOS and Food Peace and Dietitians PCOS and Food Peace. You CAN make peace with food even with PCOS and I want to show you how. Show Notes: Julie Dillon RD blog Link to subscribe to the Love Food’s Food Peace Syllabus. After the Letters Project info Respect within the Food Peace framework Intuitive Eating book and website Find Eating Disorder Dietitians near you. Do you have a complicated relationship with food? I want to help! Send your Dear Food letter to LoveFoodPodcast@gmail.com.  Click here to leave me a review in iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue!Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

I have a BONUS episode just for you! How do you make sense of your Food Peace journey when desiring a weight change? How do you put them together. One word: don't. Get a peak behind what you get by being a part of the After The Letters Project by listening now for free in your Love Food feed. Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds. Looking for more Food Peace? Want to help support the Love Food Podcast? Check out my new After the Letters Projecton Patreon. I have exclusive weekly mini-episodes for $29/month and other freebies. Find more at Patreon.com/LoveFoodPodcast This episode is brought to you by my courses: PCOS and Food Peace and Dietitians PCOS and Food Peace. You CAN make peace with food even with PCOS and I want to show you how. Show Notes: Julie Dillon RD blog Link to subscribe to the Love Food’s Food Peace Syllabus. After the Letters Project info Intuitive Eating book and website Find Eating Disorder Dietitians near you. Do you have a complicated relationship with food? I want to help! Send your Dear Food letter to LoveFoodPodcast@gmail.com.  Click here to leave me a review in iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue!Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

All foods fit. Make peace with all foods. YEEEES. Here's the only but: how do you continue to heal your relationship with foods when certain foods make you feel literally like sh*t? This is a tough subject and important for many of you. Listen to the latest Love Food podcast for options to sift through on your Food Peace journey. Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds. Looking for more Food Peace? Want to help support the Love Food Podcast? Check out my new After the Letters Projecton Patreon. I have exclusive weekly mini-episodes for $29/month and other freebies. Find more at Patreon.com/LoveFoodPodcast This episode is brought to you by my courses: PCOS and Food Peace and Dietitians PCOS and Food Peace. You CAN make peace with food even with PCOS and I want to show you how. This episode's Dear Food letter: Dear Food, I wish we had become friends sooner because just this year I'm realizing how good it truly feels to be on the same team.My mother hated and feared you, yo-yo-ing from diet to diet. Though I know she tried to insulate me from this, and always told me I was beautiful, her hatred of her body was palpable. The first time I remember thinking “I’m fat” was the first day of fourth grade. From there on out, I restricted. I declared myself a vegan in seventh grade, which happened to coincide with puberty. I associated the new attention from boys with my sudden weight loss, a correlation I still struggle with. I continued restricting my eating and obsessively exercising throughout highschool. When college came, I realized drunken nights out presented an opportunity to X; I could eat pizza or Oreos and then X and blame the alcohol. Gradually bulimia crept into my sober life, too, and I began purging regularly, any time I ate outside of my rigid framework.  My therapist at the time introduced me to intuitive eating and HAES. I remember laughing out loud through hopeless tears when she told me; it literally felt like a joke. I regained weight my first year out of college and I was miserable. I tried to mentally prepare myself for another grueling six months or a year of restriction and exercise to get back down to my goal weight, and I found I just didn't have it in me. I started eating and moving intuitively in earnest that year. It's now been two years and I finally feel free to eat whatever I want. I exercise regularly and I'm stronger than I've ever been. But now I have a new problem. My body doesn't actually get along with all types of you, food. My stomach is very sensitive and I'm very, very lactose intolerant. When I eat dairy products, my digestive system seems to collapse. I have terrible stomach pain and horrible gas and diarrhea for days. Fried foods seem to do the same-- they run through me and leave me embarrassed and in pain. After years of harming my esophagus with stomach acid from throwing up, oily or spicy food gives me terrible acid reflux. Yet the past couple of years, I have continued eating these foods because they are delicious and I feel free to eat them for the first time in my life. When I try to restrict my dairy intake, I feel like I'm back in eighth grade, eating vegan. When I'm out with friends and everyone but me is eating pizza or fried street food, I feel like I'm back in college, afraid to touch "bad foods" and denying myself the simple pleasures that I so deeply feared to partake in.  How do I move forward? My goal for this year is to try to sink even more deeply into intuitive eating, and to simultaneously find a way to respect the boundaries of what my body can and cannot process. I don't want to be constantly dealing with stomach pain, or trying to hold in gas and having to rush to the bathroom at a moment's notice. What do I do if I want to keep healing but many of the fear foods I've worked so hard to reintegrate actually wreak havoc on my body? I’m scared if I put ANY hard and fast rules in place it will feel like a new chapter in restriction and will become a slippery slope. Is there a way to restrict for foods that are incompatible with my digestive health while maintaining a clear intuitive eating mindset? Yours, Trapped between extremes Show Notes: Julie Dillon RD blog Link to subscribe to the Love Food’s Food Peace Syllabus. Beth Rosen's website (this is Julie's go-to IBS expert): GoodnessGraciousLiving.com Intuitive Eating book and website Find an Eating Disorder Dietitians near you. Do you have a complicated relationship with food? I want to help! Send your Dear Food letter to LoveFoodPodcast@gmail.com.  Click here to leave me a review in iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue!Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Do you remember when you learned that false truth that something is wrong with your body?? That is a trauma and makes recovering from dieting disorders and eating disorders so darn tough. Let's rally together to make this cultural shift. Listen to the latest Love Food podcast to find out more. Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds. Looking for more Food Peace? Want to help support the Love Food Podcast? Check out my new After the Letters Projecton Patreon. I have exclusive weekly mini-episodes for $29/month and other freebies. Find more at Patreon.com/LoveFoodPodcast This episode is brought to you by my courses: PCOS and Food Peace and Dietitians PCOS and Food Peace. You CAN make peace with food even with PCOS and I want to show you how. This episode's Dear Food letter: Dear food,          My relationship with you has not always been like this. For the majority of my life, I loved you, but at the same time, I did not pay much attention to you. I ate what was on my plate, never denied a piece of cake, and never even thought of the idea of dieting.          But, as most nice things do, this eventually came to an end, thanks to a boy in my class. This boy said instead of strawberry shortcake, people should call me strawberry fatcake, and the entire class laughed. As you can imagine, eighth grade me was mortified, and I decided not to eat for three days. I realized this was not healthy, my mom ensured me that I was, in fact, not fat, and that if she was concerned about my health, she would take me to a doctor, so I eventually returned to my old ways.          Then, I entered my freshman year of high school, surrounded by girls I thought to be much more prettier and skinnier than me. So, around Christmas, with the help of lovely diet pages on instagram, I decided to lose weight. I cut down on calories slowly and slowly, and eventually decided that 800 was about my max intake per day.          Fast forward to July, 60 pounds lighter and a diagnosis of anorexia. And I just have to say, that recovery is the hardest thing in the world. I feel like I am always eating, and I am beyond scared to eat when I am not hungry or to gain weight. It is pretty miserable, food, and I just want to forget about you!          But, the real reason that I am writing you, is that I feel like there is no way I will ever enjoy you again. How will you not make me shake at the thought of you? What if I like you too much and get fat again? How will I eat the same food again and not get fat? My goodness, the list goes on! I just need your help food, I need to know you won’t hurt me again.  Sincerely, wanting but scared to recover Show Notes: Julie Dillon RD blog Link to subscribe to the Love Food’s Food Peace Syllabus. Find an Eating Disorder Dietitians near you. Do you have a complicated relationship with food? I want to help! Send your Dear Food letter to LoveFoodPodcast@gmail.com.  Click here to leave me a review in iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue!Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

How many months, years, or decades have you experienced this complicated relationship with food? How long has it been so extreme with dieting, bingeing, or overexercising?? Not only is this tough on your body physically yet it is getting in the way with living YOUR life. Pull up a chair and let's chat over this week's letter along side guest expert Chris Sandel from the Real Health Radio podcast. Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds. Looking for more Food Peace? Want to help support the Love Food Podcast? Check out my new After the Letters Projecton Patreon. I have exclusive weekly mini-episodes for $29/month and other freebies. Find more at Patreon.com/LoveFoodPodcast This episode is brought to you by my courses: PCOS and Food Peace and Dietitians PCOS and Food Peace. You CAN make peace with food even with PCOS and I want to show you how. This episode's Dear Food letter: Dear food, I binged on you last night.  I abused you.  I attended a family gathering during the day and wasn't able to control you, and felt like I "blew it", and that was just the beginning.  I lost complete control and spent the night making trips to the kitchen.  The leftovers from the party didn't stand a chance. Food, I'm stuck in a cycle between restricting you, bingeing on you, and then compensating by intense exercise, and of course, more restriction.  And I know, I know.... I know that the restriction is the culprit here.  If I wasn't restricting, then I wouldn't be bingeing, right?  And the exercise that feels like my penance is totally an addiction now :  I push myself to walk about X miles a day, and on top of that, I do high-resistance, high-intensity exercise every day.  Sometime I cancel plans and miss out on life just so I can exercise.  It's become completely abusive.  I'm driving my body into the ground.  I haven't had my period in a year and my body is screaming for relief. Food, I spent the first twenty years of my life free from these worries.  I didn't have control, body, or exercise "issues" when I was a teenager.  It wasn't until I experienced the loss of a parent when I turned twenty that I began to control you as a way of dealing with emotions.  I spent most of my twenties entangled in a toxic relationship with you, Food.  I loved you and feared you at the same time.  And Exercise, you were both my savior and a sadistic overseer.   When I turned 28 I began a relationship with the man who is still currently my partner and this all changed.  The relationship became my new focal point, for better or worse.  Food, I completely stopped thinking about you.  I ate intuitively, didn't obsess over you, and didn't find the need to over-exercise.  It was wonderful.  My body's weight self-regulated and I thought I was free!  I enjoyed this freedom for four care-free years.  But then Food, we had a baby.  The stress of parenting became overwhelming and I found absolute comfort in controlling you, in measuring you and calculating you.  That was far "easier" than the stress of parenting and you became a distraction.  You distracted me from dealing with my emotions.   Food, I have a beautiful two year old daughter and I don't want her to absorb these problems.  I want her to be free, to feel beautiful in her body, and to trust herself.  I worry that she will see me abusing my body with exercise and bingeing and restriction. I want the cycle to end.  But here's the thing, Food.  The cycle has become a big, tangled ball of yarn and I can't work my way out of the mess. But, I know I have to make a cut somewhere, just so the whole thing can finally unravel.   And so here's my question :  Where do I make the incision?  Do I start to cut out the exercise that I know is making me so hungry, or do I cut my losses and stop controlling my food intake?   And that's the other problem, Food.  My intake.  I don't even know what to eat or how to eat anymore.  All I know is total control or total abandon.   Please Food, tell me how to stop obsessing over you and tell me how to learn to let go.   Sincerely, Tangled  Show Notes: Julie Dillon RD blog Link to subscribe to the Love Food’s Food Peace Syllabus. Chris Sandel website Real Health Radio Podcast Find an Eating Disorder Dietitians near you. Do you have a complicated relationship with food? I want to help! Send your Dear Food letter to LoveFoodPodcast@gmail.com.  Click here to leave me a review in iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue!Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

I encourage you to have unconditional permission to eat what you want, when you want. And, it is time to acknowledge the big huge unacknowledged bolder of a barrier: financial privilege. We explore a letter from someone without access to food and guest expert Lori Short-Zamudio from the Nourished Circle podcast helps us understand why food is elitist. Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds. Looking for more Food Peace? Want to help support the Love Food Podcast? Check out my new After the Letters Project on Patreon. I have exclusive weekly mini-episodes for $29/month and other freebies. Find more at Patreon.com/LoveFoodPodcast This episode is brought to you by my courses: PCOS and Food Peace and Dietitians PCOS and Food Peace. You CAN make peace with food even with PCOS and I want to show you how. This episode's Dear Food letter: Dear Food,  You and I have the pretty typical binge/emotional eating disordered relationship that is talked about often in the Health At Every Size and Intuitive Eating world. With the help of resources like Julie Duffy Dillon and the  Love, Food podcast, I am slowly working on improving our relationship. There are still things I loathe about you, part of which we’ll get to in a second, but I have optimism and hope for our future together.  Today, I want to ask you about some of your relatives, which NEVER get talked about, especially in resources and books outside of actually working with a nutritionist. Generally, when looking at intuitive eating I’m encouraged to think a lot about your siblings body positivity and intuitive movement (aka exercise). But you have some OTHER relatives that I really want to talk about too. I want to ask you about your siblings Money and Housing. I know you are only food, but you can’t deny that you are related to money and housing, no matter how many times I hear the protest that you and I can have a good relationship on any budget and that it doesn’t matter how small the kitchen counter is, I can still cook on it.  I’ve worked so hard recently to get to a really good place with you- really trying to listen to and honour my body and hunger and not place judgment on you, food. Today, I had eaten a home made packed lunch until comfortably satisfied, and as the day went on I began thinking not unhappily about what I would have for dinner. I felt like I wanted to treat myself- I didn’t have to go to work tomorrow, I had been stressed and working hard all week, and I wanted to eat something that would put a smile on my face. My thoughts turned to the burger restaurant in my neighborhood. It was exactly what I wanted. I hadn’t been there in weeks, the staff are friendly and welcoming, and it’s actually a nice way to wrap up a day. I started to look forward to going, and working on thinking about eating you neutrally and with joy, food. I had Julie’s voice in my mind saying “dieting or restriction of any kind always leads to a binge of some sort later on” and I didn’t want to restrict or stop myself from going or feel bad about going in any way. So I went. And it felt great.... until I got the bill.  I had to go into debt on an already precarious credit card, food, to eat you. I had perfectly good groceries sitting at home I could have eaten, but that’s not what I /wanted/, and I deserved to have a treat. I felt just as deep guilt, food, of spending money I couldn’t afford on you as I have in the past about consuming the calories of you to begin with. How do I separate the guilt of spending money on you from the guilt of consuming you? Can I? Should I?  Whats the difference? I feel so triggered with a sense of shame and guilt that it’s almost like I’m back at square one with my eating disorder but it’s shame and guilt at the money you are so closely related to, food. But to have NOT honoured that craving would have been restricting in a DIFFERENT way. There seems to be no way to choose a satisfying solution to my problem. How do I not connect my extremely restricted, minuscule and unpredictable financial situation and housing and kitchen access with restriction and out of control eating? I can’t be the only one who is struggling with this. Some unclear statistic of the connection of poverty and obesity keep floating in my head and I just don’t know what to do or think or feel about it all. I need help. I mentioned that there were still things I loathe about you, food, and one of them is that you DEMAND to be interacted with every single day and always cost money even if my bank account can’t handle even the most basic of you sometimes.  I know I can’t blame you for costing money, food, but can you at least tell me you’re sorry for your mean relatives and maybe how to separate my feelings for you from the rest of your family that hardly gets talked about? What happens when it’s not the toxic diet culture telling you to eat a lot less but the very dollars and cents in your bank account? Sincerely,  Hungry Bank Account With No Space To Cook Show Notes: Julie Dillon RD blog Link to subscribe to the Love Food’s Food Peace Syllabus. The Nourished Circle Podcast Lori Short Zamudio website Lori Short Zamudio blog Lori Short Zamudio Instagram Lori Short Zamudio Twitter Find Eating Disorder Dietitians near you. Do you have a complicated relationship with food? I want to help! Send your Dear Food letter to LoveFoodPodcast@gmail.com.  Click here to leave me a review in iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue!Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Do you feel the pressure to eat "good" all the time? Are you in a role where you are expected to be healthy and eat in a way to prove it? Those who study or are in dietetics, medicine, nursing, and other health related fields will easily relate yet just about everyone will relate to the pressure. Listen as we sift through ways to get through with guest expert Kimmie Singh. Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds. Looking for more Food Peace? Want to help support the Love Food Podcast? Check out my new After the Letters Project on Patreon. I have exclusive weekly mini-episodes for $29/month and other freebies. Find more at Patreon.com/LoveFoodPodcast This episode is brought to you by my courses: PCOS and Food Peace and Dietitians PCOS and Food Peace. You CAN make peace with food even with PCOS and I want to show you how. This episode's Dear Food letter: Dear Food,  I am writing this email as I am on my own personal journey with food peace and body acceptance. I am a dietetics student well into my studies academically and have had some observations as well as personal growth along the way. About a year ago, I began going to therapy and there it was revealed that I undoubtable struggle with orthorexic and disordered eating behaviors. This was, in a sense, such a relief to hear. It put a label to what I was going through and allowed me to set the path of self-improvement within my life.  Although, actually putting in the work and committing to recovery was something that I could not have prepared myself for. This is something that I am still working towards today. At any rate, this brings me to what I want to talk about, which is how isolating this struggle can be in my major. I am surrounded by people, mostly women, who are expected to have a perfect relationship with food. However, I have a sinking suspicion that this is far from the case. I am living in a world surrounded by well-meaning individuals who are smart, inspiring, and dedicated. And obsessed with food.  At the time, I felt extremely alone in my struggle. I felt as though no one else knew what I was going through because dietetics students are held to the highest of all standards. We are expected to have everything together, including our relationship with food. Now, a year into my recovery journey, I am becoming more and more concerned that the discussion of eating disorders is missing from our education. I think as people who are so enveloped in the study of food, we need to be allowed room to heal our relationship with the societal expectation that we should be “perfect.” Furthermore, we need room as individuals to heal our relationships with our own bodies, as well as our knowledge of fat stigma and shaming. We need to be allowed to un-learn commonly held beliefs surrounding weight and health.  Unfortunately, everything mentioned above is missing from the dietetic curriculum, at least at my school. As I continue on in my own food peace journey, I am left confused and frustrated that we, as future professionals within the field, are left out of the discussion on eating disorders. As a result, we are entering the field with an oversimplified and possibly harmful outlook on people’s relationship with food.  Sincerely,  Captivated & Concerned  Show Notes: Julie Dillon RD blog Link to subscribe to the Love Food’s Food Peace Syllabus. Kimmie Singh's website: BodyPositiveDietitian.com Kimmie Singh's IG: Instagram.com/BodyPositive_Dietitian The Body Love Project with Kimmie Singh The University of North Carolina at Greensboro Dietetic Internship with a HAES Rotation Find Eating Disorder Dietitians near you. Do you have a complicated relationship with food? I want to help! Send your Dear Food letter to LoveFoodPodcast@gmail.com.  Click here to leave me a review in iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue!Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Do you feel "all in" with a healthy eating pact then, next thing you know, in the throes of what feels like an uncontrollable binge? Does food fill your head and distract you from having fun and living your life? Listen up. Guest expert Carolina Guízar and I explore this on the latest episode of the Love Food podcast. Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds. Looking for more Food Peace? Want to help support the Love Food Podcast? Check out my new After the Letters Projecton Patreon. I have exclusive weekly mini-episodes for $29/month and other freebies. Find more at Patreon.com/LoveFoodPodcast This episode is brought to you by my courses: PCOS and Food Peace and Dietitians PCOS and Food Peace. You CAN make peace with food even with PCOS and I want to show you how. This episode's Dear Food letter: Dear Food, As a child, I never thought much about you. You were just the breakfast my mom made in the morning before she went to work. She put my brother and mine’s breakfast on a tray and lay it on her bed as she got ready. Usually you were something easy to make, eggos waffles smothered in syrup or scrambled eggs and ham with milk or orange juice. You were just the lunch my mom packed the night before - a sandwich filled with meat, cheese and mustard, chips, and sometimes a couple of chips ahoy cookies. Since my mom was a single working mother, my abuela would pick my brother and I up from school to take to her house until my mother was off work. We would be given vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup while we did our homework. FYI- my mother’s side is Cuban and if anyone hearing this is Hispanic they will understand that potatoes and rice are our vegetables. My abuela was an incredible cook and would always prepare some sort of meat with rice, black beans, and fried savory plantains she always made. My favorite meal was chicken fricassee- dark chicken meat, potatoes, olives, peas, and onion cooked in a flavorful tomato sauce. Looking back, I didn’t know much about you because I wasn’t able to explore you. You were just something that was put in front of me and I was told to eat. Every now and then we had some alone time when I went out with friends or to a drive through after I got my license. I came from a very frugal family, so our “dinner’s out” would be chick fil a, Panera, or Domino’s pizza. It wasn’t until freshman year of college where we finally had alone time. Starting college, I was thin and felt good about my body. As the year went on, I was overwhelmed with having free access to all the foods I love on my meal plan. Chick fil a, Au bon pain, panda express, starbucks, and food halls filled with candies, chips, ice cream and more. I stuffed my face with you thinking nothing of it while I went out drinking 4 times a week. Nights out usually ended with late night eating with friends. By the time spring break came, I realized just how much damage you had done to me. My clothes were tighter, my stomach was bigger, and my face had filled out a lot. I didn’t look like myself.  When I went home that summer, I made a pact with myself that I would work out and eat healthy. I wanted to see what my healthiest body would look like. I wanted girls to envy me and boys to desire me. I started to run every day and do a workout video off youtube. I stopped drinking for a month. I did a ton of research on healthy eating. Food, you changed into something I ate to give me the body I became obsessed with having. You changed to a form of rules that has damaged the way I see you even now. I ate cooked chicken and 99% lean turkey with no oil and only cayenne because I feared olive oil would make me fat. I only ate fruit in the morning because I read that the sugars metabolize differently in the afternoon. I only dressed my salads in balsamic vinegar because of the high calorie grocery store dressings. When you became these rules, the way I viewed everything changed. I was addicted to the praise I received when I got results, and didn’t see anything wrong with what I was doing because I was certain it was “healthy”. I had a boyfriend that summer who knew about my obsession with eating healthy. Every now and then, him or his family took me out to nice dinners where I allowed myself to eat and drink whatever I wanted. But that’s when it goes dark. Instead of being present, I would obsess over the food in front of me. I would eat past the point of full because I saw it as my only time to have this “unhealthy” food. I would be having a conversation, but I was really thinking about the eating everything and anything I could get my hands on while I could. Even after dinner, I’d drive out to cvs to get my favorite ice cream or candy. After these episodes I was convinced people could see the food I ate on my body. People noticed this cycle and I’ve received a few comments that my motto seemed to be all or nothing when it came to you, food. The next day after my binge, I’d feel so guilty and ashamed and I would go back to only eating healthy and working out until the next episode. I didn’t realize this cycle would stay with me for the next five years.  Of course,  our relationship has slightly changed over those years- I’m 24 and in my first two years of the working world. When my nutrition journey first started, I did grow to love fitness but now that I’m not active throughout the day at a desk job- my body is a little heavier than it was in college. I constantly aim to go back to the super skinny and fit shape I used to be in. I do my best to eat healthy and meal prep every week. I think about food constantly and often create meal plans and recreate them when I’m at work. Every now and then I try to convince myself I’m okay and I can have that piece of chocolate if I want it. But everytime I have a bite of something “unhealthy” it triggers a binge cycle and I find myself checking out at the grocery with sweedish fish, sour patch kids, and oreos. I kill myself at the gym six times a week. I’m constantly buying meal plans and fitness plans that promise amazing results. I stick with it a few weeks and then get frustrated when I don’t see immediate results. I go from having faith in myself to do it on my own to finding a new and shiner plan that will get me there. My binge episodes have become more frequent in a week and I’m sick of it. Now I have the same feeling I did my freshman year- I don’t recognize this body and I’m constantly torturing it.  Food, you’re taking over my life. When will this end? Aren’t you sick of this like I am? How can we get to a point where I feel safe with you no matter what? Sincerely, Exhasted Show Notes: Julie Dillon RD blog Link to subscribe to the Love Food’s Food Peace Syllabus. Carolina Guízar's website Carolina Guízar's Instagram: Instagram.com/la_eathority The Latinx Health Collective Find Eating Disorder Dietitians near you. Do you have a complicated relationship with food? I want to help! Send your Dear Food letter to LoveFoodPodcast@gmail.com.  Click here to leave me a review in iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue!Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy