How to Change Your Relationship with Food [Episode #556]

This week’s topic is: How to Change Your Relationship with Food

Food is one of our Solluna cornerstones. It’s a big topic for all of us because day to day, we’re eating, we’re putting substances and matter into our body. We can hold it, we can pick it up, we can smell it, it’s tangible. It’s always going to be a big part of our lives.

My wellness journey certainly did start with food, as I think it does for a lot of us for those very reasons. Because we have to eat, and because we see it, smell it, and taste it. What we’re going to talk about today is getting down to more fundamentals with our overall relationship to food.

We can talk about vitamins and omega fats, and all of that is key and important. However, we also want to take a step back and really start to evaluate our relationship with food. If it’s unhealthy, if it’s controlling you, if it’s taking up too much of your life, then it is time to make a shift.

What we need to remember is that it shouldn’t be a source of excess stress and struggle, which is unfortunately what I see a lot today. And it’s something that I experienced personally. We’re going to get into all of those different topics today and I’ll be sharing some tips and tools that have helped me personally.

Have you been wondering about this very topic? If you want to know the answer to this question and 3 more sent in by Beauties just like you, listen now to find out!

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[Questions Answered]

Tessa – Hawaii

There are so many viewpoints on what you should and shouldn’t eat and I feel it really messes with my mind. How can I change the way I relate to food so there’s no guilt?

Denise – Kansas

There is science and then there is listening to how our body feels when it comes to food. Is it possible we all have a distorted relationship with food because we have so many do’s and don’ts about how we should eat?

Lucy – Nevada

What was the key moment for you Kimberly, when you changed the way you related to food? Was there a moment that really stood out to you?

Anna – Europe

I know from following you, you don’t count calories but I’ve come to rely on this method to avoid weight gain. The feeling of being told when to stop eating is taking a toll on my mindset and not sure what to do about it?

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Other Podcasts you may enjoy!:

• Reducing Obsessions and Guilt Surrounding Food
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Transcript:

Note: The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate. This is due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.

Kimberly: Hey Beauties and welcome back to our Thursday Q&A Community Show, where our topic today is How to Change Your Relationship with Food. And I love this topic because first of all, food is one of our Solluna cornerstones. And food is and will always be, I think a big topic for all of us because day to day, we’re eating, we’re putting substances, matter, into our body. We can hold it, we can pick it up, we can smell it, it’s tangible. So it’s always going to be a big part of our lives. And my wellness journey certainly did start with food, as I think it does for a lot of us for those very reasons. Because we have to eat, and because we see it, and we smell it, and we taste it. And what we’re going to talk about today is getting down to more fundamentals with our actual relationship, overall, to food.

Kimberly: And this is a big topic because we can talk about some of the minutia day to day. We can talk about vitamin A and getting the right types of omega fats, and all of that is key and of course it’s important. But we also want to take a step back and really start to evaluate our relationship with food. And if it’s unhealthy, if it feels like it’s controlling you, if it feels like it’s just taking up too much of your life, which was very much the case in my life for many years, before I really started to dial in my relationship with food, then it is time to make a shift because food is important, but it’s not the most important thing. And it’s also not something that we want to have excess stress from. It’s an important part of our life. It’s a form of nourishment, it can be a form of joy, it can be a form of giving love, of course, if we make food for our loved ones, and we share it, so on and so forth.

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Kimberly: But it shouldn’t be a source of excess stress and struggle, which is unfortunately what I see a lot today. And it’s something that I experienced personally. We’re going to get into all of those different topics, those subtopics today. I’m very excited to hear your questions. Before we dive in, I just want to give a quick shout out to please leave us a review on iTunes. It’s free, it’s easy, it’s a wonderful way to support the show. And especially if you’ve benefited in any way from the show, which I certainly hope that you have, please give some support and write that review. We all know how important reviews are so I thank you so much in advance. And also, please be sure to subscribe to our show, that way you don’t miss out on any of these topics, on any of these interviews.

Kimberly: And sometimes, we all know that life gets busy, and we may have the best intentions of following through with something or keeping on top of something, but sometimes, things fall through the cracks, which is why subscription is always, always a wonderful, amazing idea, so that way you don’t have to overthink it and you don’t miss out.

Question #1: around the topic of: How to Change Your Relationship with Food: There are so many viewpoints on what you should and shouldn’t eat and I feel it really messes with my mind. How can I change the way I relate to food so there’s no guilt?

Kimberly: Okay, so all that being said, let’s get into our podcast topic today, How to Change Your Relationship with Food. Our first question comes from Tessa and she lives in Hawaii. And she writes, “There are so many viewpoints on what you should and shouldn’t eat and I feel it really messes with my mind. How can I change the way I relate to food so there’s no guilt?” So Tessa, thank you so much for your question. I think that you echo the frustration of thousands, millions of people, where it just, it is, it can be quite confusing.

Kimberly: We could say, “What am I supposed to eat? I hear on the news that coffee’s good, then coffee’s bad. And this is what I should be eating, maybe it’s too much fat, or maybe it’s the sugar, or it’s the protein, or the carbs, whatever it’s endless, it’s endless.” I do think that first of all, we need to step back and we need to look at the fact that our bodies are constant. As what I mean by that is we have a certain structure to our anatomical structure and our system. We know that our liver produces certain enzymes, we know that our GI tract is a certain shape and performs its functions in a certain way. There is a steadiness, there’s a constancy to our bodies, but there is not a constancy, there is not a stability to the news, to the media.

Kimberly: Remember, their goal is to get people to tune in, to get people to watch, to get more viewers and more attention. And so if it’s the same basic facts, it’s the same basic tips, it’s very difficult for the media to manipulate that. What happens is, there’s all these new ideas, [inaudible] that get put out, and new fad diets, and new maybe this is the magic bullet, or maybe this is the magic diet that’s going to transform everything. And that comes up because these fads, and these waves, and these fades are very good for the news, they’re very good as far as attracting attention. But what happened to me was, I got to the point where I did a lot of research and a lot of study, and I had tried many different things in my body. So I don’t know if you realize this or not, but before I became committed to being fully plant-based, I did try high protein, I did try a high meat diet, believe it or not.

Kimberly: I tried calorie counting, I tried slashing carbs. I tried many different iterations. So I experienced a range in my own body. And at the same time, I was doing a lot of research and a tremendous amount of reading and study at different institutions, and with different teachers, and even within different systems. And I got to the point where I started to connect to what felt, and continues to feel, like the truth for me, and my body, and what was best. And it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t modify to a degree over time. But for me, it got to the point where no matter what fat diet was being promoted on TV, or what celebrity thing people were talking about, I felt very rooted. I felt very connected to what I was eating and the reasons I was eating it.

Kimberly: And the reasons I went plant-based for example, were first of all, when I went to India and I learned about meditation, and yoga, and energy. And I realized and learned that every yoga master does recommend eating plant-based, being vegetarian, because of the density of plant foods. And because in meditation, we’re trying to create more lightness. Lightness is the energy of love and light, literally. And so the energy standpoint really made sense to me. Then the next reason I became vegetarian, vegan, plant-based, was because I learned more about the health reasons. I learned about stagnation in our GI tract and toxins, and just digestibility. And then I also learned about the environmental reasons.

Kimberly: And that, coupled with my Ayurvedic knowledge that I had been learning, teachings like so is the micro, as is the macro, meaning what’s best for our bodies is what’s best for the larger community. In other words, the ideal diet for us would be the lightest load, it would be the best for the animals and for the environment. When I really tuned into, that felt and continues to feel like the truth to me. When we get to a place where we start to really tune in and just, we listen to ourselves, and we listen to our intuition. And by the way, intuition is the theme this month in our Solluna Circle. We’re taking a very deep dive on the whole topic of intuition, which is a big one. How we listen to our inner guidance, or not. How we feel intuition, how we listened to it, or not.

Kimberly: And we have a very strong internal guidance system, and it will also direct us with food. If you’re interested in joining us, as we’re just getting started in the month, please. And our circle, our virtual Zoom circle isn’t until next week, it’s not until March 9th. Please check out our free app, our Solluna app, which is in the App Store, and then there’s a membership part for the Solluna Circle. When we start to tune in, we start to get stronger and stronger in our guidance and in our intuition, then this guilt that you speak of, Tessa, this messing with your mind, it just starts to become lesser and lesser. Because in the beginning, when you’re, “Am I doing it right? Is this new? Is this really going to help?” you’re very susceptible to ideas and shifting directions and pivoting back and forth, and sometimes, going in circles upon circles.

Kimberly: And we want to avoid that excess confusion because really what it is, is over-efforting and excess work. What we want to do, instead is start to tune into when something feels really, really right to us. And that can come about as an emotional feeling, sometimes it’s a mental thought. And a lot of the times, it just feels right in our bodies. When you start to eat a certain way and it just clicks, and you realize, “Hey, I actually do really well digesting brown rice. And even though all these diets were talking about giving up carbs, that doesn’t really feel right to me. It doesn’t really feel good in my body. I get constipated if I eat too much protein.” Or, “I start to feel more bloated,” whatever it is, it’s really what’s going to get past the susceptibility of, and the vulnerability to all these diets, and all this information, is connecting into yourself, and to what feels true to you.

Kimberly: And again, this can shift over time. So let’s say you decide to go plant-based and you’re eating a lot of protein. Over time, you may say, “Oh, I want to be more macrobiotic plant-based, I’m going to introduce more of these grains and more of these carbs. And that feels good to me at that moment.” So it can shift and it can change. But what’s important is staying present with your body, staying present with your truth, doing your own research, your own analysis. And once you come across what feels good to you, really honoring that because I truly believe that we all have wisdom inside of us, we all have unique bodies, we all feel differently inside of ourselves. So it’s so important that we tune in and we align our choices, including our food, to what feels best to us. I would sit with that, Tessa. I would do these practices, like asking your body what it wants to eat before you actually eat. I do this, I know it sounds funny to ask, but you will get messages the more you listen, the more you tune in.

Kimberly: I actually put my hands on my belly and I just say to my body, “What will serve you right now? What do I really need right now?” And that can help you start to tune in and start to listen, and start to make that a priority, which is really powerful. Sending you a big virtual hug, Tessa, thank you so much for your question. And I know it’s confusing, but just stay centered, stick to your truth, do your research, make your own decisions, and you’ll find over time that things will feel more and more clear to you, as it did for me. Because what happens, you choose a path, you go down it, you feel good about it, and it’s just like choosing who you marry. You can second guess that forever, right? We make a choice, what feels best, and so much of this is non-linear, so much of this as gut instinct. And you will start to feel, test it for yourself, and you will feel the truth of your own decisions.

Question #2 around the topic of: How to Change Your Relationship with Food: There is science and then there’s listening to how our body feels when it comes to food. Is it possible we all have a distorted relationship with food because we have so many do’s and don’ts about how we should eat?

Kimberly: Our next question comes from Denise, who lives in Kansas and she writes, “There is science and then there’s listening to how our body feels when it comes to food.” Well, there you go. “Is it possible we all have a distorted relationship with food because we have so many do’s and don’ts about how we should eat?” Denise, not only is it possible, but I truly believe that it is, the way it is for most all of us, that we have a distorted relationship with food because there’s so much information, and misinformation, and shifting information. First of all, I want to address the first part of your question, which is, “There is science.” Now, yes, there is science out there, but I will say, that for every nutritional philosophy, you will find supportive science. Why is that?

Kimberly: That is because you can shift studies the way they’re presented, the way that who is supporting the study, who’s backing it, who’s funded it, there’s many, many ways to portray certain information. And so that gets really confusing to, be like, “Oh, this is a big study. The China study showed that people should be plant-based.” [inaudible], “Oh, well, this big study showed that people should actually be keto.” And so it starts to become very frustrating and very, very confusing. So yes, it’s important to pay attention to emerging science, also science that backs up ancient teachings, I think as well, is pretty interesting. For instance, when clinical research started coming out about tumeric and some of these Ayurvedic herbs that have been used for thousands of years.

Kimberly: The science is important, but I would say we have to be discerning because you can really find a study to back up anything that you want to say. That’s important to keep in mind. What supersedes science to me is anatomy. And this is something I talked about in the Beauty Detox Solution. There is something called biomimicry, and it’s looking at similar species in nature, looking at species, particularly with a similar digestive tract, and shape, and length, and seeing what their ideal diet is. Which is why there was a whole section in the Beauty Detox Solution where I compared the GI tract of a human being, which is quite long and convoluted, and has a lot of twists and turns, which are all tucked in, in our intestinal tract versus the straight, linear shape of a carnivore or like a tiger or lion. One of the reasons, again, we can say beyond this study and this study, one of the reasons that it is the ideal human diet to eat largely or a plant-based diet is because our shape is very similar to plant-based eating gorillas, and primates in nature.

Kimberly: We are omnivores, it’s true. We can digest some animal products, but we certainly don’t, aren’t able to, in my opinion, and again, based on our anatomy, eat a full carnivore diet. Otherwise, our digestive tract would be shaped more like a lion’s or tiger’s. It would be straighter and shorter. And what that does for these carnivores is it allows them to metabolize the food, and to expel the waste before it sits in there, and putrefies longer and longer, in a hot mammalian body temperature, which is almost a hundred degrees. So yes, I know it’s confusing. There’s science, there’s studies, there’s conflicting studies. I urge you, Denise, and all you beauties, to take that, to take it in, to take what makes sense to you. But also again, to use your own intuition and to go beyond that because it can all be manipulated. And so when you start to say, “Oh yeah, look at my GI tract. This passageway is so long,” because the little villi, the little hair, have to absorb the nutrients along the way, and it needs a larger surface area to do that.

Kimberly: Again, that may make sense to you. It makes sense to me, it makes sense to me, I feel lighter when I’ve modified my diet to eat the way that I do. I have more energy, it’s much easier for me to maintain a flat stomach, it’s much easier for me to maintain my weight, it’s much easier for me to feel clear, and to go to the bathroom more, and all these amazing benefits. All of the do’s and the don’ts, and this is wrong, and that’s… There’s so much pushing of different ideas. And unfortunately, for the average consumer, it’s very confusing. For me, and I mentioned this to Tessa, just going beyond and realizing, yes, there’s science. Yes, there’s diets out there. Yes, the media will talk about this and this. You pay attention to a degree and you want to read the science, you want to see who’s behind the research. For instance, the Weston Price Institute, when I started digging deeper, which led to my revised position on soy, I realized they put out so much anti-soy information.

Kimberly: They are affiliated with animal agriculture. And so soy became this threat to some of their food supplies, from their profits, that they were affiliated with. And when you really look at soy, we want to avoid genetically modified soy, we want to avoid soy if we have an allergy. But for the average person who’s having organic soy, especially forms like tempeh which are fermented, you’d have to eat huge amounts for it to create the man boobs, and just some of the other issues that people were scared of in the past. I had to dig in and see who was behind some of this, it turns out it’s propaganda. It turns out there’s a lot of vested interests out there. What I would encourage you is, yes, it does go back to what your body feels. It does go back to taking that information and experimenting with your body.

Kimberly: You may be raised on Cheerios and chicken breast sandwiches with mayonnaise, and you’re like, “Oh, my body knows this, this feels good.” But if you start to discern, “Okay, well now I know more about pesticides. I know more about gluten. And I noticed that I actually get pretty bloated when I eat something like this.” The information that we have in listening to your body is for now. Right now, with the information that you have, not what felt good to you as a child, that you may be feel safe to stick with, but you know isn’t right. But what really feels good to you now, and the information that you’re taking in? Where are the sources? Does it really align to our place in nature as well?

Kimberly: I think sometimes we take this very limited perspective. It’s like a specialist in medicine that focuses just on this one organ, or this one part of the body. And they don’t understand, “Okay, if I take a bunch of medication, it actually messes up my liver, or a different system of the body” because they’re not looking at things holistically. And so I think it is with food. We are part of nature so the food that we’re eating is important, holistically, not just for losing weight, that’s one thing. But I want this food to nourish me, and to nourish my skin, and to nourish my energy. I also want this food to be the best thing for the planet, and for all our brothers and sisters, and all the animals and everything. When we take a step back and we use the criteria beyond one specific scientific study, or beyond one specific person’s opinion, and even though I write books about food, I always say, “Feel your body. What feels good to you? What makes you bloated? What gives you energy?”

Kimberly: And to step back and to realize that, yes, if we pay attention to all this stuff, our perspective is not only distorted, it will continue to be more and more distorted over time. Tune in and listen to your truth, and things will become more and more clear from that. Thank you so much for your question, my love. I appreciate you being in our community, I appreciate you asking a question. I send you a big hug, I love you over there in Kansas, and thank you again.

All right, my loves, we have two more questions on this topic, but we’re going to take a quick short break. And after the break, we’ll be back for you with two more questions.

Break

Kimberly: All right Beauties, we are back from our break. We have two more questions for you guys on this topic of How to Change Your Relationship With Food. I love this topic because again as I said at the beginning of our show there are so many details, there’s so much minutia, there’s so many little things that we can get fixated on. And yeah, some of them are quite important and we want to make sure that we’re getting near the right amount of nutrients and so on and so forth overall but until we actually change our root relationship with food we can continue to have struggle and an unhealthy relationship that makes it very difficult to function day-to-day with ease as far as our diet choices, our meals. We’re always second-guessing ourselves, we’re always feeling guilty and shame, and really food should be more simple than that.

Question #3 around the topic of: How to Change Your Relationship with Food: What was the key moment for you, Kimberly, when you changed the way you related to food? Was there a moment that really stood out to you?

Kimberly: It should be nourishment for our body, it should be what feels attuned to our needs, and without all this heaviness that really surrounds so many of our lives. So many of us have an unhealthy relationship but it’s time to really turn that around. Our first question back from the break comes from Lucy who lives in Nevada and she writes, “What was the key moment for you, Kimberly, when you changed the way you related to food? Was there a moment that really stood out to you?”

Kimberly: Yes, Lucy, I love this question, thank you so much for being part of our community. Thank you for this lovely question. And I love to share about my personal journey because I think when we share our stories we connect to each other and we can really support each other. And for me, this was back when I was in Australia and I was working there after college. And basically what happened was I had been on this long quest for trying to find the best way to lose weight and I had tried all these different diets in my body.

Kimberly: So, as I had mentioned back on Denise’s question, the last question, I tried no-meat diet, high-protein, low-carb, no bread, no sugar, this, that, all these different things. And I was feeling a lot of frustration because I would experience some weight loss but it would be like a yo-yo, I go up and then I would go down and nothing was sustainable and for sure almost everything required a tremendous amount of effort and nothing really felt natural to me. It felt like a lot of work. Oh, what am I supposed to eat now, charting it out, planning it out. It was exhausting and it took up a tremendous amount of my thoughts in my everyday life and I really didn’t want to live that way.

Kimberly: And what happened was I happened to see a sign that said something like, “Learn how to detox.” And I didn’t even really understand what that meant. But there was a hand-drawn of a happy-looking skinny woman and I thought, “Oh, maybe this has something to do with weight loss.” So I went in and I spoke to this nutritionist and it’s amazing that I even did that because I wasn’t going to the gym very much, this is where I happened to see the flyer and I just didn’t have that much money back then so the fact that I even set up an appointment and sat with someone is amazing. But I sat with her, it was so important to me to try to figure this out.

Kimberly: And she asked me, “How’s your digestion?” And again, my first response was, “I don’t want to talk about that. I want to talk about the good stuff like what’s the real way to lose weight?” And she said to me, “It’s all connected.” And then we went on to discuss further about my bloating and my constipation and all these digestive issues I had. And that was the pivotal moment that changed my perspective because I didn’t understand everything but it widened my perspective to seeing that it wasn’t about this little narrow box that I thought it was all about, calories in, calories out, all these mathematical equations. The specific number of protein grams versus the specific number of fat grams, all this math I was doing.

Kimberly: I started to understand that there’s larger energies at play when it comes to health, when it comes to food, beyond calories including the energy of actually assimilating your food, the energy of breaking down food, the energy of elimination, all these things play a part in how we look and how we feel in our energy in the best foods that work for us. And these things can not be delineated down to simply just numbers. Numbers can be helpful, numbers can be a guide, but they are not the end-all be-all.

Kimberly: That was the day, Lucy, that I started to see things in much broader terms and I started to understand that energy was really… Learning how to work with energy was the key and the key in my relationship with food. And that’s why in the Beauty Detox Solution you’ll see the term beauty energy. And I actually started to really take a deep dive on that and that journey continues today and now I talk so much about our cornerstones which include food body and then includes emotional wellbeing and spiritual growth. These things that you don’t see with your physical eyes but they have a lot of energy in them.

Kimberly: And the energy, for instance, of processing your feelings or spiritually connecting back in with your center energetically affects digestion and it affects yourself, it affects your food choices, it affects your food cravings because everything is so interconnected. That was the day, Lucy, that I started to look at food in terms of energy and that changed everything. I stopped looking at food as the enemy, something that could destroy me, something that could take me down, something that could hurt me, something that could really just throw things off for me, and I started to look at the energy of it.

Kimberly: So yes, the energy of how well foods digest, the energy of how natural foods were, how close they were to nature. I started to trust the naturalness of food and my being a human being in nature. I started to trust real… If you go back to the Beauty Detox Solluna principles there’s solidity in them because they’re based in nature. Again, as we spoke about earlier, the way that our anatomy works, the way that our ancestors ate which was very simple. They didn’t have access to a salad bar with 80 different things. So food combining which is really essentially about simplicity is the natural way of things, we can call it just the natural way of things, and the shape of our GI tract.

Kimberly: And so I started to respect that and I started to respect my own energy and I wanted to put in foods that would match my energy and elevate my energy and help me get to the place where I wanted to go. Naturally, when you think about it that way there’s a transition point of course but you want to have the beautiful mangoes, and the almond milk, and the kale. And when you start to learn more and more about what dairy does to your body, what it does to your skin, what it does to your energy, you start to shift away from that.

Kimberly: For me it was that day, it was that moment, then of course tremendous study and learning to come after that, but it just widened my perspective to realizing there’s a lot more to this. And food is just one puzzle piece in the context of all of our energy, again, you look at the cornerstones it’s just one part of the whole way that we care for ourselves, the whole way that we approach wellness. And self-care and everything basically benefits from taking this holistic approach, that was my day.

Kimberly: And I will share with you my love listening to this that the biggest thing to take away from this podcast I think if we could distill it down, that your relationship with food is first of all seeing food as energy and understanding that it’s one part of the puzzle. And so it’s not this separate thing floating off in its own island, it’s part of everything else. So that’s a big key. If you don’t have a good relationship with food I would look to the other cornerstones. What’s your relationship with yourself, with your self-worth, with your confidence, with your connection inside? When you work more and more with the emotional, mental, spiritual part, it heals the food cornerstone.

Kimberly: Because why? Because a lot of times what we’re hungry for is connection, we’re hungry for feeling good and so we think it’s going to feel good when we get skinny or it’s going to feel good just when we eat that ice cream sundae. But instead we learn to feel good when we’re whole, we feel good by being in touch with our essence, with our truth. It feels good to be authentic, it feels good to just be so connected, so deeply connected deep inside of ourselves and then we can connect more to other people so our relationships deepen, which of course helps also to heal our relationship with food. We don’t look to food to just shift our moods, we don’t look to food as bandaid to placate us when we feel down, we don’t look to food for the distorted reasons around food.

Kimberly: So one of the biggest ways we heal, the way to heal is to work all the cornerstones instead of hyper-focusing on food. And ironically that day when I started to see food and energy, I started to heal and I started to look at my own energy, and I started to look at my own negative self-talk, and I started to look at my own insecurities and all the ways that I would speak down to myself, the ways that I kept myself small, I saw myself as small, and then everything started to grow in tandem. I started to meditate, I started to heal my relationship with myself, and that healed my relationship with food. So it’s very important that we take a step back and we take a wider perspective and that in and of itself is incredibly healing. So thank you so much, Lucy. I love this question and sending you a big virtual hug wherever you may be.

Question #4 around the topic of: How to Change Your Relationship with Food: I know from following you that you don’t count calories, but I’ve come to rely on this method to avoid waking. The feeling of being told when to stop eating is taking a toll on my mindset and I’m not sure what to do about it.

Kimberly: All right. Our next question comes from Anna and she’s from Europe. She writes, “I know from following you that you don’t count calories, but I’ve come to rely on this method to avoid waking. The feeling of being told when to stop eating is taking a toll on my mindset and I’m not sure what to do about it.” From me, Anna, thank you so much my love for this question I think that a lot of us relate. I certainly had a period where I was very attached to my calorie-counting, and it did not feel safe to not know the calorie count of what I was eating.

Kimberly: I’ll say that for me… We think of calorie-counting like training wheels. In the beginning it gives you some support especially if you have no background or no knowledge about food at all. I can give you some general guidance. You may be shocked to realize, oh… I’m just making this up. This pasta dish that I eat actually has a thousand calories, or I had no idea there was this many calories in these baked chips or whatever, it’s a guideline. But what happens over time is that it becomes very limited because to your point, you end up being told when to stop eating. It’s outside of yourself, it’s external. Calories are numbers so it’s just one picture of what it is, one aspect of that particular food item.

Kimberly: And it doesn’t translate to the wholeness of us because we’re multidimensional beings and we are so beyond numbers and all these simplistic formulas that we’ve been told in the past, again, the calories in, the calories out, there’s a lot more to it. There’s our hormones, there’s our digestive fire, and there is our stress, there’s our nervous system. When our nervous system is over-activated we tend to draw blood and energy away from our digestion and so we hold on more and that leads to bloating. So there’s so much more.

Kimberly: I would say that it’s taking a toll because it’s unnatural, Anna, and in my opinion it’s not sustainable. So the way that I was able to get rid of calorie-counting as a controlling force in my life was to start to trust food again, and by doing that I really mean whole foods and in particular whole plant foods. And I found that when I started eating food in its natural state, and again, having some general background of knowledge. We don’t want to eat cups and cups of olive oil, for instance. You can say, “Okay, Olive oil is pretty dense.” And by the way it’s not a whole food it’s a pressed oil without the fiber of the actual olive.

Kimberly: So you start to have a general idea but for me it’s really this principle of filling up with fiber, only plant foods have fiber. The way I got around calorie-counting was to really have salad and a lot of veggies and then to add the heavier foods on top of that. Whether it’s lentils, beans, quinoa,, tempeh, walnuts, whatever, the more dense foods were they were on top of fiber-rich foods and both raw and cooked. So raw salad doesn’t have just fiber it also has all this water, it’s very filling to the degree that it’s going to fill your stomach up with bulk. And same thing with cooked veggies. You fill up with that and all the fiber actually creates bulk and weight and fullness.

Kimberly: And so to me that’s the natural form of portion control and calorie-counting. Without calorie-counting it’s just to utilize veggies. Now, remember animal products have no fiber so it doesn’t work that way. You really want to use a wide range of veggies and to eat seasonal foods and to bulk up on that. And so that was to me the way I found freedom from counting calories.

Kimberly: So, Anna, there’s nothing wrong with it per se, I find it limited though. So you can use it to gather knowledge and to know some basics, but I don’t think it’s the healthiest sustainable way to choose our foods and to live our life, so you want to just focus on whole foods, focus on the fiber, make sure you’re fully hydrated, basics. Hydrate between meals have smoothies like our Glowing Green Smoothie and your body will do the math for you. You will digest better and better, of course, fostering digestion through our SBO Probiotics and taking the right supplements, all of that is also really important as well and that will help to cleanse you of your calorie-counting addiction.

Kimberly: And it takes time. I’ve had clients that were so addicted to it it was very hard to peel them away from counting calories. They clung to them and clung to them as truth, as comfort, so there’s an emotional part of this, which is why I what I was saying with Lucy, please do pay attention to all of the cornerstones. Here we’re talking about the body moving in a way that feels good, sleeping well, taking the right supplements, emotionally processing your feelings, calling on a supportive tribe. We also have our Solluna Circle for this, which is part of our app, which you can check out.

Kimberly: And then spiritually, the more you connect back in, you start to listen to yourself and your intuition more. So meditation provides clarity, it provides connection with your body as well with yourself. So meditation is very powerful in healing our relationship with food because we go beyond it and then we can start to see, oh, yeah, food’s important because we need to eat but it’s not the end-all be-all and it doesn’t have to be so serious, and it certainly doesn’t have to be so confusing. So thank you my love and I hope that helps and lots more resources and information about this on our website as well.

Thought of the Week

Kimberly: Our quote of the week, I want to leave you guys with this thought. I wrote this right before our podcast when I heard the topic. You and your body are unique, so listen to the guidance of your own intuition on how to best care for yourself. I’ll say it again. You and your body are unique, so listen to the guidance of your own intuition on how to best care for yourself. You are unique, your body is unique, you have unique needs, you have a unique genetic constitution, you have a unique Vikruti and Prakruti, these terms from our Ayurveda, the way that we are born and the way that we manifest today with imbalance. You have a unique lifestyle.

Kimberly: So gather information, read the books, listen, take it in, but ultimately you want to listen to your own body. And again, what I said earlier it’s very important to discern with today’s world where there’s so much out there and again, there’s different studies that can point to your truth within different philosophies so you want to go beyond just one thing, one study. You want to listen to your heart to what resonates and to listen to the people that come from their heart and that you obviously resonate with as well.

Kimberly: I’ll leave you with that. I loved our topic today, I hope you did as well. Please keep the questions coming about this or anything else that you’re wondering about. I love to support you, I love to be here for you, I love you. I can’t even tell you how grateful I am for our community and I really do mean that from the bottom of my heart. I think we have such a beautiful, wonderful, loving, heart-centered group of people here and I’m so grateful. I will be back here Monday for our next interview podcast. Till then, I’ll see you on social, I’ll see you in the app. Sending you so much love and see you here on Monday. Lots of love.

The post How to Change Your Relationship with Food [Episode #556] appeared first on Solluna by Kimberly Snyder.