Willpower V Food Freedom

by | Sep 17, 2021 | Blog, Healthy Knowledge | 0 comments

What does food freedom look like for you?

If you’ve ever been on a restricted diet or deliberately avoided certain foods, you will know all about willpower. It’s great until it’s not. The trouble with willpower is that you have a certain amount of it, and that might get used up during the day, dealing with difficult clients or family situations. Then there’s none left to ensure you make the best food choices. Especially if you’re hungry because you’ve been dieting.

So, imagine your willpower is pretty low by the end of the day, and you go past your calorie or carb allowance, or you eat something on your no-no list. It’s all too easy to end up in a ‘what the heck’ space where anything goes.

This is regular diet behavior because dieting teaches you to ignore your body’s satiety cues, the biological signals that tell you if you are hungry or full. This teaches your brain not to listen to your body.

When you start to explore mindful eating, you regain your perspective around food and can unlearn unhelpful habits related to what, when and how you eat. That, in my book, is called food freedom.

My own experience with mindful eating

Food should be one of life’s great pleasures and yet many of us miss out on it. On my own journey to health, I learned that it is possible to reclaim the joy of eating through being more mindful. All you need to do is to pay attention to the tastes, the smells, the feelings and the people that join you for the meal.

One very important discovery I made was that a lot of my habits around food originated in my childhood and as a parent I want to keep all the healthy habits as I raise my own kids and not to repeat any of the unnecessary patterns that can cause distress, guilt, shame and judgement.

I am sure you can relate to the fact that if we eat while watching TV, distracted and not really tasting, the food goes down without us noticing it and that leads to us remaining somehow hungry and unsatisfied. Next we go searching for something more to nourish us.

Through mindful eating we can learn to be present when we eat and improve our relationship with food

Welcome

Hi there! I’m Ionela, but you can call me Ella. I’m a certified Health and Nutrition Coach, Skin therapist and mom living in the beautiful Galway, passionate about the powerful effects of nutrition.

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