#7 How Food Fear and Restrictions Are Holding Back Your Healing

Everywhere you look, you’re being told food is the problem.
Gluten, dairy, histamines, sugar… the list keeps growing — and the more rules you follow, the smaller your world gets.

In this episode of The Rebellious Healer, Jenny explains why food fears are so common with chronic symptoms and how subconscious beliefs about food can keep your body stuck in survival mode.

In this episode, you’ll learn:
 • Why food sensitivities often grow instead of shrink
 • How fear around food can trigger real symptoms
 • Why avoiding more foods doesn’t solve the root problem
 • How to start feeling free around food again

If your world keeps getting smaller because of food rules…
and you just wish you could eat whatever you want without worrying what it will do to your body…this episode will change the way you look at food completely.

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Thanks for listening! 

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:04

Everywhere you look, you're being told that food is the enemy, that every bite you take could be a threat to your health and your healing. Food fear is a common struggle for those living with chronic conditions, whether it's gluten, dairy, histamines, or carbs. But today we're going to break it all down and show you why this fear is actually holding you back from the healing you deserve. You're about to discover how ditching these food fears is the first step towards stepping into your true power as a healer. So keep listening because you're about to change the way you look at food once and for all. Welcome back to the Rebellious Healer Podcast, where we don't just talk about healing, we take action. This podcast is for women who are done letting their symptoms control them. It's time to ditch the fear, understand the symptoms, and take control of your health and healing. Everywhere we turn, we're told that certain foods are poison. Histamines, gluten, dairy, sugar, carbs, they're all labeled as the enemy. But here's the thing, when we buy into these myths, we shrink our world. We stop trusting our bodies and we start fearing every single thing we put into our mouth. What starts as a healthy choice ends up becoming a stress-induced cycle.

SPEAKER_00 1:39

And that's the real problem.

SPEAKER_01 1:53

The foods I could eat were even shorter. Some I had a sensitivity to, while others I believed I had to avoid in order to be quote unquote healthy. But with all these restrictions, I was the healthiest, sickest person I knew. I was a walking contradiction, health conscious on the outside, yet plagued by food fears on the inside. I ate all organic, avoided gluten, no dairy, no sugar, you name it. My grocery bill was insane. I thought if I followed all the rules, I would finally heal, and I would be healthy. But instead, I only created more fear around food. I started fearing every bite, and eating wasn't a joy anymore. It was a stress fest. I was trapped. The more I clung to these beliefs, the smaller my world became. Food became a prison, not a source of nourishment. I was afraid to eat, afraid of what I couldn't eat. And this created a vicious cycle of stress, anxiety, and digestive issues. And you the truth is the more I believed food was the problem, the more trapped I became. It wasn't until I realized that food wasn't the problem, I was the problem, that things started to shift. The more I trusted my body, the more I stopped fearing food. And you know what happened? The symptoms went away. Now let's get real about symptoms. If you've been following me for a while, or if you've listened to this podcast before, you know that symptoms don't happen because of the food you eat. Symptoms are your body's biological response to perceived stress. That perceived stress could very well come from how you view food. If you think that dairy isn't digestible, then you probably won't digest it well. By believing that you've made a subconscious connection that dairy is a threat. And what happens? Your body reacts, just like it would to anything else it perceives unsafe. What you believe is what your body responds to. Your biology is designed to respond to your perception of the world, including food. So when your body is in a state of fear, whether from a stressful experience or a stressful belief, it reacts as if it's in danger, whether it's imagined or real. So when you're constantly fearing food, you're in a state of stress, and that's what triggers digestive issues, fatigue, bloating, and all these other symptoms. But there is good news. Once you understand this, you'll realize that food isn't your enemy. Your subconscious is sending the signals and your body is just doing its job by responding to what it believes is a threat. No, I want to address food sensitivities because it seems like it's everywhere. And if you try and go for help, this is one of the first things that you're going to be told is that you have these food sensitivities. And essentially, this is where a lot of it all starts with the sensitivities. You aren't aware that you have the sensitivities, and then you go and you get tests done and they tell you you have these sensitivities, and all of a sudden now you're worried about these sensitivities plus what if it causes other things, and it just starts this domino effect. So if you have food sensitivities, you've probably been conditioned to think that certain foods are the problem. But let me tell you, it's not the food itself, it's the belief and the subconscious patterns that was created around it.

SPEAKER_00 5:21

Food sensitivities are created by association.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

If you've experienced something stressful while eating a certain food, your subconscious will associate that food with the stress. It's like your body learns to see that food as a threat. When in reality, it's the association with the stressful event or the way that you are thinking that the food is harmful that's causing the reaction.

SPEAKER_00 5:52

The food just happened to be in the environment in that moment.

SPEAKER_01 5:56

Your brain doesn't differentiate between food and the situation surrounding it. Your subconscious is constantly taking in everything around you. What you consciously see, your subconsciously sees ten times that amount. So everything you experience, including your thoughts, feelings, the environment around you, doesn't matter. Your subconscious is taking that all in. It doesn't know how to separate it. That's the problem, is it doesn't know that when I'm eating this food, but also feeling this certain way or having a particular experience, that the experience is the problem. It just looks as, okay, this food was in my mouth while I was having this experience. It must be the food. So if you experience something stressful while eating, your brain is going to tag the food as the threat. That's how food sensitivities are created by association. Almost all of our clients come to us with food fears or sensitivities. Tania, who is now a MBR coach, but was a former student as well, came to us only being able to eat three foods for several years. We're not just talking three foods and it was just a short period of time. For several years, she ate just these three foods. She had severe food sensitivities and her world was shrinking. She was constantly anxious about food and what would happen if she ate the wrong thing. And hers also started out with just a couple sensitivities, and then it turned into almost everything. But once we worked with Tania to uncover the subconscious beliefs she had around food and the experiences that she experienced, she started to change her re-relationship with eating. We rewired those old fears, and Tania started eating more freely. Over time, her food sensitivities started to fade and she began to enjoy food again. Now Tania is able to eat anything, and she can't imagine ever having to limit her foods again. If you want to learn about Tania's story much more in depth, listen to episode number 10. It's a good one. This whole process is the power of addressing subconscious patterns. When you rewire those beliefs that you have about food and work on the experiences that haven't been resolved, your body no longer reacts as if the food is a threat. I also want to talk about the snowball effect of food fears. It's important to understand how this happens. When we start avoiding one or two foods, we can quickly begin to develop sensitivities to more. And this happens because fear around food creates more fear. And our world just keeps getting smaller and smaller as we add more restrictions or as we learn about this particular thing, then we worry about this particular thing. Like it just moves from one thing to the next and it keeps on growing. We've worked with clients who started with just one or two sensitivities and suddenly found themselves sensitive to everything from common foods to chemicals in their environment. It's a vicious cycle that grows as the fear continues to grow. The more we can reduce that fear and rewire those beliefs, the less likely that snowball effect will continue. There are some people that really debate what I have to say about food sensitivities and it's starting in the subconscious. And they'll say, Well, I've avoided these certain foods and all of my symptoms went away. But here is the thing. If you have avoided certain foods and say that it has resolved all of your symptoms or a specific symptom, then you're really not solving the root issue. You're just avoiding the association track that was created in your subconscious. By avoiding it, you don't have symptoms. But then there's the catch. If you don't want those symptoms anymore, you need to avoid that food for the rest of your life. And that's no way to live. So if you really want to resolve this issue at the root, at the core, and you want to be able to eat anything, then the subconscious patterns are what need to be addressed. And by just simply avoiding food that caused the problem, that is just a temporary surface fix. And let's talk about the beliefs about our body not being able to do certain things. The truth is your body is actually not as picky or as sensitive as you think. It can digest pretty much anything with the exception of a LICO. You know, your histamines, carbs, sugar, dairy, whatever foods you want to put into all of this category, your body can digest it all. Even small levels of toxins, your body is capable of handling. It's the large quantities of toxins, if exposed to them regularly, that can build up and cause problems. Nobody dies from eating a donut or a piece of bread. Your body will still heal if you choose to eat these things as well. It doesn't have to have the certain requirement in order for it to heal. I want you to think about kids when they break bones. They're young, right? And a lot of kids, when they're younger, they eat crap. They don't eat well. And their bones heal. It's the same thing if if you have a cut on your finger. Your body doesn't say, well, you can't heal because you ate that donut or that cookie today, or ate that histamine. Your body heals regardless. You can also be perfectly healthy eating these so-called bad foods. And I'm living proof of that. I eat anything I want now, and I don't have any symptoms. I see food as nourishment. That's it. Do I have moderations of things? Yes, because certain foods have different value, but I'm not looking at it and saying I'm not going to eat that because it's not top-notch premium fuel all the time. So there's nothing wrong with wanting to eat clean or healthy foods. I'm not against that, and I'm not saying that don't do it, but being obsessed about it is where the problem starts. And it's all about having that balance. And then we have the debate of, you know, we need to clean up our food so all our chronic illnesses go away. Well, the truth is cleaning up our food will not solve chronic illness. And if it did, myself, our coaches, and all of our clients would have healed when we were eating the purest, healthiest foods. But it didn't fix anything because all of us, that's what we've done to try and get well when we have these chronic conditions. We go organic, we watch everything we eat and eat as pure as possible. And our symptoms didn't go away by doing that. Not saying eating healthy isn't a good thing, but we can't rely on it to fix health conditions that are rooted in our subconscious. I want you to think about what it would feel like to eat anything, whether you have sensitivities or just simply you fear eating certain types of food, the type of freedom that you would feel, not having to worry about whether something you ate caused a particular symptom, not stressing about needing to bring your own food to a party because the hostess won't have anything you can eat. If that freedom is something that you want, then the first step is to debunk your food beliefs. And I'm going to give you a quick rundown of how you can debunk those beliefs. So grab a pen and paper if you got one, or come back to and listen to this and write it down at another time. You want to start out by listing all the food beliefs that you currently have. And I want you to write all those down. That list can get quite long depending on what your programming is and what you've been through. So some examples would be I can't eat gluten or dairy makes me sick, I can't have carbs, carbs are bad for me, uh, histamines are bad for me. You know, what are your rules? Sit down and you know, when you think about certain foods, what are the ones that you say, absolutely can't eat those, or I shouldn't eat those, or those I've been told I should stay away from, and make your list. Then once you make your list, then ask yourself, where did those beliefs come from? Who taught you those rules? Were they social media influencers who changed their story every week? Because there's a lot of those, or functional medicine docs who are just as obsessed with killing all the bad stuff in your body as conventional doctors are, or is it your sister-in-law who gives you health tips every single time you see her? Or every time you turn on the TV, you hear this particular thing, and you that's where you learned it from. Like, where did you learn these beliefs? Because they came from somewhere. You weren't born with this belief system. It's something that you decide to take on based on your environment or what you're told. So they come from someplace. And you might not be able to say, well, this exact person told me where it came from, but you know for sure that maybe it was at a certain time in your life that you, you know, basically took on that belief system. And so once you can identify on some level where these beliefs came from, then I want you to think about it and how many of these sources actually understand true biology? How many truly get how your body works? These were their beliefs. They weren't yours. Understanding the source of these beliefs, the source of where these people have gotten the beliefs, what kind of education they received as well, helps you realize that these beliefs were never yours in the first place. And that is very powerful because you don't, you're not forced to believe this belief and have it for the rest of your life. You can choose to say, this isn't this belief isn't working for me anymore anymore. And this belief came from a source that I really don't consider to be uh a good resource at this point based on what they are understanding on the level of biology and body. Again, this is all about you get to determine now, but you also have to find kind of in your mind of where it started, so it makes sense to debunk it. It makes it a lot easier to debunk things when we go back and find the source and go, oh yeah, that doesn't make sense anymore. So once you have the source of where these beliefs came from, then ask yourself, what price will you pay if you continue to believe this? Will your world stay small? Will you not be able to travel freely or enjoy meals with others? Will food continue to no longer be enjoyable? Will social gatherings be no longer be enjoyable? What is the price you're going to pay for continuing to believe these beliefs about food? And then once you have that, now ask yourself, how could your life change if you didn't believe this anymore? What other belief could you adopt that would empower you to achieve the goal that you want to have? Maybe it's all food is nourishment or my body can digest anything. What do you want to believe? Even though what you want to believe might not feel really comfortable when you say that right now. So when I say to you, all food is nourishment, and there's a little hesitation in your body and in your mind, that's totally normal because that is your subconscious resisting what it normally knows. It knows, oh no, not all food is nourishment. There are some good, there are some bad that can't be digested, blah, blah, blah. That's not feeling comfortable to your nervous system because it's something that is not in line with it. And that discomfort is normal when you start believing something different. But just because it feels uncomfortable when you start to say these new beliefs and step into it, it doesn't mean that it's wrong and that you can't ever believe that. It just means it's going to take time to rewire that new belief system as you let go of the old stuff. This is what the rewiring process looks like. The rewiring process takes time. And it the subconscious is going to need some practice of going back in and testing. It's going to want to get back to that comfort level every once in a while. And then you have to bring it to this new level of comfort and say, it's okay. We don't believe that anymore because it's not working for us, blah, blah, blah. Okay. So there is some work that comes with shifting this over. But this process that I'm taking you through is to start seeing a new perception of is this belief worth me holding on to anymore? And what if I do, what are the consequences of it? And then you get to decide. So when you believe your body can digest anything, your brain will stop associating food with danger and you will allow your body to relax and do what it's designed to do. And that stress response will become a thing of the past and your healing will begin. So, what is the takeaway here? The takeaway is that food is not the problem. The problem is the fear you've been taught to have about food. When you understand your body's biology, and what I mean biology is survival. All it cares about is two things. Am I safe or am I unsafe? That is how we are all biologically programmed. So survival is going to be where the focus is. And if we understand all my body cares about is if I'm safe or unsafe, then that is going to be applied to everything, whether you how you think about food, how you're perceiving your environment, what you think about yourself. And all of that is going to be sending messages to your body either to respond or not to respond. That is biology. As simple as it is, survival is our biology. And when we understand that, healing becomes really simple. You can forget about all these bullshit rules, and you can focus on what is most important, the inner work. Thanks for listening. And remember, you are the healer you've been waiting for. The journey starts with you and it starts now. Keep trusting your body, and I'll see you in the next episode.