Getting Rid of Shame Around Food

In this podcast episode I share my journey to developing a healthier relationship with food and helping others do the same. The process starts with recognizing that you have the power to change your relationship with food, learning about hidden ingredients and misinformation, and focusing on making consistent changes rather than aiming for perfection. 

Transcript

(00:10):

Guilt is a word that I commonly run into when speaking to clients about their eating, about their health goals, about their nutrition program. And guilt is one of those words that I think should never be associated with food. I'm Julia. I am the founder of Jolie. We create nutrition programs and meal programs and send them everywhere, fully prepared, organic. And one of the impetus of creating Jolie and one of my guiding points is I really want people you to feel comfortable with food, to have a really, really good relationship with food. Because not having a good relationship with food and feeling guilty about it robs you of a lot of joy. And how I got to this is that I love to cook. I love to cook. I never knew I loved to cook until I went to Russia and experienced real food for the first time in my life.
(01:24)
And I came back to St. Louis and I cooked and I fell in love with cooking. I moved to New York City and that was like an accelerator. I fell even deeper in love with cooking. I now had access to food from all over the world. I had access to ingredients from all over the world. I had artisanal cheeses. I had really, really well bred meat. I had heirloom vegetables. I had farmer's markets. I had amazing restaurants to enjoy. I fell head over heels with food. I went to culinary school. I loved, loved, loved food. It was exciting to me from the time you plant the seed in the ground to the time you harvest it, to the time you collect it, to the time you cook it, to the time you set down. So gardening was my thing. All heirloom vegetables. I love the farmer's market.
(02:27)
It's still my happiest place in the world. I love going, buying things, coming home and cooking. What was in season like what I got from the garden, what I got from the farmer's market. I loved it. I love setting tables. I love dinner parties, I love everything. However, I was overweight. I felt fat. I felt like I was constantly getting the clothes that made me look thinner, that it was constantly a struggle for sizes. It was constantly a struggle for things that being a high fashion person that I loved but I could not fit into. It was a struggle because I struggled with my weight. And because of that, I felt very, very, very ashamed of my love of food. I felt like I had no right to love food. I'm overweight here. How can I say I love food when I hate being overweight?
(03:33)
I felt so much guilt, so much like I love this thing, but then I hate this other thing. There was such tension in me that I had such a hard time accepting the part of me that loved food and accepting the part of me that desperately desired to be a healthy weight. And after I became a healthy weight, I was still ashamed of my love of food. And I was afraid that my love of food would completely foil, completely unwind the work that I had done. And so that's when I came to really focus on my relationship with food. Because food, unlike say, if you have an alcohol use disorder or you vape or you do something like that, those are things that you can habits, you can break addictions, you can break, and you never have to interface with them again. Food is not like that.
(04:43)
Food you have to always interface with. And so it really brought me to diving deep into my relationship with food. And the first thing that I noticed is it was highly imbalanced. My relationship with food was like being in a relationship with a toxic person. Food had all the power and I was the victim of food. I felt very controlled by food. I felt like I ate and I had no idea what happened. And I had no idea what it did in my body. I felt like I ate healthy and still I was overweight. I felt like completely out of control. And so it was time to dive into my relationship with food and to discover what it meant to master food and to be free from guilt and shame. And so that began a journey which then ended up in Jolie. And this is what we're talking about today.
(05:53)
How does it get into a better relationship with food? And I will say the first step is recognizing that your relationship with food needs changing, that my relationship with food needed to be changed. And as in all relationships, you are the one to change it. Which means that even when you don't feel like it, you are the one who has the power to change your relationship with food. You are the one who can say, Hey, I'm changing my relationship with food. You are not a victim of food. You are moving into the driver's seat, as I say, with food. And the second key is realizing that you don't know everything. That there's a certain degree of black box ness about food and it's going to take time to learn it all. I find that sometimes we think food is food. We've been eating food since we were born.
(07:09)
We should understand it. We should know. I should know how to feed myself. I should know what to eat. I'm sorry, but that is not true. That is not true in our current landscape and our landscape of a lot of misinformation about food, our landscape of hidden things in food. I tell you one of the most interesting things that I was reading recently is sugar. That in processed food, there's lots of hidden sugar in processed food and there are sugars and things that you wouldn't expect there to be sugar in. So let's say you get something really, really savory like spicy corn salsa for instance. You don't expect sugar to be in there and you eat it and you literally do not taste sugar. However, you look at the ingredients and there's sugar there. We have these wonderful receptors. They're part of the vagus nerve in our stomachs and in our gut that can detect that sugar that our taste buds did not detect.
(08:11)
And guess what happens? The whole sugar response happens in our body. It's absolutely fascinating. So you're in a space of having this corn salsa thinking you're doing the right thing and not realizing that there's actually added sugar to it. This is not your fault. This is like big food production at work here. You're told that that makes you fat. You are not told the mechanism, you're not told that actually that's not true. You're not told what is really making you fat. So the first part of once you realize, okay, I have a relationship with food and I have the power to change it. Second is I don't know everything I need to know. Some things are hidden from me, some things I learned are actually not true and some things are special to just me. And so being in that state of saying, okay, I don't know everything, it removes this weird sense of responsibility that we feel that our state of health or weight is our fault.
(09:25)
It removes that. And when it removes that, it opens us up to, okay, let's learn. Let's see what happens. So for example, for me, moose would cookbook, absolutely adore it. Love black bean soup. Black bean soup is supposed to be really healthy for you. I made the broth, I put the cut up the vegetables. I made it really, really healthy for you. High in fiber, feed your gut, all the things really, really healthy for you. In my stage two, my stage of realizing I don't know everything. One of the things that I would do is I would weigh myself. I'm like, okay, let me figure out what's happening here. What's making me gain weight? What makes me lose weight? Let me see what's happening. Black bean soup, epitome of health, moose wood cookbook. Literally every time I ate it, the scale went up and it stayed up.
(10:23)
Every time I ate it, the scale went up and it stayed up. That tells me something that my belief, my thought, what I learned that this was healthy food for me. Julia is actually not healthy food for me, Julia. It is not aligned with my goals. And so when you get to the space of saying, okay, I don't know everything and allows you A to seek help, it allows you B to be an investigator and investigate how food interacts with your body. And C, it frees you from this paralyzing sense of it's all my fault. So that's your second step to realize that you don't know everything and that you get to investigate what food does to you. That you get to seek help in a nutritionist or a counselor, and you get to learn by observing yourself, by reading books, by going to podcasts that are well studied.
(11:27)
There is the information out there, you just kind of have to dig for it. So you open yourself up to receiving new information. You open yourself up to releasing beliefs that don't hold true for you. Like black being super is good for me, I'm sorry, but for me, Julia, no bueno. I can have the Jolie style black bean soup, which is mainly vegetables and a few black beans, but I can't have the other style that is mainly black beans. So that's your second step, realizing that you don't know everything and your third step is making changes. So I say that wisdom comes through doing notice. It's wisdom comes through doing. It's not perfection. And this too is a space that we need to let go of perfection in eating, perfection in doing things just right, perfection and sticking to your food program, sticking to your exercise routine.
(12:42)
Oftentimes our desire for perfect undermines the bigger goal. And with food, I ask that you give up perfection instead. You really aim for consistency. I want to consistently eat well. I want, and consistency means that if you don't eat well one time, you do eat well the next time. Consistency. If you commit to consistency, you are committing to not throwing in the towel. You are committing to getting back on the wagon. When you fall off, you are committing to making something your normal. And so even within abnormal, there can be blips, but we're still in normal. So that shifts us from this all or nothing thinking like I blew it or I didn't blow. It puts food back in control of this relationship to know I'm in control and my commitment is to be consistent to consistently try to eat the way that is aligned to my goals.
(14:05)
And in that consistency, there is muscle building, there is getting stronger. There is starting from the bottom and working yourself up. And so when you say to yourself, okay, I have this relationship with food that I can control everything that I thought I knew isn't necessarily true and there's a lot that I don't know and I'm going to be consistent in working to create the best health I can with the food that I can consume. And this allows you to begin to learn. This allows you to begin to slowly give up habits that you know aren't good for you. This allows you to say there's no good food. There's no bad food, there's only choices that are aligned with my goals and that are not aligned. And when I look at it that way, when something isn't aligned, I don't beat myself up. I don't feel ashamed.
(15:15)
I don't feel like I did something wrong. Instead I ask myself, what would be better aligned? Or how can I align this to my choices? So that is part of your road away from shame, away from guilt because you are moving into a space of empowerment and a space of creation. You are creating a new reality with food. You're creating a new relationship, you're creating a new understanding. You're creating a new way of being. And this is where I want to get to the I am statements. So I am good with food. I am good at taking care of myself. I am good at making decisions. I am good about figuring this thing out. I am good about getting back on track. I am good about hydrating myself. I am good about eating my vegetables. This is where I want you to concentrate. This is where I want you to focus your attention on the good things, not on the good and the bad.
(16:24)
Not, oh, I ate this bad food. I ate this good food. All food is good, all food is good. Whether it's aligned or not, different story, but all food is good. I go back to my black bean soups story. I couldn't eat the moose wood and get the results I wanted. So how can I eat black bean soup, which I still adore and it be aligned. I can do that by making it more vegetable. I can do that by taking out some of the beans. That's how I do it. So there's no like, oh, black bean soup is bad for me. It's like, no, that form of black bean soup is bad for me. No, I can't eat pancakes for the rest of my life. I can eat love pancakes made out of buckwheat, or I can eat pancakes every so often. This is me mastering food where there is no bad food, good food, there is no, I feel guilty.
(17:26)
Instead, it's investigation and changing my relationship with food. So I want to share another story with you because when we're changing our relationship with food, one of the things that we oftentimes fight against is this feeling of I can't do this. This feeling of I'll never get it right. This feeling of, oh my gosh, I totally blew it. And then we give up and we're back to square one again. And I share this story because I want you to know that when you are master food, there is no going back to square one. There is just pivoting. There is just understanding. There is just making this thing work because you're the creator, you're building the building. And so I want you to be in that mindset. So here's the story. I love these chocolate. I love shortbread cookies, period. Ever since going to England, I'm in love with them. They are my weakness. They're in these amazing shortbread cookies dipped in chocolate that I absolutely adore. One day I was overwhelmed with desire for them. I went, I bought them. I probably ate four of them on the way home and then I proceeded to eat some more. That was a lot. It was a lot. I could feel guilty, I could feel ashamed. I could feel like, oh my gosh, you totally just set yourself back. And then the next day my period came and I was like, oh my gosh, this was it.
(18:56)
This was just my body craving sugar before my period. And then I began to notice that literally that happens every single time. If I didn't know my period was coming, if I just paid attention to me getting an overwhelming desire for sugar, that comes and goes, instantly it comes. It has to be satisfied and then it disappears for the next 28 days. I then learned, okay, this is just how my body is. This is my body. Doing that, that learning, that not being like all or nothing like, oh my gosh, I guess I'm on this big sugar binge, but I am consistent. So I went back to my regular way of eating, allowed me to learn, okay, this is what happens. And give up. I don't have to go back to square one. I don't have to give up. I don't have to say I'm bad.
(19:58)
I don't have to say, oh Julia, why were you that stupid? Or you are the head of jolee. You of all people should avoid those cookies. Oh my gosh, no, I put on that same hat that I'm encouraging you to put on of I am the master food. There is zero guilt about the choices I make and it's only my job to work to be consistent, to get the results that I want and to study my body so I can learn to master my relationship with food. So I can learn that I'm in charge. I get to choose and I get to change. So I have those cookies. I realize, okay, this is part of my menstrual cycle. And so next menstrual cycle, when this comes up, I can choose to have sugar or to not have sugar. I can say to myself, Hey, this is the day before your menstrual.
(20:58)
This is why you're craving less. Just make it through the day. You'll be fine. I can say, Hey, I really would like that thing, so let's just have some of it. But tomorrow we know we're not eating sugar. I can do that. So I really want for you to be able to use these tools to move into a space of food mastery. You are in control, you are learning, and you are consistent. And you can make changes and tweaks as you need to follow those three steps. And you'll reach a space where you are never guilty about your choices, where you never feel shame around food or eating and where you never feel that you are the victim of food. Instead, you will feel in control. You will feel like you are the master of food and you will feel that you have the tools you need to make changes in your relationship with food.
(22:04)
And that is a state of power. That is a state of true ability to transform your health and your body. And that is a state of connecting with yourself. And so I encourage you on that. I encourage you to really think into this idea of no shame, no guilt, I'm in control. I choose. I am the master food. Food is not the master of me. I hope this helped you. This was a more conceptual kind of get in their emotional mindset. Shifting podcast, I'm really open to questions. If this has helped you, please share it. Let me know what you need to know, what your challenges are, what your questions are, and visit us@thejolife.com. Visit me, connect with me at Julie at the Jolie life and we are on Instagram as at the Jolie life. I will talk to you soon. I hope you enjoyed this podcast, the Jolie Life Podcast.
(23:17)
And if this podcast helped you in any way, I invite you to share it with your friends and your family and whoever you come across that you think might be helped for this podcast. I would love to hear your comments. And you can contact me at julia@thejolielife.com and please follow us on Instagram, the Jolie Life. Our website is the jolie life.com and it be lovely if you would subscribe and if you would rate this podcast and go back and share this with someone. Let the ripple effect happen. Let the Jo life be the beautiful life that keeps on giving lots of love.