Bites & Body Love (v)

End Food Noise For Good: My Three-Pillar Roadmap For Lasting Food Freedom

• Jamie Magdic

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Disordered eating doesn’t have to control your life. In this video, I share my 3-pillar roadmap to end food noise, rebuild body trust, release food rules, and find true nourishment freedom. 💛

For the roots quiz:
DM me "Quiz" on Instagram. @jamierd_

To apply to work with me:
https://www.jamiethedietitian.com/app...

SPEAKER_00:

So today we're going to dive into my three-pillar roadmap to end food noise and build true freedom and full recovery. Now, if your brain never stopped thinking about food, what to eat, how much, or what you should have done, this video is for you. Maybe you just want to eat a couple pieces of chocolate or pizza without spiraling into a binge, or go out for dinner without mentally calculating every single calorie. Maybe you'd want to just look in the mirror and feel at peace instead of being flooded with obsessive thoughts about your body. But right now, food and body thoughts are taking over 24-7. In just a few minutes, I'm going to explain why that constant food noise isn't your fault and why it exists in the first place. And then I'm going to share the exact three-part framework to quiet the food noise that completely changed things for me and for my clients. I know how much food noise sucks. I've been there. Constant thoughts about what and how much to eat, guilt after eating, fear of certain foods, or obsessing over your body. And I only healed my 12 years of food noise when I realized it's not random. It exists for several reasons, and there is a way to stop it at its core. Think of food noise like a smoke detector that won't stop blaring, loud, annoying, and impossible to ignore. It's signaling that something deeper needs attention. And we can't stop a smoke alarm from going off if we don't find the smoke and put out the fires. In my framework, there are three areas in which we can have fires that we need to put out, which I like to illustrate as parts of a tree. The first part is the roots. That's your psychology, the science, the coping behind your behaviors. That's the why. And then we have the trunk, which is your relationship with your body, your body image. And then from there, we have the branches and the leaves. The branches and the leaves represent your food and eating behaviors, that outward expression that we tend to put the most focus on. But this is why meal plans are just eating intuitively often backfires, because it's like you're trimming the leaves, addressing the surface behaviors without tackling the deeper roots and trunk of the tree. These behaviors are just manifestations of the deeper system. I remember when I was working so hard to recover and stopped a lot of my behaviors, but the food noise was still so strong. And I was stuck in this place that I like to call pseudo-recovery. I became hopeless because I was eating intuitively and thought I was doing everything right. I wasn't following the disordered eating voice, but I was only more confused. And this is because I didn't understand what was underneath that was keeping the food noise so strong. If you only work on the branches, the tree will never be healthy. And that's why past efforts didn't work. You didn't fail, you didn't not try hard enough, your approach was just incomplete. And that's why I created the three-pillar roadmap. Instead of just managing behaviors, we heal the entire tree from the roots up. So without further ado, let's walk you through all three pillars, how to address each part of the tree, and talk about exactly how you can start making changes today to silence food noise for good. Starting with the first pillar of the roadmap, that's going to be the roots of the tree, your psychology. This is all about understanding the why behind your behaviors. It's the foundation for lasting food and body image freedom. Think about it. The restricting, the binging, the body checking, the constant hopping on the scale, the mental calorie counting, that guilt after eating certain foods. They all have a why. What we often see as food issues, binging, restricting, obsession, it's just the tip of the iceberg. I like to use this iceberg analogy with clients because I find it very helpful to explain that there is so much more to your behaviors. At the tip of the iceberg, we have binging, restricting, food obsession, emotional eating, disordered eating behaviors. But below that iceberg, which we cannot see below that surface, is the fear, trauma, shame, control, conditioning, safety needs, the real drivers. That is the why. These underlying forces are why behaviors exist. The behaviors themselves are just smoke from the fire. If you only address the behaviors at the tip, the food noise will never quiet down. You have to understand and address the root causes. To explain this root work a bit further, I want to introduce what's called internal family systems, parts work, or IFS. I find this super helpful to work with when I'm helping my clients to understand the development of these behaviors. So dieting, disordered eating, and body obsession often develop as protective strategies, as protective parts of us. These behaviors aren't failures, they're actually resilient strategies that your body and your nervous system created to help you cope, to keep you safe, although they're often unconscious. And they're going to continue to drive those behaviors you don't like, including the food noise, unless we do some work around them, give them space and understand them. So I want you to imagine a glowing core, your true self, surrounded by these protective parts, surrounded by these layers, the restriction, the body obsession, the control, the binging. Now, these layers are not your enemies. They are those protective parts. Healing happens when we gently understand what they are protecting and why. This is where parts work or internal family systems comes in. In internal family systems, we have the exiles, the managers, and the firefighters. Those exiles are your young, vulnerable parts holding old burdens, traumas, fear. And then we have the managers and firefighters that are trying to keep those exiles, those feelings that really don't feel good. They feel very unsafe. Those managers and firefighters are trying to keep them at bay. They're trying to keep them from popping up. And so those managers do all they can to keep them quiet and to keep them undisturbed, to keep them from being felt. So let's talk about the difference between managers and firefighters. Now they're both protective parts. The managers are those proactive protectors. They are going to be those perfectionists, those controlling parts, those parts that restrict and diet and plan. And then you have the firefighters. Those are those reactive protectors. Those use behaviors to distract or soothe intense emotions, usually like over-exercise, binging, purging. Now everyone has those parts, those firefighters, those managers. And none of them are bad. These parts develop to meet past needs. And some of them may still feel like they're needed today. For example, that calorie counter, the nighttime binger, the perfectionist. It is there for a reason. They aren't the enemies, they're protecting aspects trying to help you cope. As mentioned, when these parts are seen, understood, and healed, they naturally let go of their grip. The intensity of your food noise is going to quiet and you start to feel safe in your body. You begin trusting that you can handle food and life without relying on these old coping mechanisms because you understand them and build new coping mechanisms. And those managers and firefighters then feel safe to step aside and let another part of you lead, the true core part of you lead. So why does understanding these roots and your whys matter? This work helps uncover your unique internal landscape. And by listening to the scared or protective parts of you, you build safety, understanding, self-trust. And this is foundational because it allows true intuitive eating and food freedom to emerge. So a past client of mine had been out of formal eating disorder recovery for six years and she wasn't dieting. She exercised daily, she was preparing quote unquote healthy meals in advance, yet she felt completely obsessed and out of control around food. A last-minute invitation for a coffee would trigger panic. Does this fit into my workout schedule? What if my friend wants to share a muffin? How many calories are going to be there? Yada yada. So her life was still run by invisible rules. She said no to social outings and restaurants, exhausted by hours of meal prep and workouts. And so while the behaviors might have looked okay from an outside perspective, those branches looked okay. We knew that there was root work to be done. And through that deep foundational work, we were able to uncover the roots. A part of her self-worth was tied to perfectly following these eating and workout rules. And once she was able to recognize, understand, and hold space to this part and heal this part, everything began to shift. Now she orders pizza on a Tuesday when she doesn't want to cook and deleted her calorie tracking apps. It really wasn't about the pizza. It was about reclaiming her trust, her freedom, and her flexibility in her relationship with her body and her life. So moving on to pillar two, the body image work, your relationship with your body. Now the trunk grows from the roots. Your psychology and your whys are going to provide the strength, structure, support, and makeup of your relationship with your body and your body image. This pillar is all about rebuilding your relationship with your body, building trust within your body, acceptance, connection. Once we've addressed the roots, we can start building a strong trunk, a strong relationship with body. Strong body image. But this isn't about fitting a certain look. That's not the body image I'm talking about. It's not about fitting a certain look, wearing a bikini, or just reciting affirmations in the mirror. Real body image work is about developing a caring, trusting relationship with your body, seeing it as an ally and not an enemy. It's about weeding out harmful beliefs that you've internalized from family, culture, or media and planting new seeds of self-respect, trust, and body acceptance. Why does body image work matter? Why does the trunk matter? Even after you have addressed your psychology and understand the roots, and alongside of that, these things are all done alongside each other. But even after you understand the roots, skipping body image work leaves you trapped in invisible mental rules. We have to have a solid relationship with body image in order to quiet the food noise. So for example, you may stop binging or restricting and you understand the roots, but you still obsess about your weight. You might eat intuitively and understand that root work, but feel shame when it comes to your body changing. In other words, fixing those behaviors without healing your body image is like building a house on shaky ground. So what is body image work? What is the real work around body image? How can we transform our relationship with our body? True body image work involves handing over control to your body, which means learning how to trust it, listening to it, and honor it. It's about creating a safe, supportive relationship with your body grounded in principles of a safe, secure relationship. I want you to think of a safe, secure relationship with another person. What is that built on? It's built on trust, communication, consistency, respect, compassion, patience, reliability, acceptance. And so when it comes to working on our relationship with our body, it's very similar to building a healthy relationship with another individual. Another way I like to represent body image work is through the garden analogy, tending to your garden. Now, I want you to think of your garden as your relationship with your body. We were all given a body, and let's think of that as our soil. And your body is inherently good and unique. However, what was planted in this soil were these different seeds. Before we were able to even be conscious of it or have our own beliefs, these seeds were planted by family, culture, and media. And then we watered these seeds unintentionally through behaviors, whether that's restricting or dieting or shaming our body. And so now we need to tend to this garden that we have. We need to weed out the harmful ideas like shame and self-criticism, the things that we don't want, those harmful behaviors. And we need to plant and nurture the plants that we do want in our garden. We want to nurture the self-respect, the trust, the acceptance, and start tending to our body in a different way. Tending to our garden in a different way, caring for your body daily with compassion and respect rather than these disrespectful behaviors that are really making that food noise really loud and keeping it there. So now when your roots are healed and your trunk feels strong, your branches, your daily behaviors with food, we can work with them more easily. So another client example. I had a client who recently stopped binging. Her behavior seemed under control, but she was still terrified around her weight and weight gain. We did the root work and we uncovered where that was coming from and the parts of her that tied her self-worth to her size. And then the body image work was really where we saw significant change. She began to trust her body and release these roles. So now instead of obsessing, she approaches food and life with flexibility and ease and hasn't binged in years and doesn't have the urge to binge or feel out of control with food. And she has a healthy relationship with her body, a respectful, compassionate, confident relationship with her body. The shift wasn't about affirmations or forcing self-love. It came from really rebuilding that trust and acceptance from the inside out through doing the real body image work. And last but not least, pillar three, the branches, the leaves, your food and body behaviors. So that third pillar focuses on the branches. That's your daily behaviors with food. Your restricting, your binging, intuitive eating, honoring those cues. So after healing the roots, the psychology and the whys, and strengthening that trunk, body trust in your relationship with your body, it's time to turn your attention to how you show up with food every day. Real food freedom comes from shifting from external rules to internal wisdom. I'm going to say that again. Really shifting these behaviors with food comes from shifting from external rules and conditions to building and understanding your own internal wisdom. You can't truly feel free while labeling food as good or bad and listening to external rules. Your body is going to sense when this mistrust remains and the food noise is going to continue because it feels needed because you are still using these external rules rather than having this unwavering internal trust and internal wisdom. So why can't you skip this step? Skipping this pillar is going to keep your body on high alert. It's going to keep that smoke detector never from shutting off. That calorie counting, dieting, restricting, those are all band-aids. Those aren't solutions. True behavior shifts and food freedom and the ability to eat intuitively is going to require you to build trust with your own internal compass, which we're going to talk about here in a second. So shifting from the external to internal. You all are the experts of your own body. You all have that natural internal wisdom. But diet culture has taught you to outsource your body wisdom, following calories, macro, meal plans, other providers, rules from others who don't know your bodies, who don't live in your bodies, who don't know your lives. Intuitive nourishment is about turning inward and building a relationship with your body where you're able to listen to it, give it what it needs, and have a cop aesthetic relationship together where you work together. And this is where I like to bring in the analogy of the compass, the compass of your body, your intuitive eating compass, your food compass, your body respect compass. And this compass has all of the answers. It guides you to what you need and allows you to be that intuitive eater without needing that food noise. So I want you to visualize this compass. This represents your inner wisdom, guiding you toward balance, satisfaction, intuitive eating, and trust. These external rules, calorie trackers, meal plans, those are like GPS apps. And they often lead you in circles and they have broken your compass. And we need to recalibrate your compass because it's no longer calibrated for you because you've been listening to all of this external advice that all contradicts each other. So of course your compass is going to be confused. But your internal compass possesses the ability to guide you home. And so once you're able to learn how to trust it, trust your cues, your hungers, your cravings, your energy, your fullness, how you feel, navigate that from day to day, then you're golden. You found your compass again. You don't need all that external noise. And it's not just eat when you're hungry and stop when you're full. It's really about building that communication and connection with your body that allows you to tune into your compass on the daily, moment to moment, telling you what it needs and what's going to feel best. And with that three-pillar roadmap, by addressing the roots, understanding the why to help you build a solid relationship with your body, a safe, secure relationship with your body, and finding that internal compass and recalibrating it so you can eat intuitively and honor your body, honor the wisdom of your body, then you're unstoppable. That three-pillar roadmap is simpler than what you've been doing because it's actually going to get you out of these cycles once and for all. The true deep work and not the band-aid fixes is going to actually set you free. So you don't have to be living in disordered eating with constant food noise forever. Now, before you were constantly fighting this food noise and disordered behaviors by focusing on just the branches without ever finding the source, without ever healing your relationship with your body, without ever recalibrating your compass. And I know firsthand how exhausting this can be. But now with this integrated system, everything works together. You can't fix the problem by just focusing on the behaviors, on the branches. You have to heal the entire systems from the roots up. So how do you start applying this? Now that you understand how these pillars work together, the most powerful thing you can do next is understanding your roots, the psychological whys behind your food noise. I've created a free roots quiz, just about two minutes long, that helps you identify some specific psychological root causes because everyone's roots are different and your whys are unique to you. The root quiz can give you a bit of instant clarity on what's driving your food noise so you know exactly where to start healing from the ground up. And I want you to leave that with this. True, full lasting recovery is possible. You do not have to struggle with food noise for the rest of your life. You do not have to have food and body image thoughts take up 24, 7 of your days and 100% of your brain space. Every client I've worked with who's rebuilt their tree from the roots up has been able to silence their food noise and found lasting food freedom because they have a system that supports them. I believe in full recovery and I believe you can get there. So thank you so much for joining me today. I hope to see you in the DMs, send that quiz along, and continue to cheer you on in your recovery.