- Can you think of a time when you notice, wow,
the old me never got to done this before.
Noticing those wins is so important.
(upbeat music)
Welcome to the series I'm Alyssia
and I'm so excited you're here.
Before we get started I wanna remind you
to subscribe and hit the bell.
This series is launching every Monday
through Friday throughout the month of January.
Remember that this is actually a course being hosted
via email, even though the videos are on YouTube.
So if you want all the downloads and other materials
sign up at mindovermunch.com/foodfreedom for free.
All of the materials are free.
So food freedom is the name of this series
and I talked about why.
It comes from "Whole 30," Melissa Urban,
her book, "Food Freedom Forever"
really inspired me to just make peace with food
and that was one of the catalysts
and me really intentionally trying
to heal my relationship with food.
For so long I felt like, you know,
food owned me and controlled me
and I learned that it doesn't need to be that way
and that what I eat doesn't define me.
We talked on Friday about, you know,
taking the morality out of food.
This journey has been over the course of many years
but there were some really neat moments
where I just stopped and I knew I was making progress
toward my goal of peace with food.
You know, it's not really like you wake up one day
and suddenly everything's different.
I've talked in email about I love the saying,
"Transformation requires transition."
And like, you know when you see an Instagram photo
and you see like the before and after
you miss everything in between.
You don't know what that person went through really
and how many downs they went through.
And also that every single day in between
it doesn't look that different day to day.
It only looks different when you really
compare the beginning and the end
and that's how it was in my relationship
with food in this journey.
Like, you know, beginning to end,
it seems like a drastic change but every single day
it's so small.
So you really have to pay attention to see it.
Today I thought it would be fun to share
some of my food freedom wins and just, you know
bring awareness around this idea of appreciating those
so that you can start to notice them in yourself.
So remember, part of why mindfulness
was so healing for me is it helped me shift my relationships
to things around me, including food.
It didn't change external circumstances,
it helped me respond differently to an experience.
And when I respond differently, I don't need
to experience the same amount of suffering
that I was before.
So now I can respond differently to food
and health and I don't need to feel so stressed out
or like, ah why can't I figure this out?
Why am I doing everything and nothing's working?
So part of this is stopping and reflecting
back along the way.
If we don't notice this progress
we're gonna feel like we're never getting anywhere.
We're gonna get stuck in judgment.
So I really intentionally try to look back
and see, you know, where I've come.
Now, some of these moments might seem small to you
but in the moment to me, they were huge.
You'll have your own and I hope that you'll share some
of them in the comments.
So the first one was a McDonald's experience.
It was after a friend's wedding two years ago.
And Christian and I left the wedding at,
I dunno it was probably after midnight.
And when Christian and I first started dating,
which was 10 years ago, no, actually over 10 years ago,
'cause we had like a thing and then you know what, anyway.
We used to eat McDonald's breakfast
like three, four days a week.
Like we, it was bad.
So good, we love McDonald's breakfast.
But I haven't eaten it in years.
So there's a McDonald's drive through
on the way home and we decided, okay, let's just,
you know go get McDonald's.
And we got like, I think they have like a two for one deal
like two double cheeseburgers, a dollar each or something
and so we got that.
And I remember I'm like looking at it
and it looks and smells so good.
And I remember like ah, I used to eat McDonald's
all the time and I would love it so much
but it's unhealthy and I don't wanna eat.
I remember I took this bite and I took the first bite
and I thought, oh, it doesn't taste like I remembered.
It didn't like, I don't know it wasn't that good.
And what I think I realized now looking back is
I wasn't just eating it mindlessly,
like shoving it in my mouth like I used to.
I was like, okay, I haven't eaten a McDonald's cheeseburger
in a really long time, I wanna be present
and enjoy this, right.
I wanna bring mindfulness to the experience.
And when I did that, I realized it wasn't that satisfying.
And so I like took the one bite and then I stopped
for a second and notice how I felt.
And I took a second bite just to make sure
I wasn't crazy.
And like it didn't hit the mark.
And in that moment, a part of me was disappointed
'cause I was like,
Aww.
I really wanted to enjoy this burger.
Also, it wasn't that good and now I've eaten some of it.
But then I had this win where I was like, this is so cool.
I've never started eating a McDonald's burger
and not finished it.
Except for our, actually in fourth grade once.
We went to McDonald's in Walmart;
our home Walmart had a McDonald's in it.
And I ate that burger and I got food poisoning.
And I remember telling my mom I didn't wanna eat
the rest of it and she made me eat the rest of it.
No, really. She made me eat the rest of it
and then it, all of us had food poisoning that night
and couldn't go to school. (chuckles)
Didn't plan to include that in this episode.
Thanks mom.
(chuckles) No, seriously,
I remember taking a bite and being like,
"Mom this doesn't taste good."
And she was like, "Eat your lunch."
(camera man murmurs) (Alyssia chuckles)
Yeah, I didn't finish it.
And then I like went up to the trash can
and while my mom wasn't looking at was like,(wretches)
and I threw it away because I couldn't eat the rest of it.
The Walmart McDonald's. (laughs)
My next food freedom win is less of a story
but was still very insightful and it was my second
Whole 30 that I did in 2018.
So the first, Whole 30 I did, I was like,
oh my gosh, my body is responding like so insanely
to removing these inflammatory foods.
And so I so focused on the physical.
The second one, what I realized is so much
of my mental distress, my anxiety,
my attitude was affected by what I ate.
And this was the first time I really started to consider
that my mental health could be connected to food.
And this is why I started posting videos.
Like last year I did, you know, foods that may raise
or lower anxiety or whatever, food, stuff like that
because I started to see from my experience
that food, it wasn't just like there's our physical health
and then there's our mental and emotional health.
It was combined.
And food was actually at the top of the pyramid.
So, food affects, it's a connector of both physical
and mental health and why wouldn't it be, right?
Like we have to eat food to fuel our bodies
to fuel our brains.
And it just started to make sense to me.
I don't know, I know something,
like now I look back and I'm like why would I ever
not think that?
Well because this is how the West is.
We'll get there in another video.
Anyway, the next food freedom win
was the time I gave myself permission
to eat an entire bag of white cheddar Cheetos
and this was a couple of years ago too.
So I love the white cheddar natural Cheetos.
I've loved them for like, I don't know 15 years
since they came out.
And the problem is I wouldn't let myself buy them
for so long because if they were there,
I would eat them all.
Like I couldn't stop.
Like even if I tried to put some in a bowl
then I would finish the bowl
and come back and put more in the bowl.
So what would end up happening is I just eat the whole bag.
And every time I bought it, I wouldn't buy it
because I knew the whole bag was gonna be eaten.
And so one time I was like having a really tough,
emotional day and I knew I wanted to turn to food
for comfort and I had the awareness.
And this is something I want you guys to understand
that I'm gonna talk about later in the series.
It's actually okay to turn to food for comfort sometimes.
The goal is awareness and mindfulness.
It's not that we can't celebrate with food
or comfort ourselves with food
but we have to really be aware when we're doing it
and be mindful when we're doing it.
And so, I had a really hard day and I went to the store
and I bought this bag of white cheddar Cheetos.
And I remember just saying, I'm gonna give myself permission
to just eat this bag of Cheetos.
And I sat on the couch and I ate the entire bag.
And it was really interesting because I did eat
the entire bag.
But when I tell myself that I can't have something
I start to tune out and eat really mindlessly.
You know, I'm eating out of scarcity.
Every bite I'm like feeling terrible
judging myself like, "Oh my God, I'm an awful person
and I don't know what to do."
When I bring mindfulness to it
which is nonjudgmental awareness of the present moment,
I realized my body might not need this and that's okay.
We don't need to only eat for fuel.
Emotional eating is okay.
It can be a tool.
I learned this in a program I got certified for
earlier last year, I'm gonna tell you about this later.
But the idea is to remove the judgment.
When we take the judgment away, suddenly it's like
I can feel so much lighter.
So I talked about this in the FEAR foods video
I did last year which was one of the first videos
where I talked about my relationship with food
and FEAR stood for foods with emotional attachment
and rules, okay.
And so I started to just notice all of my FEAR foods
and give myself permission to eat them
and suddenly all the judgment just dissipated
when the permission was there.
So, you know, I use the word should as an alarm
there's saying like, are you should-ing on yourself?
Because if you're telling yourself you should
or shouldn't be doing something
then you're just judging yourself the whole time.
And when we remove that judgment, we take the morality
out of food because me eating this entire bag
of Cheetos doesn't make me good or bad.
The next food freedom win was actually just
a couple of months ago.
And it was, we got a delivery from a local restaurant,
Christian and I ordered these two like burrito bowls
or something and it was at a new restaurant.
We hadn't tried it before but it kept coming up
on Postmates.
This was like middle of Coronavirus
and we're just like sick of ordering the same things
all the time. So we decided to try this new place.
And I wanted, you know, I was like, okay
it's like Tuesday nights so I'll eat something
relatively healthy, whatever.
And they bring the food and there's no burrito bowls.
Instead there's some other bowl,
I don't even know what it was,
but it was a bowl of a bunch of yummy stuff,
a salad and a pizza.
And we did not, we did not order this.
It was completely the wrong order.
Now, it really, my first thought when it came
was to a couple of years ago, when I was doing Whole 30,
I had ordered Chipotle and the wrong food came.
And during Whole 30, you know, you can't eat gluten,
you can't eat legumes, you can't eat dairy.
And instead of my burrito bowl, I got like a bean burrito.
So I couldn't eat any of it.
It was after like the longest, most stressful day.
And on top of it, the anxiety of, you know, abiding
by these arbitrary rules, the stress I felt, the panic,
the resistance, like, oh my God, I'm gonna ruin them.
I'm gonna ruin it if I eat this burrito
but I'm so hungry.
I'm, like I caused myself so much pain and suffering.
And so in this moment, I remember,
you know the moment where the pizza
and all that food, I didn't order a comes,
I thought back to that Chipotle experience
and I realized like,
wow, - Wow.
- I have grown so much because what's happening right now
is all this food is here and it's a Tuesday night
and I want it to be healthy and I'm just gonna go,
"Okay, let's just eat the pizza instead."
Now again, this might seem like no big deal to you,
but if that's true probably you wouldn't really
be watching this series, right?
Like this stuff is hard.
It's so stressful.
We make ourselves crazy trying to abide
by all these rules because we wanna do the right thing.
We wanna be healthy.
We wanna, you don't take care of our bodies
but when we stress ourselves out that much, it doesn't help.
And really now what I believe is eating that pizza
and just going, okay, I'm gonna give myself permission.
I'm not gonna judge myself, I'm not gonna get stressed out
and tomorrow, you know, I'll listen to my body
and see if I need a salad or maybe I want leftover pizza,
who knows, right?
But this was my mindfulness at work.
It helped me be okay with whatever is happening now,
no stress needed.
And in this way mindfulness becomes a tool
for stress management.
All right, so I wanna finish this video,
just acknowledging gratitude and appreciation
because I think it's relevant here.
And I said, at the beginning we need to look back
and appreciate ourselves and, you know
see how far we've come.
There's power in acknowledging our personal growth
and what's good in our lives.
And the science backs it.
It's not just because like Alyssia says it works.
One study actually found that gratitude practice
not only predicted less loneliness
but also fewer physical health symptoms
like sleep disturbances, headaches
respiratory infections, gastrointestinal problems.
So a gratitude practice is one of the first tools
I started using when I began turning inward
and I still do it today.
So I just simply write down three things I'm grateful for.
Now, not out of scarcity.
So not, you know, I should feel grateful
because I have a job.
That's not really gratitude, but rather
out of abundance.
It doesn't have to be a big thing.
It could be I'm really grateful for this cup
of coffee or I'm grateful for coffee in general.
This is on my gratitude list a lot.
I'm grateful for my front yard.
I'm grateful for the weather.
I'm grateful for grocery delivery in Coronavirus.
You know, anything you're genuinely grateful for.
Christian and I also share a gratitude practice each day
together.
And I also do an appreciation practice
with him and on my own.
So we share something we appreciate about the other person.
It's a great opportunity to connect and, you know
be kind and just acknowledge each other.
So it could be, I appreciate that you did the dishes.
I appreciate that you made dinner.
I appreciate that you texted my sister happy birthday.
But also we share something that we appreciate
about ourselves.
And this is so much harder.
So try it, writing down one to three things
that you appreciate about yourself, big or small.
You know, some days it's I appreciate that. I exercised,
I appreciate that I ate breakfast instead of skipping it.
I appreciate that I called my mom,
got that task that I've been avoiding done.
The gratitude can be hard at first to.
You know, we often feel we're lacking so much
or things are against us.
So just start small, one thing per day.
What goes along with gratitude and appreciation
is self compassion which is very important
and relevant to mindfulness.
Remember, mindfulness is the present moment
that is nonjudgmental.
So self-compassion is the antidote to judgment.
It's caring for yourself and talking to yourself
as you would a friend.
I mean, would you tell your friend, you know
stop being so lazy and workout
or you shouldn't eat that whole bag of Cheetos
or you're gonna get fat?
No, you wouldn't say that to your friend
because you're a good human being.
But we talk to ourselves that way.
Studies have actually shown self-compassionate people
are more likely to exercise, eat healthy,
sleep well and manage stress.
This all points to inner wisdom first.
Once we have that foundation of inner wisdom
then we can expand out.
Before we worry about all the nutrition and details
get the foundation down.
I talk about the so much more
in my Mind Over Meal Prep course.
This is the last week to sign up
if you want a deeper dive into mindfulness
and to sustainably approach meal prep.
So tell me in the comments, what are your food freedom wins?
You know, what is a moment where you looked back
and you're like, wow, I'm so proud that I did that.
And if you think this video or series is relevant
to a friend, I hope that you will share it
on your social media.
Thank you so much for being here.
I'll be back tomorrow and remember,
it's all a matter of mind over munch.
(upbeat music)