Still obsessing over the junk food you ate? I get it. Eating what you want without feeling guilty is the biggest step you can take. Even if it’s baby steps into that direction.

I’m going to share some personal things I went through so everything makes sense.

My story

Growing up I always thought eating foods like pizza, chocolate, chips and salsa, etc would make me gain fat. So I would try my best to stay away from foods like that. Needless to say, it was hard. I felt like a failure every time I satisfied my cravings. Not only that, but I struggled with binge eating because I was constantly telling myself I couldn’t have junk food. It made me crave it even more. Eventually, I would cave and eat as much of it as I could.

I remember someone saying, “If you keep eating chips and hot sauce you’re going to get fatter.” That hurt. I put the bag of chips and hot sauce down and didn’t eat them for months. I remember this being the start of

Any time I had any type of emotion other than happiness, I was binging on food to cope. It was my way of making myself feel better, but between you and I….I felt worse after the fact. I remember sitting on my couch after I binged and thinking, “Why do I keep doing this to myself? Why can’t I stop?”

So as you can imagine, I was shameful of the “bad” foods I was eating. I wanted to be free from the shame I was putting on myself. The guilt was real, yall lol.

After binging, I ended up gaining 50 lbs, and I made a commitment to lose weight. I tried diet after diet, but it only made things worse. I was restricting myself from the junk food because the diets and meal plans said I needed to stick to certain types of food. I hardly made it a week because I would end up binging.

Studies have shown that any time we tell ourselves we can’t have those foods, our brain will react very strongly to restriction. The more we say, “No,” the more we can’t stop thinking about it.

When I stopped restricting myself is when I lost 50 lbs. Of course, it wasn’t that easy, but that’s where my progress started. I took the first step to healing my binge eating disorder.

Here are proven ways to overcome food guilt and restriction

Not only have these worked for me, but they have also worked for a lot of my clients so let me know how they work for you!

1. Break the habit of feeling crappy about the foods you put in your body

We aren’t meant to be on this earth to diet and cut out foods. That makes life miserable. If you can’t imagine yourself doing that for months on end or even years, then it’s not sustainable, and it’s not going to work. If it does, it only works short term.

You’re allowed to eat your favorite foods without guilt and still reach your fitness goals, and that includes losing weight.

2. Break the habit of labeling foods as “good” or “bad”

When you let go of labeling foods, your life gets to be a lot less complicated. You’re able to do things like go out to eat without stressing about it being “bad” food or it’ll make you fat. You’re also able to go to a family/friends gathering and eat a few cookies and have a beer/glass of wine without obsessing over what you ate/drank. You CAN feel free of guilt.

3. Nothing is off limits

This is kinda similar to #2, but if you aren’t labeling foods as good or bad, then nothing’s off limits. You can still go out to eat and order your favorite Mexican food platter without guilt.

You can have a life where you’re reaching your health goals and enjoying your life.

Until next time…

Christina <3