When people first come to Find Food Freedom®, they usually expect to talk about food.
What should I eat? How do I eat “healthier” without becoming restrictive again? How do I stop feeling out of control around certain foods? How do I know when I’m hungry or full?
Those are completely understandable questions. But sometimes, after doing this work for a while, food becomes one of the least interesting parts of the conversation.
That’s exactly what happened for Caren.
When Caren first reached out to Find Food Freedom®, she had already been introduced to Intuitive Eating. She had read the book, listened to it, worked through some of the exercises, and knew she wanted to move away from restrictive eating. But she also felt like she needed more support than she could get from doing it on her own.
Nearly a year into working with her Find Food Freedom® dietitian, Grace, something had shifted.
“We never talk about food,” Caren told me.
And she didn’t mean that as a complaint.
She meant that food simply didn’t require the same amount of attention anymore.
When Caren started working with us, one of her goals was figuring out how to eat in a way that supported her health without falling back into restriction. She had spent years associating health with thinness. Like so many people, she had absorbed the message that being thinner meant being healthier, better, or somehow more worthy.
Today, her definition of health looks very different.
Health means being able to move freely and do the things she wants to do. It means looking at things like her labs and how she actually feels. Her weight, appearance, and the number on the scale no longer get to be the defining factors.
And interestingly, the work that helped her get there wasn’t primarily about what was on her plate.
It involved examining her values. Questioning beliefs she had carried for decades. Recognizing internalized fatphobia. Looking at the ways she judged herself and other people based on body size.
This is one of the reasons Intuitive Eating is so much more nuanced than “eat when you’re hungry and stop when you’re full.”
You might start because you’re exhausted by dieting and then find yourself asking much bigger questions about what you believe, where those beliefs came from, and whether you actually want to carry them with you anymore.
When your body becomes less important
Caren was very open about the fact that she doesn’t necessarily love her body now.
And I think that matters.
There can be an expectation that healing your body image means eventually waking up every morning absolutely obsessed with your reflection. You do not need to make that the goal.
When Caren started this work, she described her relationship with her body as unpleasant. Almost a year later, she described herself as much closer to body neutrality.
She thinks about her appearance less. She worries less about how her clothes look on her. Her body simply feels less important than it once did.
As she put it, “It’s just not as important as it used to be.”
That can be an incredibly meaningful body image shift.
You can have bad body image days. You can have parts of your appearance you don’t particularly like. You can exist somewhere between acceptance and neutrality. Sometimes freedom looks like your appearance becoming a much smaller part of how you experience your life.
That shift has shown up in some surprisingly practical ways for Caren, including how she gets dressed.
One strategy Grace suggested was changing the way she tried on clothes. Instead of immediately looking in the mirror, Caren would first notice how the clothing felt.
Is it comfortable? Can I move in it? Do I actually like being in this?
Then she could look in the mirror.
Over time, her closet changed too. There were fewer clothes hanging around in sizes that no longer fit, silently reminding her of bodies she used to have or thought she should have.
Her relationship with movement changed in a similar way.
For years, exercise had been tangled up with morality. Getting up for a 6 a.m. workout made her feel like she was somehow a “better” person. She had learned that exercise was supposed to be hard, painful, and something you pushed through.
Eventually, she stepped away from movement altogether. That break gave her space to ask a question she hadn’t really considered before:
What do I actually like doing?
She tried Pilates. She found an environment where nobody was talking about getting a “beach body.” She started looking forward to movement instead of simply enjoying the feeling of having completed a workout.
During one workout, her lower back began hurting. Instead of pushing through the pain like she had been taught to do, she stopped.
That might sound like a tiny moment, but when you’ve spent years overriding your body in the name of being “healthy,” listening when it tells you to stop is a pretty big freaking deal.
Food, movement, clothes, body image. So much of this work comes back to learning how to hear yourself again instead of automatically following every external rule about what your body should look like and what you should be doing with it.
“You don’t have to make it so important”
One phrase from Grace has stuck with Caren throughout this process:
“You don’t have to make it so important.”
She has found herself applying it to all kinds of things.
Before going to exercise, she even keeps a rock in her car with another reminder written on it:
“You deserve this.”
I love both of those reminders because they capture so much of what can change through this work.
Food doesn’t have to be so important. Your weight doesn’t have to be so important. A workout doesn’t have to determine whether you were “good” that day. How your stomach looks in a pair of pants doesn’t have to decide whether you get to wear them.
And when those things start losing some of their power, you have more room for everything else.
Caren has noticed that shift beyond her relationship with herself too. She described becoming less judgmental and more open to people who don’t look like her. She feels more curious, more accepting, and less consumed by the beliefs about bodies that once shaped how she saw herself and other people.
Listen to Caren share her full story here.
Caren is 57, and one of the things she spoke about was growing up in a generation where dieting and the pursuit of thinness were simply part of the culture. She reflected on what she learned from her parents, what she passed down to her own daughter, and what she now hopes to share differently with her future grandchildren.
At one point she said, “It’s just bigger than me, I think.”
I couldn’t agree more.
There is no age when you’ve been dieting for “too long” to start questioning it. There is no point when you’ve spent too many years criticizing your body to practice treating it differently.
Sometimes progress is eating with less guilt. Sometimes it’s buying the pants that comfortably fit your body today. Sometimes it’s stopping a workout when your back hurts. Sometimes it’s realizing you haven’t thought about food for hours.
And sometimes it’s simply recognizing that your body doesn’t have to be the most important thing about you anymore.
Want support finding your own version of food freedom?
If you’re tired of dieting but aren’t quite sure what comes next, our weight-inclusive dietitians can help you explore a relationship with food, movement, health, and your body that isn’t rooted in restriction or shame.
Many people are surprised to learn that nutrition counseling may be covered by their insurance. Check your insurance benefits with Find Food Freedom® to see what support may be available to you.
