Latest / Unlearning Beautiful / Ep. 39 Why You Can't Trust Yourself Around Food (And Where the Distrust Actually Began)
Transcript
- Kristina Bruce: But before we get into today's episode, I want to let you know that in a few weeks, starting in early September 2026, I'll be opening registration for the next round of my Body Peace Small Group Coaching. If you've been listening to this podcast and have already made some progress feeling more peaceful in your body, but you're ready to go deeper, we'll work with practical tools you can actually use when old thoughts and patterns show up, while doing this alongside four to six other women who get it. Especially when you may be the only one you know in your life not dieting or using GLP ones. If you're ready for more body peace and self-trust and want support putting it into practice, join the priority interest list through the link in the description. You'll be the first to receive the details and application when registration opens. Now, on to today's episode. There was a time when I genuinely believed I couldn't trust myself around food. If there were cookies in the house, I felt like I had to get rid of them. If I had ice cream in the freezer, I felt like I couldn't stop myself from eating it. And I thought the solution was to have more control. But what I eventually realized was that I hadn't been born without self-control around food. I had learned not to trust myself around it. In this episode, we're going to unpack how dieting restrictions, scarcity, and using food to cope can create this exact pattern and why rebuilding trust with food is possible. Let's dive in. Welcome to Unlearning Beautiful. Podcast for women tired of trying to look good enough and ready to feel good from within. I'm your host, Christina Bruce, here to help you let go of the pressure to look right or do it all right and reconnect with your inner guidance, your natural work, and what truly makes you feel fulfilled. Because the freedom you're craving was never in how you look. When we talk about not being able to trust yourself around food, what does that actually look like in a day to day sense? For be it was I couldn't keep cookies in the house or ice cream in the freezer. Maybe your spouse needs to hide the chocolate from you, or you feel like you need rules and structure around what you can eat and what you can't eat. Because if you don't, you'll completely lose control. And so there's this belief that if I don't manage everything around my food, it it will be a bad situation. And then there's this underlying belief of I can't trust myself to make good choices with food. And I would say that that belief came from a pattern where you consistently witnessed yourself being out of control at you didn't start that way. It ended up developing for some very good reasons. For me, it was at a point where I thought I was addicted to sugar. I even took this test that said, are you addicted to sugar? And then it sold me this super restrictive diet program that is still active today, I am sure. But I came to later realize, no, I wasn't actually addicted to sugar and I didn't need more rules. I just needed to break the underlying patterns that got developed. And when I was able to do that, I didn't need to feel like I had to dump the ice cream and pour water over it so I would stop myself from eating it, which are things that I had done. I didn't know at the time it was the fact that I had Had so many rules around food that had created the whole cycle to begin with. So, what often starts this whole feeling of not trusting yourself around food is scarcity. It's when a certain food is only available occasionally. For a lot of us, it looked more like restriction around certain foods in childhood. There was maybe some heavy talk around sweets or certain foods. You could only have You know, cake or cookies on a special occasion, or you can only have one, or this is just a special treat. So there was a lot of excitement and allure and scarcity around these foods. When it comes to us as adults, we're not usually as hyperactive as kids are. But there can still be this specialness. But it shows up a little bit differently because dieting has taught us that there are good foods and bad foods, that you should be eating this or you shouldn't be eating that. this amount or that amount. And so there's this mental gymnastics that's constantly being played where we're restricting in our minds all the time. That creates the restriction. Even if you're eating a regular amount of food in your day, if there's any sort of mental restriction, it can create this energetic tension that when you finally get it, You're gonna go harder on it than you would have otherwise. And how this I can't trust myself belief gets reinforced is we have experience over experience of that happening. We go off the wagon on our diet or we binge on this thing and we say, see, I really can't trust myself. And then we feel guilt and then we feel shame and there's the desire to compensate. There's more rules, more restriction. And the whole thing just keeps itself in place. Usually as a young teen, if we feel like we need to go on a diet, it's because we had this belief that we're too fat and that makes us feel not good enough and less than, or we got teased. And so we think the way that I'm gonna feel better is to lose weight. So we use this idea or tool to try to get us the outcome to try to not feel bad. That decision to restrict didn't come from a balanced place. So it's why it's always going to feel hard to keep up because it never actually dealt with the underlying feeling in the first place. The I don't feel good enough or I'm not lovable or something's wrong with me. It just got pushed to the side. Truthfully, for many people, hasn't really been looked at. And there's no fault in that. It's just we haven't really done the intentional inner work to say. I'm gonna actually go and sit with and uncover what is driving this pattern in the first place. When we start to heal that, then if restriction and dieting was used as a coping mechanism, it starts to fall away and we start to trust ourselves again around food because we're not using it in the way to avoid That deeper pain that was there since childhood. I remember the first time when I was at work and there was a little bag of Lindor chocolates in my drawer. I had opened the drawer and saw the bag there and noticed that I didn't feel any desire to eat a chocolate. And that was surprising to me. I was actually excited because I thought, wow, like I didn't think that that was possible. That actually happened. For a little while, I forgot that it was there. Because when I was dieting, you better believe I would have known that it was there. In fact, I would have never had it there. It showed me it was possible that, ⁓ I could trust myself around food again. But the pent up restriction scarcity energy had to be dissipated first. We come more into a balanced place where we're listening and noticing what we're experiencing and we're using food as information. You may notice instead of eating that. Extra slice of pizza at dinner that I really didn't need it. And instead of going into the guilt and the shame and the punishment, I just use it as information. Okay, so I noticed that actually I didn't need to eat that. What's happening is that our nervous system is starting to feel safe again. And it's really about nervous system regulation because scarcity and control comes out of fear. We don't feel safe. So when we can feel safe again, we're able to make those choices naturally. And now all of a sudden, food isn't such a big deal anymore. What also happen is when we start to remove that restriction pattern, we may notice that there's still a pattern of using food for emotional regulation. And this isn't about making that bad or wrong because we get that enough where, ⁓ you shouldn't overeat. And it's always, of course, related to weight gain. Eating is pleasurable, it's soothing at times. I mean, babies eat to soothe. So it's not that it's bad or wrong, it's that If that is our primary or only way of coping with stress or sadness or overwhelm or discomfort, then it means that we need to be able to develop more skill and ability to sit with the actual emotion that's coming up. And this can come up especially if maybe there's something hard going on in our life, like we're having challenges in our relationship or our job and we really know that we need to look at it. When we start taking away the coping mechanisms. like the eating or the dieting, because that is a coping mechanism too. It forces us to sit with what's coming up within ourselves. And that's always going to be there until we actually deal with it. That's why it's so important to be able to develop the skill and ability to sit with the emotion and to investigate it. Not just I feel its presence, but really allowing yourself to go into the emotion, to allow it like a wave to wash over you, to not be caught in the story with the emotion, but to be the observer of it. That's a skill that really needs to be developed because we may be taught out of it as we're kids. We may be given coping mechanisms or way to distract ourselves versus actually learning, how do I allow this temporary emotional experience to come up and wash over me? When we can allow ourselves to get better at it, that's when the coping mechanisms of the eating starts to fall away. We're also less reactive and we're more responsive. So, how do we start to rebuild this trust? It's starting to become aware of the pattern, just noticing what is going on for me. What am I feeling? What am I believing about the food? Was I restricting beforehand? Like, did I not eat enough today and now I'm really going hard at this meal because I'm so hungry? Was I trying to compensate afterwards? So bringing awareness to the patterns and the behaviors, which Is hard to do in this culture because it's normalized and actually prescribed. If you're even listening this far, I know that you're far enough away from that to have some awareness around it. And then start to question like, why is this food forbidden? You know, what rules am I still following? ⁓ what am I afraid would happen if I stopped controlling this? And then, like I said, it's really about learning to sit with and be in the discomfort. That would get us really far because there's so many things that we want to do but don't do because we don't want to feel the internal emotion that's coming up. And so if we're able to be comfortable feeling nervous or scared to do the thing, then we'll still do it anyways. It's a really useful skill and practice to have in our life, anyways. Not trusting yourself around food is not like a fundamental flaw. I really believe it's a pattern that was developed over time. And so many people are in it because we live in a culture that has a lot of rules and frankly messed up ideas around food. This is about trusting ourselves again, because we have the innate ability to return to trusting ourselves. You know, and that will then look like where we can have cookies in the house and it doesn't bother us, or we're not panicked about having to make decisions around food, or we don't feel guilty after eating. I mean, that's a much more peaceful place to live. So if you are looking for some support on that, you know that that's the work that I do with one-to-one clients. So you can check out the description below. Of course, also I've got the small group coming up. And if you're curious to learn more about that, you can join the interest list. Hope this episode helped today. Look forward to seeing you in the next one. Thanks for listening to Unlearning Beautiful. If this episode resonated with you, follow the show and share it with another woman who's ready to see beauty and herself in a new way. And if you feel moved, Leave a rating and review. It will help this show reach more women who need to hear it. Remember, you're already everything you've been trying to become. Enough, worthy, and free. I'm Christina Bruce. Until next time.