Turn Your Food Struggle Into Your Greatest Asset - The Free Life

Turn Your Food Struggle Into Your Greatest Asset


This week on the podcast I am sharing and imploring you to consider adopting a new way of living.

This struggle of 5, 10, 20 plus years, let it become your greatest asset to make the next decade your BEST decade yet. 

Let go of the regret of losing years battling food and weight. 

Let go of resentment towards anyone that brought the diet mentality into your world.

Let go of feeling there is something wrong with you and it is too late.

Let go of thinking it will take too long to overcome so why bother.

And decide today.

That this struggle will now become your teacher and create the strength and skills to make the next chapter of your life the best chapter of your life.

Among the struggle you had hope, love, travel, laughs, and wins. They were not wasted. Beauty lives among the chaos. Struggle and Success walk hand and hand as sisters.

Listen to the podcast this week. Turn off distractions, focus, breath in the message and then make a choice.

Make a choice that change doesn’t have to come from tough love and harsh words to snap you into action.

Love. Calm Confidence. Quiet Courage. And words that speak to you and allow you to feel heard and seen. These things can be more powerful than rigid rules and guilt-ridden words.

Show Notes:

Your free life is a life where your power lies within not with food. You have reclaimed your energy back from the chaos and overthinking. This happens when we turn the struggle from a battle to overcome into an asset to get ahead. Let it become your superpower in life not a reason to hide in shame. 

Dive into this episode to hear:

  • Three ways your struggle with food will make you unstoppable. 
  • How the tools that will get you out of this pattern, will propel you forward in so many other areas. 
  • Create unshakeable confidence when you step out of a pattern you thought was too hard to stop.
  • Discover all the dreams that come rushing back when you have your time and energy back. 

 

Podcast Transcript

Introduction 

 I am so excited to talk today about turning your food struggle into your greatest asset. I want you to let go of any regret or resentment you have towards however long you have struggled with food or body image. You may have spent years, maybe five years, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years struggling was food, struggling with their relationship with their body, struggling with what weight and being very weight focused. It may seem like wasted time or feel like evidence that it will take years to turn around. It can be easier than you think.

It is not a complicated thing when you go in all in and do the work. It is actually quite simple and doesn’t mean it’s always easy whenever we’re dealing with how to use our brains, how to shift our minds to think a different way and to challenge things that we have held as beliefs for so long. When you realize that it was a choice to believe it, and it was not a fact of truth you may start to questions yourself a lot. You may wonder have I wasted all of this time? I could have shifted this years ago and I just want you to ask yourself, is that thought serving you? I don’t want that to be another reason you stay stuck. 

 (02:35)
There’s a belief underneath that to challenge. If we feel life would have been better if I never was taught dieting growing up, never  have gone on this diet, hired this coach, or this person wouldn’t have made this comment that made me stop eating because I was so uncomfortable with my body. Whatever the trigger was, the truth is we don’t know life would have been better. We can’t get in a time travel machine and take you back to that time, erase it, fix it, and give you the new belief system, mindset, tools that you now have to live your free life.  We don’t know that life would have catapulted you to this amazing place. There could have been another struggle that came along that was more difficult. So let’s just embrace this as everyone has some kind of struggle they need to overcome and thank goodness that we do because it makes us stronger and prepares us for the things we are meant to do. It gives us purpose because  when we get through a hurdle, it is then turning around to lend a hand to help the next person out of that same struggle which gives us purpose,  joy, and inner peace.

 (04:54)
Turn your food struggle into your greatest asset because it can be. Right here, right now, listening to this podcast, you can make a decision that it’s your greatest asset, not your biggest weakness and there are three things that are going to help you feel that way when you commit to doing this work.

The first one is you learn life-changing tools. Whether you are in my break free program, bought the book Within that you can www.withinbook.com or you work with someone else that you really resonate with. You’re going to learn life-changing tools. You’re going to have this arsenal, this toolkit of things that you can do and pull on and apply to so many situations. Your relationship with yourself, your relationship with your family or friends, even within your career and money.

 (06:08)
These tools help you focus and gain self-awareness to respond and not react. Examining things without self-judgment allows you to live in the present moment and empower you to move forward. They help you deal with uncomfortable feelings, to stop labeling things as good or bad and know there are no right and wrong choices in all situations. You’re going to have all these tools for life. And what I love about the work that I do is that within these tools there are many different ways to get to the same place because everybody has different personalities. You get to play with what works and resonates with you the best.

(07:04)
When people can really connect this is a skill they have for life by returning to the system and run a different scenario or situation through it. Getting to a place where you feel freer and trust your gut and intuition. The thing with trusting our gut and intuition is sometimes we’re so in the muck that is hard to see from a fresh, clean outsider’s perspective. 

 (08:01)
I still go back and use these tools when I feel stuck or frustrated. Asking what am I missing here? How can I shake this up and look at it from a different angle? Even in my book Within I put an exercise at the end of the chapters and I tell people the answers will change over time so you can go back and redo them at different stages of life. These questions are going to be different six months from now, a year from now, a year and a half from now. It’s timeless because we change as people. We shy away from change and yet change is the most constant thing in our lives.

(09:04)
I’m enjoying the goal I’m going after now. I’m enjoying the journey and when I get to my current goal, I’m going to be a different person. I’m going to want different things. I may have different goals and there’s going to be a new journey to enjoy. Embracing that cycle has been so empowering and brought so much inner peace. It helps so you no longer rush to get to a destination. 

(10:06)
Needing to just get the weight off is not how you start this work.  When you care most about calming the chaos inside of your head and wanting to feel peace despite a busy life then you are on the right track. Overthinking food, body, and weight makes you tired and when you want that energy and time back you are ready. It is time to learn how to use your food struggle as a teacher and an asset. Suddenly it’s not something you’re trying to fight, get rid of or squish into a little box and hide from people. When the voices come up with the food and body, you know something’s out of balance and it is time to reset.  When life starts to return to chaos instead of letting it fester, you can examine and pivot using the exercises and tools you learned. 

 (12:15)
How much of your time is spent thinking about food? If I could give you a gift right now and Poof, you suddenly are only thinking about food for maybe a minute in the morning to assess what your day is like and what you’re going to need for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Just that quick assessment time and when you actually are going to eat so the rest of your time is free. How much energy, how much time are you going to have in your life? What are you gonna do with that time when you get it back? Some people will rejoice, others may not know how to use the time. 

For those who don’t know, it’s even more fun. It feels like Christmas morning because you get to feel this excitement of rediscovering who you are. You will remember things you want to do which you completely forgot about because you’ve been so caught up in survival mode and hoping that the next day is going to be better than the next when it comes to food.

(15:12)
The third benefit is unshakable confidence. When you’re able to completely reinvent yourself and step out of a habit that you never thought you could you will feel unstoppable. Someone just told me they can’t believe they went to a work function with a buffet food and dessert and everyone was like a potluck and I just went and I ate, picked what I wanted.

Speaker 1: (16:38)
I didn’t finish what’s on my plate and I just left. I didn’t have mine drama. I didn’t try to avoid it. I didn’t get frustrated and say, oh, there’s always something that gets in my way when I’m trying to be quote unquote good. None of that happened. I just went, ate what I wanted, left food, turn down dessert because I didn’t feel like it at the moment and enjoy my coworkers and they’re like, I can’t believe that. If that doesn’t instill unshakeable confidence in somebody, I don’t know what does, especially when you think you go into this work, like I can’t imagine what that would be like. And when you stop identifying as someone who can’t do it and you realize you have the power to be that person, you get confident. And what happens when you get confident. You don’t shy away from difficult situations.

Speaker 1: (17:39)
You lean into them. You don’t need tips or tricks to go out. You don’t need, let’s say you decide, you know that you don’t want to drink through this work. You decide, you know what, I don’t really like how it makes me feel when I drink alcohol and it just makes my inhibitions or these habits that I returned to, um, that much easier to kind of fall back into it. It doesn’t feel good. And so it’s just not something that serves me. And so you’re not drinking and you go out with your friends and everybody’s drinking and they’re like, okay, well I don’t want to have to deal with the comments are people asking me? So I’m going to pretend that I am right or order something that looks like a cocktail because I don’t want to have conversations. And you’re kind of hiding in a way.

Speaker 1: (18:29)
But when you have unshakable confidence and you’re completely clear with what you want and what works for you, and you can separate food and alcohol from being with your friends and having fun and you don’t have to take on their concerns or their worries about how it looks for them. If you’re not drinking you, it doesn’t matter. You just order what you want and if someone asked you like not drinking tonight and change the subject and keep talking and it’s not a big deal and things just move and they flow and it doesn’t have to be something where, Oh, I got a plan or a tip or a trick. I need someone to help me learn what to say. It’s inside of you because when you know that you’re doing what you want to do to be the best version of you and you’re completely clear on it and you don’t have any doubts and you’re not trying to boost motivation, you’re just internally driven and at peace with it.

Speaker 1: (19:36)
You can show up with any situation and if something comes up that triggers you or upsets you or derails you, then you can say, okay, look, here’s another situation. Here’s another situation that came up that I had a heart. I haven’t had a hard time in a while, but this one was hard. It brought back old feelings, old habits, old instincts. Let me look at that. Let me go back to my toolbox. Let me go back to those life changing tools. Let me reclaim that energy back from that. Let me deepen this practice. You don’t have to worry. You don’t have to avoid. You have something to go back to and here is the last thing that’s going to make it your greatest asset is through the life changing tools, through reclaiming your energy, through the unshakable confidence that you’re going to have. Suddenly you know these other things that you want to and you’re going to go keep going, right?

Speaker 1: (20:50)
What to help other, let’s say it’s to help other people as happens a lot where you want to help other people like I want everyone to feel like I’m feeling right now. I don’t want to keep this feeling to myself. And so you can then go on. Right. And you know, like for me, when I wrote my book, the reason I’m doing this podcast, the reason that I help women, the reason that I have my support group for the women and Facebook is because I know that I come from a place where I struggled. Like my family struggled with addiction. Not Everybody, but it runs on my mom’s side of the family. And I learned the tools, I learned the self awareness, I learned all of this stuff for myself. I have the thoughts, they come in, they come and go, but I have all of these tools and I ran the nutrition department, the eating disorder clinic, and I met all these amazing people and these amazing women, amazing families.

Speaker 1: (22:01)
And I just realized I, when I had my daughter about 12 years ago, that I don’t, I don’t think that there’s this perfect way to raise her. You know, I’m doing my best in each moment to be open, to have conversations, to give her the tools, but is not realistic that she’s never going to struggle. I mean, if I believe what I believe, which is that your struggle can be your greatest asset and teachers who you what you need to get to that next level or do that next thing or overcome that next hurdle in your life. Well then how of course like in that way like she’s going to struggle. I should embrace her struggling because of she is, it’s going to make her stronger and learn those lessons as much as like a mama bear. You want to protect her and save her.

Speaker 1: (22:57)
That’s not what I, that’s not my belief system. So I said, what can I control? I always look back on what can I control in my life and I always invite people to do the same. Like what are the things you can control and I can control my goals, my inner work, me being open, me putting out as much content out there as possible. Me Helping as many women as possible that want help from me. And if she struggles, when she struggles, when that time comes, if it’s with food and body image that she knows there’s nothing to be ashamed of because I’m open and I’m talking about it and I’m putting out content and I’m, I’m living, I’m living proof of it. I want to be living proof of it. It is this core desire inside of me that just lights my flame and fuels me every single day.

Speaker 1: (24:04)
You, you can have that too. You can have that too. And so generational legacy is a big fuel for me. Um, to use this as my greatest asset. Maybe it is for you to generational legacy is that things are passed down from generation to generation. Some legacies are something that you have pride in and you’re, you just feel so excited to pass down. And there’s other legacies, right? Like the legacy of addiction that I had in my family that my mom ended with her, the legacy of addiction ended with my mother. So while I still had those tendencies, I learned the skills to step out of that genetic destination. And it was partly because my mother and my father chose for it not to be their story and they didn’t want to pass it down to their kids. And so it’s even less gonna hopefully going to be even less of an issue with my kids.

Speaker 1: (25:14)
I don’t know. We’ll see. You know, with the tools and all of that stuff, we’ll see what happens there. They’re still young right now, so I’m not sure. But you get to choose. And so when it comes to food struggles and body image, you know, yes we are getting a little bit further, but we have a really long way to go. And if we don’t want our kids to struggle, it starts with us doing the work within ourselves. So if we want that legacy to and with us, then we get to pass down a different generational legacy through doing this work. And to me, I don’t know what, what could make it a greater asset than that? So my question to you is, can you make the shift to start looking at this as your greatest asset and commit to yourself? Do you want to commit to yourself to making it your greatest asset?

Speaker 1: (26:19)
If you do, I would love to hear from you can either screenshot this podcast, share it. If you think it would be helpful to anybody, tag me on Instagram at, at Karen Diaz Rd, or shoot me an email I, hello@thefreelife.com and let me know, do you want to turn your food struggle into your greatest asset or one takeaway, one little nugget from this podcast that really stood out to you. I’m always always humbled and honored to hear from you guys and I love every email and I respond personally to each one. I hope you guys have an amazing day.

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