Indulge on weekends, holidays, and vacations. Restart for a three, seven, or 21 days cleanse of sugar or clean eating. This cycle may seem normal. In the episode, I pose a fresh perspective. Does this cycle hold you back from truly knowing the joys of living your free life. When you associate eating certain foods during certain occasions, are you neutralizing food and making aligned choices that propel you forward and are aligned with your values. 

Show Notes

In this episode, I’m talking all about how to:

• The Indulge and Restart cycle holding you back from living your free life. 
• How to know if it is just your rhythm or a habit to let go of. 
• How associating certain foods with certain situations is not aligning you with what you truly desire.
• The three words that are truly critical to feeling free every day. 
• How your relationship with food is important to invest in developing further to learn about yourself and live your best life. 

Podcast Transcript

Today we are talking about the fresh perspective of not restarting.

What if you never had to “restart”, “refresh”, or “cleanse”?

These words can be neutral, fun,  chosen, and needed. They can also be part of a cycle keeping you stuck from moving forward towards living your free life.

So what is the difference?

Throughout the year, there is always an approaching holiday, long weekend, or celebration to indulge. Leaving you feeling tired, bloated, and regretful of choices made in the food department. If you constantly are indulging and restarting, eventually you are going to feel overwhelmed. You will want to avoid events to avoid the cycle of ups and downs. This will shrink your life because of the urges and food you are avoiding. 

Even when I’m working with clients who have been working on the relationship with food for months and are not binging or emotional eating I have seen a pattern.  When they still don’t trust themselves with foods they avoid certain situations or triggers. That is not living your free life. That is shrinking your life waiting until you think you can handle it. Yet, the only times that we can handle it with ease and flow and living our free life every single day is from leaning into these situations and practicing a new way of enjoying life without food stress.

(03:32)
Getting a fresh perspective from somebody who has a bird’s eye view and has handled this many times helps us realize this pattern doesn’t serve us.  In order to get closer to living a freedom lifestyle every single day let’s talk good versus bad with this cycle. When we commit to a 3 day, 7 days, 21 days, 30 days of cleansing or clean eating in whichever form it is chosen we are saying we want to get our eating back on track. This is a sign of judgment between good and bad.

It starts with a holiday weekend of letting loose with food because you are tired of thinking about what you should do. Then it catches up when your body doesn’t feel good. Then you think I don’t want to see sugar again for another month. Once you start to feel better and “on track”, the cravings return or it is time to let loose again. Being tired of the strict rules and following everything on the plan brings about deprivation and the inner rebel. 

 (05:35)
It’s a cycle and it’s not going to end unless you take a step back and ask some questions.

What happens when I judge these situations as good or bad?

When do I think that I have to make up for one with the other and is this pattern frequent?

What would it be like if I didn’t do that?

When you have an association with when to eat certain foods, it will keep you in that cycle. When I go out to eat, I can relax. I order what I want, I can get soda or I can get a glass of wine. I can have dessert, I can eat what I want. That’s a time to relax. During the work week when I’m in my schedule is my time to eat, clean, prep my meals, and follow systems. The question is was this habit intentional or created from the habit of all you have known.
It’s an association that you’ve subtly created. Whether it’s created from childhood patterns or modeled behaviors, it doesn’t really matter. Something can contribute to starting the pattern like social media or diet culture, but you can choose to end it.  

 (07:58)
For example, you can grow up having dessert after dinner every single night. If you are taught you need to eat dinner to get dessert, you may years later as an adult continue this choice.  Except we have free will and can change things. A pattern we are in on its own may not seem harmless at first. When the frustration and self-judgment kicks in we only see it as being out of control and now needing to cut out all sugar because we watched a documentary that it causes cancer and is more addictive than heroin so we feel guilty and want to stop craving dessert at night.  Just taking a step back first is crucial to our relationship with food and ourselves.  

(09:06)
My relationship with food is important. It’s important because it teaches me a lot about myself internally. If it’s healthy and aligned, I feel freedom and can go farther in life with ease. I’m going to have more confidence. I can reclaim the energy around all the time spent asking what should and shouldn’t be eaten. I can put some things to bed from the past of why certain habits were created.  I can make decisions about what works and what I desire today, right here, right now. Such an important skill that we don’t think about because they seem subtle. It doesn’t matter the patterns given to us from our parents. They were doing the best that they could. If it gave us a message or habit as we are older that is taking a toll on our mental, physical, emotional health then we can change it without blame.

(10:25)
When you remove good and bad from the association of when you can have certain foods, you begin to open up permission to eat what you want. While the immediate thought from diet culture is the fear of always choosing heavier foods that will make us gain weight or be sicker, the opposite is true.

 (11:33)
If you’ve never lived with full permission, then you don’t know this truth yet. Anyone living that way will tell you they want that food less. They want foods that nourish and tastes good. When having something heavier it is for absolute pleasure and is the best choice in that moment. This is equally as healthy for different reasons. When you value the energy, feeling vibrant and feeling focused you simply don’t desire foods that take away from those buckets. Permission, alignment, and tapping into your intuition equals living your free life every day. There’s no reason to restart from this place. You can enjoy every season. You don’t have to worry about a long weekend and you don’t have to worry about a vacation.

(12:38)
I love a decadent dessert, specifically key lime pie or anything caramel. Those are my taste buds. My family gets ice cream quite a bit. They enjoy ice cream. I personally don’t enjoy ice cream. I don’t crave it on a weekly basis. I don’t feel deprived watching them eat it.  I might want a key lime pie at noon by myself as a break from my workday and I don’t feel like I need to eat lunch to enjoy it. I can just it for lunch at a cafe alone or with friends. I might really want pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving, but there were times on Thanksgiving that I have not eaten dessert at all. Let yourself experience it all.

(13:57)
I do a three day reset for my gut four times a year to clear out the bacteria that makes me tired and not feel good so fresh bacteria can grow which helps with immune system and focus. I enjoy doing this. It feels good. I know that it really helps with my mental edge and focus, but I don’t wait to do it on a Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Sometimes I do it over a weekend or holiday weekend because I have full permission and alignment to do what feels right not what is normal. 

One core value is quality over quantity. I give myself full permission to enjoy dessert or fried food when I want it, but it needs to be the highest quality and something I’m really excited about.  I don’t want crappy birthday cake. I would rather pass and wait until it’s something I really, really, really want. That happens when judgment and association of when we should eat certain foods is absent.

 (16:14)
This type of permission and tapping into your intuition is a skill.  The beliefs and core values I created for myself when I was setting my goals and thinking about what was important for me in my life was intentional. It is not left up to emotions, fear, or culture to sway me in the moment.  If I feel overwhelmed or creating old patterns again, it is not a restart just a signal to stop. It is time to take a step back and assess the whole picture to find where I am going astray from what I desire. 

(18:14)
If you look back on your patterns, is this a pattern, the restarting and the indulging and going off the rails? And do you have an association with having certain foods at certain times? And so it’s just automatic. It’s not intentional, it’s not empowering. And if so, if the answer is yes, email me at hello@thefreelife.com or take a picture of this podcast and tag me @karendiazrd on Instagram. I would love to hear from you and invite you to take a fresh perspective to start to neutralize when you eat certain foods and to invite permission, alignment, and intuition into your life so you can truly see what works for you and propels you forward instead of remaining in a cycle that you just haven’t realized.