How To Practice Food Freedom

Learning how to practice food freedom can help to prevent dieting and heal your relationship with food. Let’s dive into my top six tips on how to find food freedom.

What is Food Freedom?

Food freedom is an approach to eating that removes any restrictions that commonly come along with dieting. This way of thinking can reduce stress around the food choices you make, whether you are traveling, attending celebrations such as graduations or weddings, or planning meals for the week.

My Top Six Tips for How to Practice Food Freedom

Practicing food freedom is no easy task. However, when you implement this concept into your eating patterns, you no longer stress about food choices. Instead of focusing on restriction, you begin to focus on fueling your body with whole foods, while satisfying your cravings in moderation. Below are my top six tips to begin practicing food freedom.

1. Practice mindful eating. This can be done by practicing awareness and intention while eating. To practice mindful eating, I encourage using the Hunger-Satiety Scale – a simple tool that can help understand body cues, which will ultimately help with portion control.
2. Implement intuitive eating. A form of eating that honors both physical and mental health. This can be done by following the 80/20 rule to live a balanced lifestyle.
3. Let go of restriction. Instead of saying you need to limit or restrict certain foods, focus on balance. If possible, look for healthier alternatives of your favorite foods. Focus on reviewing the ingredient lists, purchasing packaged foods that contain ingredients you can read and understand. Here is a great resource on my favorite brands with clean ingredient lists.
4. Focus on all six pillars of health. When we focus on the six pillars of health, we take pressure off our food choices, while understanding the other concepts that influence our health status. These pillars of health include nutrition, hydration, sleep, daily movement, stress, and community.
5. Practice self-compassion. Be kind to yourself and treat your body with respect. When we respect our body, we feel better, have more energy, sleep better, and have more mental clarity, to name a few.
6. Find your WHY. There is power behind writing down your health goals, along with your why. Understanding your why will hold you disciplined during weeks when you may have decreased motivation. Be sure to place your goals and your why in a place where you can review them on a daily basis.

Food freedom is a behavior-change approach that emphasizes on listening to your body through mindful and intuitive eating, instead of following restrictive diets that aren’t sustainable. If you have any questions on how to practice food freedom, be sure to comment below!