How Eating Ice Cream For Dinner Healed My Relationship With Food And It Can For You Too

It was my first year of Graduate School and my first time living by myself in my own apartment. I was experimenting with applying the somatic tools I was learning in relationship with food. Up until that point in time, I had also labeled foods as good or bad, something that if you have been with me for a while I'm very clear now that there are no good or bad foods.

I knew that to deepen into healing my relationship with all food I needed to also have neutral eating experiences with foods I had labeled as "bad." So I created an experiment for myself. Every day for a week, I chose a food I had labeled as "bad" and ate that for dinner. One of those foods was ice cream.

I went to the grocery store the day of so I could choose the exact ice cream my body wanted that day. Later that night, without any distractions I sat down with my ice cream. I remember thinking how strange it felt to be eating only ice cream for dinner. It felt like one note. Uninteresting and even too sweet.

Suddenly, making ice cream completely neutral and absolutely something I could choose to eat for dinner if I wanted to no longer held any interest for me.

Since that day, I have never had just ice cream for dinner again. Have I had ice cream? Absolutely! And the energy in which it has been eaten has been entirely different without labels, without shoulds or shouldn't, and without fear or concern. I ate as much as what resonated with my body and I moved on.

I want you to think of a food you have labeled as "bad." When you eat this food, are you present? Are you in your body while eating it or floating above yourself? Do you actually know in detail how this food tastes or just a vague memory? The only way to free yourself of food labeling and discover how your body responds to specific foods in different quantities is by being IN your body while you're eating. When these foods are chosen in a disembodied way, you can be choosing them from what you have connected to that food and not how that food actually feels in your body now.

For me, ice cream has been emotionally correlated with connection. I remember summers getting ice cream with my family at the beach, eating ice cream with my friends while we watch a movie, sharing ice cream with my mom as I grieve a heartbreak. I will always have these memories AND I get to honor that ice cream does not have the same experience in my body with who it is now and how it has transformed.

Now, think of that food you labeled as "bad" again.

What memories do you have around that food?

What has that food been connected to for you?

When you slow down & allow yourself to eat it now, how does it feel in your present day body?

There is no such thing as a good or bad food. Different foods will feel supportive to your body for different reasons. Ultimately, you get to decide what is going to be best for you and the way to do that is to de-label all food and notice and observe your bodily feedback after every time you eat. Your body will be guiding you again and again after every eating experience. This way you're making food decisions based off of who you are now and not based off of who your body used to be or what supported it in the past.

Side note, sometimes you might have to choose to eat these foods again and again to discover that they are not supporting you in feeling the way you want to feel in your life now. There can be so much that can be connected to a food that it can take time to discover what has been emotionally and mentally connected to a food that is making it harder to hear what your body has to say about it.

Give yourself all the time you need on this path. There is no rush. You get to trust you're always exactly where you're meant to be, learning what you're meant to be learning.

Thanks so much for tuning in this week. The Satiated Podcast is now an affiliate with Kajabi. If you're someone who has been wanting to share your wisdom in a self created online program, start your own podcast, send out emails, Kajabi is your one stop shop. Kajabi is an all-in-one platform to create and scale your knowledge. Click here and you will get a special 30 day trial!