Finding Food Freedom

The following article was featured in the Spring 2025 issue of Mesoodar women’s magazine.

Thanks, Rachel :)

I don’t remember exactly when I first started dieting. I don’t recall the first restriction, the first scale, or the first forbidden food. 

But I do remember the moment I realized dieting wasn’t just a behavior—it was a way of being. It wasn’t just what I was doing to my body, it was what I was doing to my sense of self. 

I had given dieting my power—my trust, my attention, my self-worth. Every aspect of my life, every decision, even my sense of who I was, revolved around the idea of losing weight and becoming better. And, like a hamster on a wheel, I kept running.

In the early years, dieting felt like a refuge. It gave me structure, a purpose. There were rules, there were goals, and there was always something to work toward. It promised control. It promised a better life—a life where I would feel good about myself, where I would finally be worthy, where I would be enough. 

But here’s the thing: The more I ran, the farther I got from my own self. I was so obsessed with the goal, so wrapped up in the “if/then” promise, that I lost sight of the life I had right in front of me.

The “if/then” was simple, yet insidious: If I lose the weight, then I’ll be happy. If I eat less, then I’ll be lovable. If I control my body, then I will be worthy. 

And it wasn’t just a statement—it was a belief. This narrative became the lens through which I viewed every action I took. Every calorie, every bite, every moment of indulgence or self-discipline became loaded with significance, with value tied to how closely I could adhere to this story. 

But it wasn’t a story that ever ended in a happily-ever-after. The weight might come off for a while, but it always crept back. The happiness was fleeting. And the worthiness, that elusive feeling, never seemed to stick around.

The more I chased it, the more I realized it was a myth. I had been running on a treadmill that never stopped, trying to hit a finish line that didn’t exist. 

And I was exhausted—physically, emotionally, spiritually. It wasn’t just the dieting that I needed to surrender; it was the entire paradigm. I needed to let go of the belief that my body and my worth were tied to the same scale. I needed to stop measuring myself by the way I looked, the way I ate, the way others perceived me. The diet culture I had bought into was a trap—one that encouraged me to chase something that wasn’t real, and in the process, to lose the most important thing I had: myself.

What I had really been seeking all along wasn’t a smaller body or a number on the scale. What I was after was the experience of feeling good about myself, of being enough, of having self-worth that wasn’t conditional on external validation. 

But this kind of worth—the kind that’s always within us—cannot be earned or achieved. It is unconditional, and it can never be found by reaching or running after something outside of us. It is only ever found in stillness. 

And this brings me to the heart of the issue. When we reject obsession with dieting, we often swing to the opposite extreme and become obsessed with rejecting the diet. We become anti-diet, anti-restriction, anti-anything that resembles the rules we once followed. “If you lose weight, you’ll be good” gets replaced by “If you reject dieting, you’ll be free.” It feels empowering at first—like a defiant act of rebellion against the system that has harmed us—but this, too, becomes another form of obsession. The more we focus on fighting the system, the more we feed into it. We’ve simply traded one form of external control for another. One if/then for another. We’re on the same wheel, except this time, we’re running backwards.

In reality, true freedom isn’t found by becoming obsessed with what we’re not supposed to do; it’s found by getting off the hamster wheel altogether. It’s not enough to merely reject dieting, or to vilify the very idea of weight loss or control. What we need is a new relationship with ourselves—a relationship where our worth isn’t based on any external outcome at all. 

The real change, the real move, is learning how to listen to our bodies, to trust our own inner wisdom, and to create space for the divine within.

This is where Intuitive Eating comes in. Intuitive Eating is about more than just choosing to eat when we’re hungry and stopping when we’re full (though that’s a part of it). It’s about making peace with food and, more importantly, with ourselves. It’s about recognizing that our bodies are not battlegrounds and that our worth isn’t tied to how we eat or what we weigh. It’s about learning to trust ourselves again, to believe that we can make choices from a place of self-compassion instead of self-punishment.

Nobody’s prying their fingers off the edges of the pool if there’s no belief that there’s a sea of wisdom underneath to catch us. So as someone who’s already floating in it, I’m here to tell you: when we check out of diet mentality and begin to really listen, we step into something that is so real, so wise, and so ours. 

What we’re left with is not the empty space of rebellion, but the full, rich experience of being alive. We stop doing things to get somewhere and start doing things because they feel right, because they come from a place of alignment, not urgency. And it’s this deep alignment with ourselves that will always guide us to what we need—whether it’s food, rest, movement, or simply peace.

This is what it looks like to be an intuitive eater:  The noise quiets. The obsession fades. We no longer measure every bite, every calorie, every "good" or "bad" food. Instead, we trust that our bodies—these beautiful, wise, ever-knowing bodies—know exactly what they need, when they need it. 

There’s no guilt in choosing a meal, no shame in enjoying a treat, no tension around what’s next. It’s like the mind has been freed from the chains of constant calculation and comparison, leaving space for what truly matters. We find pleasure in the simple act of eating—without striving, without reaching for some unattainable “perfect.” Eating becomes an experience of nourishment, both physical and emotional, and it’s a pleasure to honor the desires of our bodies because those desires are aligned with what’s truly good for us. 

And in this alignment, life opens up. We can think about things that have nothing to do with food or body, because our energy isn’t consumed by endless cycles of control and rebellion. We’re living fully, in the moment, grounded in the deep wisdom of our own bodies, and therein lies the freedom. 

Bon Appetit.