Freedom from Food Taboos - Weight Loss Journey Series

What did I learn in the three years I did not diet or weigh myself?  I stopped obsessing about food.  It was perhaps the best and most liberating thing I could have done for my long term health.  My first diet was at 8, so I figure that I'd been on a diet or watching my weight for the better part of 37 years.  I had all sorts of "red light foods", these were foods that I could not have in the house because I would eat them until they were gone - so I brought them in the house and ate them.  Don't get me wrong, I am not a binger and I am not an overeater but I let myself enjoy previously considered "taboo foods".

I ate whole avocados.  I bought dry roasted peanuts every time I went to the store.  I ate the skin off the chicken.  I ate the fat off the rib eye steak.  I ate pork rinds.  I ate homemade bread with salted butter.  I melted cheese and butter on broccoli.  I ate all the high-fat foods I loved and had denied myself my entire life - I ate as much of them as I wanted and you know what?  Now they are just food.  They are no longer the forbidden fruit and have lost their power over me.  I can take them or leave them.

As a matter of fact, the biggest "red light" food I had was dry roasted peanuts.  After three years of allowing myself to eat them, I don't even like them much anymore.  They make me feel weird, so I avoid them.

Going three years without diet or weighing myself erased any kind of food issues I was carrying around.  When an orange stops becoming punishment it becomes glorious.  When a roasted Brussels sprout is the best part of the meal and not part of a strict regime, it is savored and enjoyed for what it is.

So perhaps if you are following along on this journey, you should contemplate if there are specific foods you have "issues" with.  Do you have "taboo foods"?  Do you look on healthy foods with a healthy attitude or are they tainted with years of dieting?

By giving myself the freedom to stop punishing myself with endless deprivation and diets - I freed myself from lifelong bondage.  This adult journey I am undertaking is without the hang-ups and the baggage - I'm a grown ass woman and ain't nobody got time for that.  Perhaps you can do the same.