I guess one of the one of the hugest changes for me, when I was learning how to not free food was to learn how to be intuitive with my eating to be mindful with food. You know diets sort of Teach us, we unlearn how to be connected to our bodies. When we're hungry. The diet says believe it's not time to eat, you donate. If you you know your calories. You're about to go over the calories then, you know, cannot be any more.

They suggest we have a drink of water. Even our stomachs rumbling will ensure the Beijing is completely getting rid of all of that. I think one of the keys for me was learning to listen to my hunger. So when my body tells me that I'm hungry, my stomach starts to growl. I attend to that Don't let it get to the point where I'm so famished that I quickly need some, you know, British sugar or something because my blood sugar levels have dropped so much. Learning to be intuitive with food is not so much about what you ate, but it's about how you ate when I was dieting, and I was eating something that was off plan, I would find myself eating really quickly, you know, it was was like there was shame in it and so I wanted the food to be gone really fast.

You know, if you eat it fast enough, it didn't happen. Well, intuitive ation is quite the opposite of that. So it's when you can try to sit down, trying to put your phone to the side. I know that's hard in a busy world, but trying to be in that moment. And I try and make food choices that incorporate foods that are really great for my body. And in one of the one of the videos to come out.

Do the story about the three stomachs. And that really helps with my food choices. But I attend to my hunger and I say to myself, What is it you feel like eating? Now? My greatest fear was that if I asked my body that question, I was going to find myself covered in crisp, salted, crispy cheap crumbs because that was something that I really enjoyed eating as, you know, one of my binge foods or one of my treat foods when I was on a diet, so I had this fear that I was just going to be eating crappy foods all the time. But what I found is that I crave texture.

I crave taste, and learning how to become intuitive is really about relearning what it is that you enjoy eating, diet sort of set that promise. I'm sure you can relate to that. Boring, bland tuna salad that we all take the lunch when we're on a diet or we're trying to eat healthy tuna salad. I love tuna salad these days, because what I put in my tuna salad is avocado or olive oil or not, or anything that I think is going to give it some beautiful flavor and texture. food doesn't have to be boring. And the thing is when you revisit the foods that you actually like, you might find that some of the foods that you were your big treat foods, you don't actually like them that much when they're something that you can choose at any time.

So learning it to become intuitive with food is a really important step in the journey. Now you got to remember back to video one, wait, there's no such thing as perfection. So you're not going to get it right all the time. And I have meals where I'm not intuitive at all, you know, I've just realized I've eaten whatever it is a, you know, a sandwich and it hasn't even hit the sides didn't even notice that it was happening. But that's okay. Because it's about how you respond to yourself in those moments.

So in those moments when I eat things that I didn't plan on eating or ate more than I planned to eat, I just addressed myself with kindness and compassion. Oh, well, I was really busy. I was trying to get some food in before something else happened. No problem. There's always the next meal. And I guess when you're not on to perfection, then it's a really mindful journey.

And you'll find that when you start wanting to treat yourself well, because you actually appreciate who you are and you start to appreciate your body. You find that you want to take care of it. You know, it's that whole thing. It's very hard. To take care of something that you hate. So when we're in that sense of hating our bodies and being angry because we can't stick to a diet, we treat ourselves is cheats.

And, you know, we we shame ourselves. And this is about undoing all of that. That stuff belongs to diet culture. This journey is about reconnecting with yourself, listening to your body, learning that when you feel fall, it's time to stop learning that it's okay to leave some food on your plate. It's also okay if a few minutes later you feel like eating some more and you pull your plate back. This is your life journey.

You don't want to spend the rest of your life counting calories, wiring about your portion size. You just want to listen to your body. The craziest part of all this was finding out that my body actually knew what was going on all along. I just didn't realize I could believe it. So Start small. Start now.

Start with your next meal. Try and chew your food slowly. Enjoy what it is that you're eating. If you're not enjoying it, donate it. Put your fork down more often. Remember that it takes 20 minutes for your body to be your mind and your stomach to connect.

So that it registers that you've actually eaten food. And and it's okay to have a hungry day. We have hungry days. We have less hungry days. Listen to your body and you're allowed to eat