The definition of trust is "the firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something." Firm belief--that's a lot to ask!

Would you say that you have a "firm belief" in your ability to approach food in the way you would like? And do you feel that you have a "firm belief" in your body's ability to know what it needs? If so, congratulations!

But if you don't, you're not alone. Not by a long-shot. Trust is one of the issues that my clients and I talk about the most. In fact, I hear statements like these all the time:

I can’t trust myself around food
I can’t trust that my body knows what it needs
I can’t trust myself to stop eating when I’m full
I can’t trust myself to know what I need
I can’t trust myself to eat intuitively

No, most of us don't have a "firm belief" when it comes to navigating food and our bodies. We don't trust ourselves around the foods that we "fear," and we don't trust our bodies to tell us what they need. This lack of trust is incredibly common. But here's the thing:

You absolutely used to trust yourself with food. And you absolutely used to trust your body. You were just taught not to.

It's true! We are all intuitive eaters at birth. Babies and infants are very tuned into their bodies, eating when they're hungry and stopping when they're full. They eat what appeals to them at the moment and ignore the rest (or push it off the table and onto the floor). Babies and toddlers have no concept of calories and "good/bad" foods. And they love their bodies for the wondrous creations that they are--they don't have any expectations for what their bodies should or shouldn't be doing.

But in early childhood, all of that starts to change, and we pick up on messages about food and about our bodies. Specifically that some foods are "better" than others, food should be controlled, and hunger is something that should be avoided or ignored. We also start to learn which bodies are more valuable (i.e. thin, white, straight, able-bodied ones) and that we should be unhappy with ours. And who teaches us these things? Diet culture, of course.

Diet culture directly leads to the breakdown of the trust that we have in ourselves about food and about our bodies.

How does it do that? It teaches us that:

If we don't diet, we'll be out-of-control with food
We should hate our bodies (and why would we trust something that we hate?)
Hunger is something to be feared, avoided, and ignored
We should disconnect from our bodies and follow their plan, instead of listening to our own cues

But you know what? Diet culture is dead wrong.

You can absolutely trust yourself, and that's what we're talking about on today's podcast. In this episode, we're discussing how we lost faith in ourselves and our bodies, and how we can return to trusting ourselves. I'll show you how to use Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Intuitive Eating (IE) approaches to forget all of those diet culture messages and get back to trusting yourself again. When you get that trust back, you can approach food with the calm awareness of a Self-Led eater (see our last episode). Take a listen!

Click below to listen!

Episode 24: Using IFS and Intuitive Eating to Rebuild Your Trust with Food.