How To Be Forever Free From Food Obsession — While Gaining A Head-Turning Body
Since you are reading this page, you probably know something is off with your eating pattern and relationship with food. You probably wondered “do I have a food obsession?” This post is going to lead you to the answer and if you do have it, the solution.
I’ve been helping women resolve food obsession and weight problems with proven results for 8 years now. Without delay, let’s dive into the key essentials:
- What is food obsession and are you experiencing it?
- Where does food obsession come from?
- What’s stopping you from getting rid of food obsession?
- Do you have to deprive yourself to lose weight?
- Is it possible to lose weight while enjoying food freedom?
- How to achieve food freedom while consistently, effortlessly losing weight?
What Is Food Obsession?
Food obsession is being emotionally preoccupied by the thoughts of food and eating mostly due to the desire to lose weight. If you have food obsession, not only will you find yourself constantly analyzing food, but also micromanaging eating and easily feeling stressed, anxious, frustrated, or guilty about food and eating.
You may also find your life revolving around food because you tend to make many decisions in daily life based on food, calories, and carbs, etc., for example:
Turning down social events because you are afraid of overeating.
Refusing to go out because you want to stick with a meal plan.
Choosing restaurants solely based on low-calorie options.
It’s an experience of constantly doubting and second-guessing yourself and thinking about food — to the degree that you can’t be fully present in life.
That describes food obsession overall. It also indicates a toxic relationship with food (and self).
Where does food obsession come from?
Usually two things combined at the core:
Your strong desire to lose weight, and the deeply rooted belief that you have to diligently and consistently deprive yourself to lose weight.
The more you believe food is the enemy to health and weight loss, and the more you believe weight loss is all about food and eating, the more you tend to limit, dread, over-analyze, and overthink about food.
It leads you to operate from the scarcity mindset and constantly suppress your food desires — many of them is about fulfilling your body’s natural, basic needs.
Since what you resist always persists, and you always want what you can’t have even more, the self-talk that “I can’t have food a or b because i have to lose weight” will make you want them even more.
“Cannot have it,” when charged with strong negative emotions, is the powerful seed that fuels stronger cravings towards “it.” This is just how your brain is wired. And since you are constantly fighting food cravings and desires by suppressing yourself, the food obsession naturally happens and the harder you fight it, the more dominant it becomes.
You can’t fight your brain regardless.
Hence, to remove food cravings and obsession, you must understand two things:
First, real weight loss is freeing and liberating, which is the very opposite of self-deprivation and dieting.
(The definition of real weight loss: the kind of weight loss fueled and driven by the body’s intrinsic power and its basic instincts, not through the mechanical effort of cutting calories and carbs. Distinction: it’s your body’s natural instinct to self-manage and self-correct as long as you allow it. Not understanding this is the first roadblock to real weight loss, health, and a blissful relationship with food).
Second, food matters to weight loss, but only to a certain degree.
And when your body’s key engine drives weight loss for you, 99% of the food matters that you constantly worry about now don’t even matter.
Imagine the difference between driving the car vs pushing the car with an engine that doesn’t work. I talk about this concept in details here:
@riselean Why you have been failing to lose weight and projected to fail more…and how to change it. #weightlosscoach #weightlosscoaching #emotionaleatingcoach #emotionaleatingexpert #emotionaleatinghealing #keto #weightloss #foodfreedom #foodobsession #relationshipwithfood #weightloss #healthyliving #dietobsessed ♬ original sound - Rise Lean Store
By manually controlling every calorie and every gram you put into your mouth without caring about if your body is enabled to lose weight, you are pushing the car without turning on its engine. The result is the same that you’ve been keeping getting: exhausted, frustrated, without seeing lasting results.
Knowing these two concepts — the nature of real weight loss and the fact that food is secondary matter compared to the body — is the key to resolve food obsession from its root.
Without shifting your perceptions about weight loss and food, you’d still be stuck in the same thought pattern of a dieter. And to a dieter, two things are inevitable:
The first is food obsession. The second is weight obsession and the lack of real weight loss because the lost weight keeps coming back.
@riselean You want to lose weight, get fit, and thoroughly heal your relationship with food. If you do it right, the same experience is yours VERY SOON. To learn more, simply visit and follow my page.#weightloss #sustainableweightloss #relationshipwithfood #foodaddiction #foodobsession #healthyeating #healthyliving ♬ original sound - RiseLean.com
What’s stopping you from getting rid of food obsession?
There are a few things that need to be looked at together. But the biggest, most fundamental barrier is the dieter’s mentality because the more you deprive yourself of food, the more you are running this scarcity mindset which causes extra food cravings, overthinking, and food obsession.
A dieter’s mentality manifests a dieter’s reality.
And here’s a distinction to wake you up:
A dieter and a holistically healthy, lean person are completely two different categories of people even though they are both 130 pounds and looking slim.
In reality, their bodies function differently. Their minds function differently. And their lives are lived differently.
That 5’8 130 lb woman care-freely eating an ice cream in those skinny jeans doesn’t ever need to overthink about the ice cream. She’s likely feeling great about herself and the food and can be fully present in the moment, with the loved ones, and just get the fun out of things and make the fullest of every opportunity.
That 5’8 130 lb dieter spending 15 minutes deciding what to order in the restaurants will likely have to use caution everywhere when food presents and wrestling against insecurity for years. And she has to make extra efforts than normal people, only to find discipline cannot reverse her tendency to regain the weight. She can’t be present with herself and mental dialogues about food are taking way too much energy everyday.
A dieter and a holistically lean, healthy, and free person live in different dimensions.
Not only that, they are opposite outcomes. The former has freedom, confidence, health, a relaxing attitude about health and body, plus tons of energy and time saved to be laser focused on what really matters in life. The former experience the lack of these and is surrounded by fears of food, guilt, insecurity, and may spend 2-4 hours every day thinking about food, eating and weight loss at the back of her mind.
Here’s something people don’t realize:
The moment when you adopt the dieter’s self-depriving rules, tactics, and mindset, you are heading towards that direction, emotional state, and physical reality for a dieter.
Food obsession is just one of the many components of that identity package.
And you can’t be on the pathway towards that while hoping to gain a set of opposite outcomes.
That’s the biggest factor you need to consider when trying to get out of food obsession.
And you need to remember the seed of this obsession is suppression, which is fueled by the wrong beliefs about food and weight loss. Again, these are elements of the dieter’s way of thinking.
What all of that means is: if you can’t adapt to the mindset of a holistically lean, healthy person, and adopt a way of eating which allows you to healthily, sustainably lose weight while being satisfied and free, you won’t find food freedom.
Do you have to deprive yourself to lose weight?
Absolutely no.
Depriving yourself of food and eating poorly can make you lose weight for a few weeks or month, but it won’t bring long-lasting results. This is because your body, when stressed and limited throughout time, may develop patterns that make weight loss more difficult.
One thing most people don’t understand is that your ability to lose weight depends on how well you can enable and empower your body to do it — through energizing, nourishing, smoothing out its inner dynamics, and feeling reconnected with your natural senses.
Suppression, which causes food obsession, also turns your body into working against you — for instance, by slowing down its metabolism, retaining excessive fluid (in the situation of compensating indulgence afterwards), and suppressing its intrinsic balance and abilities for natural weight management, such as appetite management.
The truth is: again, real, sustainable weight loss is always a liberating and satisfying experience where steady, lasting results are achieve through — for the lack of better words — living and eating like a normal person.
@riselean You can lose weight while enjoying food freedom, period. #weightloss #RiseLean #foodobsession #healthyliving #emotionaleatingexpert #foodfreedom #intuitiveeating #relationshipwithfood #healthliving #entrepreneur ♬ original sound - Leslie | Slim-Down Strategist
Is it possible to lose weight while enjoying unbridled food freedom?
Some people are told to never mind weight loss or think of it — in order to remove food obsession.
However, to really remove food obsession from its root, you shouldn’t dodge the weight loss topic at all.
Food obsession is the symptom, weight obsession is the problem. You can appease the symptoms using steroid, but that isn’t a real solution.
And what you resist persists. The more you suppress an obsession, whether it’s food or weight, the stronger it comes back at you.
Therefore, you need to shift your attitude towards weight loss. And instead of being obsessed and laser-focused, gain a neutral position on it knowing it’s a BY-PRODUCT as long as you do the basics right.
About this, I probably can’t talk you through it because you don’t have the real-life experience to support that belief.
But it’s something my clients see and experience in my coaching all the time. And all that takes for them to adopt that belief is seeing their weight automatically adjusted as long as they eat freely and balacedly — just like a normal person.
And as long as you experience it once, it’ll be hard for you to become obsessed with food again because now you know exactly like I said, food is secondary to the physical outcomes you want — compared to making your inner engine work again.
That twisted mindset and relationship with food is gone from this point.
Make sure you hear the following words again:
Food freedom is a natural, integral part of real, lasting weight loss. You really cannot separate these two.
And this one more time:
It’s your natural ability to live a healthy, fit life without worrying about food. This is because as I’ve mentioned earlier: it’s your body’s instinct to self-manage and self-correct for its best survival interest.
You may know some people around you who are totally carefree about food while having naturally fit bodies. They aren’t controlling anything. They aren’t counting calories (or not even aware of calories). But they are perfectly in control, in flow, and in balance. And they are in the Size 6 or 8 jeans that they’ve been wearing since 15 years ago.
Let me tell you: this is the norm and the instinct. And this norm and instinct is yours to have too — as long as you allow them. For more information on the practical method to make it happen, read about my coaching .
How to achieve food freedom while consistently, effortlessly losing weight?
I just mentioned the first step, which is to understand, see, and experience the fact that real weight loss isn’t dependent on food deprivation.
As the scarcity mindset and the streams of negative beliefs around food are gone, the food obsession very quickly loses its anchor. And this immediately turns your relationship with food into the bright direction.
Another thing I want to point out here is: learn real balance.
I’m an equestrian riding Western style. I remember at my first riding lesson, my instructor told me the only way to learn real balance on the horseback is through letting go of the saddle horn.
I found it true. The saddle horn may make you feel secure as it’s something for you to constantly hold onto. But it’s not real balance. And having to hold onto it makes you stressed, nervous, and easily impacts your position, which is essential for gaining real balance, and limits your potential on the horseback.
Food rules and metrics are the same. You feel you are in control by meticulously counting calories and CICO. However, you have no control over how your body responds to your measures whatsoever.
And that’s not real balance.
Real balance is a feel. And most importantly it’s an — again I’d like to use that word — instinct.
When was the last time you heard yourself saying “omg, I’m afraid of overeating the oxygen!” Eating and breathing are both instincts, and being in control without being controlling is your intrinsic ability being hindered.
Once you’ve resurrected the instinct and the balance, you’ll be able to see what I’ve been telling you from the beginning, which is that real, lasting weight loss CAN happen, and is supposed to happen, while you enjoy unbridled food freedom and not holding onto the calories or the grams.
You’ll see your food freedom attracting more weight loss, happiness, satisfaction, joy, and energy to do whatever you want in life.
And once you’ve learned the balanced way to eat intuitively, freely, and satisfyingly while losing weight steadily, this one single ability will set you up for the outcomes you desire for a life-time.
That’s a lot of information for you reflect on, and I’ll stop here.
Whenever you are ready to gain massive food freedom, eat happily and care-freely, while seeing the weight come off for good left and and right, book a 1:1 call.
Reflect On This:
If you don’t count the seconds of each breath to make sure you aren’t overly inhaling oxygen.... And if you don't count the inches between your feet to make sure you aren't stepping on yourself when you walk....
What on earth makes you think you need to count the calories of every meal to make sure you aren’t overeating?
Leslie Chen — Founder of Rise Lean and Creator of Lean Instinct Formula™.
For 8 years, Leslie has been helping high-achieving professionals who struggle with problematic eating and weight patterns create a blissful relationship with food while losing weight left and right.
Her proprietary system Lean Instinct Formula™ leverages powerful wisdom from Asia which helps people achieve food freedom and weight freedom in weeks by reactivating their dormant instincts.
Besides coaching, Leslie is also a sought-after expert for world-scale media outlet for opinion on topics she teaches on, and she’s an Expert Contributor for Entrepreneur.com — world’s #1 magazine for entrepreneurs.
She’s also a guest at the world’s top 1% podcasts.
