I host events called After Hours With Cristy all across the country. A big part of these events is a live, interactive Q&A with my audience of Rebels and people new to the Code Red Lifestyle.
At one I held in Twin Falls April 20, a guy in the audience who’d reached his goal weight admitted he feels guilty reintroducing foods.
In case you’re new to Code Red, a little background: On the Code Red Lifestyle, we eliminate certain foods in weight loss mode, because they’re either destroying our health, or they simply stall weight loss.
Eliminating them in weight loss mode helps get the weight off faster.
When you get to maintenance, I teach you how to strategically reintroduce foods, so you don’t gain back all the weight you’ve worked so hard to lose.
That’s where this guy at the After Hours event was in his weight loss journey: He’d reached his goal, was experimenting with reintroducing foods, and feeling guilty about eating them.
My take on that is pretty straightforward: Food should never be a source of guilt or shame.
But I know that it often is. I get it, because there have been times in my life when it was for me, too.
Even so, I got past it, and I want that for everyone else.
In fact, it’s part of the reason I tell my Rebels to think of food as fuel.
It’s not a reward, but nor is it a punishment. Yet society trains us to see food as both.
“You did great at school today, how about some ice cream?”
“Don’t you talk back to me. If you’re going to do that, you can just go to bed without dinner.”
And those are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how our view of food gets tangled up in our emotions, especially guilt and shame.
We feel guilty after we eat that brownie. We feel guilty at the thought of ordering that pizza.
We binge, and then feel sick and ashamed afterwards.
Thinking of food as fuel is a great way to start breaking away from that vicious cycle.
It doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the food you eat.
But I want you to start eating to fuel your body, not to reward yourself for “getting through the day,” or to help you cope with stress, or to celebrate, or especially, to punish yourself.