Have you ever described your relationship with food as an addiction? Do you think that Food Peace™ will never work for you because you're addicted to certain kinds of food? Listen now to get my take on this Food Peace™ challenge. Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds. This episode is brought to you by my online course, Your Step-by-Step Guide to PCOS and Food Peace™. Enrollment is open! Receive my FREE road map: Your First 3 Steps Toward Food Peace™ with PCOS. You CAN make peace with food even with PCOS and I want to show you how. Check out the whole Love, Food Podcast store here. All T-Shirt designs have at least one with size range options from XS to 5X. All proceeds go to funding this labor of love to keep it as a free resource for you. Product links may be affiliate. If you click and make a purchase, there's no extra cost to you. The transcribed episode can be found here. Episode's Key Points: Your feelings about being addicted to food are valid... BUT, it's important to investigate WHY we feel that way, and to dig deeper. We live in a world where controlling our food and having a certain body size are thought to go hand-in-hand. We think that if we eat less, we're going to weigh less, and that people in larger bodies just don't have "discipline" when it comes to food. But this just isn't true!! Internalized fatphobia and the desire to find acceptance in our thin-obsessed culture can drive us towards dieting, and the desire to restrict our food. It can also push us towards removing pleasure from our lives, whether it's about food, sex, or anything else! If we were allowed to embrace pleasure, I think that the feeling of addiction around food would change. If we aren't giving ourselves PERMISSION to have pleasure, we are going to subconsciously restrict and deprive ourselves of food. This is not your fault! Our body pushes us to be preoccupied with food when we deprive ourselves of food. Restriction keeps the food-preoccupation going!! Compassion and permission are key, not keeping ourselves "under control." Name the moments when food has too much power!! Our bodies and our brains just want us to stay alive, and the feeling of food addiction is actually how our bodies continue to try and stay alive. Remember, your needs aren't a burden. You are NOT too needy! Redefine your expectations around meeting your needs. Consider how thin privilege plays a role in feeling like we need to fix ourselves. Put the anger and the burden where it belongs! Not on us, but on the fatphobic society in which we live. Strive for embodiment, pleasure, satisfaction, and compassion. Patients with PCOS often experience even more intense feelings about being addicted to food, especially because most doctors encourage people with PCOS to cut out carbs. But carbs are not the enemy! By removing them from your diet, you just increase the need for them, and the feeling of being out of control around them. Show Notes: Julie Dillon RD blog Link to subscribe to the weekly FREE Food Peace™ Newsletter. It is sent out every Tuesday morning. By signing up, I will also send you Love Food's Food Peace™ Syllabus. Amy Pershing's work Episode 70 of the Love, Food Podcast with Marci Evans Eating Disorder Dietitians can help your Food Peace™ journey. Get access to one near you here. Do you have a complicated relationship with food? I want to help! Send your Dear Food letter to LoveFoodPodcast@gmail.com.  Click here to leave me a review in iTunes and subscribe. This type of kindness helps the show continue! Thank you for listening to the Love, Food series.