Welcome to International Dieting Month. Let's Rally together to withstand the pressure from Diet Culture. This episode's letter connects the dots on the pressure to diet, lose weight, and control oneself. Content Warning: this letter describes eating disorder behaviors linked to Bulimia. Subscribe and leave a review here in just seconds. This episode of the Love Food Podcast is brought to you by my PCOS and Food Peace course. Grab it before the price goes up the end of January at PCOSandFoodPeace.com. New Podcast alert! Check out My Black Body Podcast hosted by Rawiyah and Jessica Wilson. Click here to support their show or learn more. Dear Food Dear food, or really, dear me for we are nothing without one another. Together we have navigated rocky terrain, a tumultuous relationship full of more fear than love. I have needed you, hated you, and in that needed and hated myself. I have blamed you, restricted you binged you earned you burned you enjoyed you hidden you purged you. My Self is tied to you closely and painfully. But as I have arrived at my 23rd year most of the previous 22 spent focusing far too much on you, I am unravelling some of the tangled web we exist in together and realizing it is not your fault, food. Ant it is not mine either. It feels cliché to say but I have seen the truth. It’s society that has created all of this. It’s all lies mirrors and smoke illusions to suck away happiness and freedom and, most importantly, money and power. It’s the patriarchy and capitalism two systems of oppressive power that taught me to worry about you about us about my size and shape and the effect that you have on those parts of me. So young I felt for the first time like I took up too much space with this body of mine. That I needed to shrink so I could fit into tiny little premade boxes. So young I cut you out I forgot the pleasure you could bring me. I thought only of numbers, trying to get you as small as possible so I could be that way as well. The rush that success brought is tempting even now, but I have learned since the first time that trying to make yourself smaller is a process doomed to fail. That in fact our bodies try to protect us by making us take up even more space after. Because our bodies don’t believe the lies. Our innate wisdom sees through the smoke and mirrors. And if only I was better at balancing my body and my mind I would also be able to see the truth. Instead, I still look in the mirror and hear the voices of the systems whispering their poison. So insidious they are that I yearn to listen to them to try again to shrink. But I won’t, not anymore. Because after years of finding myself with my fingers down my throat, after years of having the most abusive relationship with you, food, I’ve decided to save my own life. I am unlearning the lies. I am shouldering a lifetime of clearing away the darkness that has been put into my mind. Because I realized that even when my body is not what the world tells me it should be, I feel lighter When I can just see you, food, As a friend. SHOWNOTES: Julie Dillon RD blog The PCOS + Food Peace Free Roadmap The PCOS + Food Peace Course Link to get latest Food Peace Syllabus. 6 Keys To Food Peace Submit your Dear Food letter here or https://forms.gle/pepKRGPC8JbHLHHn8 Julie on Instagram: Instagram.com/FoodPeaceDietitian Find Eating Disorder Dietitians near you. 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!