Dr. Lara Zibarras is the food freedom psychologist. Her 20s and 30s were riddled with food anxieties and disordered eating, so finding food freedom was truly life changing. Using her background in psychology, nutrition and intuitive eating, she is now on a mission to help women eat dessert without guilt, find “healthy” without the obsession, and the freedom and joy in eating again.
Lara Zibarras, Food Freedom Psychologist
Can you tell us a little about your background story and how you came to be doing what you are today?
I am a registered psychologist with a PhD and throughout my career I have worked both as an academic and a freelance practitioner. During my training as a psychologist, I had a very negative relationship with food and suffered from an eating disorder. In recovery, I was working with a nutritional therapist and this sparked my interest in nutrition, so years later I decided to train as a nutrition and wellness coach. Alongside my day job, I started coaching a handful of clients to “get healthy”, yet found that so many women were trapped inside the dieting cycle of restricting and then bingeing. They felt helpless and out of control around food – much like I had previously.
It was learning about intuitive eating that helped me refine my approach as a coach where, instead of focusing on food restriction (as in many diets), I focused more on helping clients create a healthier and happier relationship with food. This meant that all foods could fit in a healthful and wholesome diet, and that “health” was attained through focusing on health promoting behaviours. I now use a combination of psychology, mindset and intuitive eating to help people feel at peace with food and find their “true health” but without obsession.
You call yourself a food freedom psychologist ‒ what exactly is “food freedom”?
At the heart of the food freedom concept is the idea that we don’t need restrictive rules around food. When we have rigid rules, food will always hold some power over us (which is exactly why food restriction often leads to binges which make us feel out of control). Food freedom allows us to say goodbye to diets, rules and the idea of “good vs. bad” food (think spinach versus chocolate). Food freedom allows us to have a “normal” relationship with food without controlling it, or food controlling you.
Food freedom is about ditching diet culture, it’s where “all foods fit” in a healthy approach to eating. We learn to neutralise food and stop labelling food as either good or bad – this takes the emotions out of eating where an apple is just and apple and ice cream is just ice cream (neither is good/bad, healthy/unhealthy). This perspective allows us to eat for nourishment and enjoyment, without guilt.
Now you may be wondering where “health” comes into this – a question I am asked regularly is: how can I be healthy and care about my health goals whilst pursuing food freedom? It’s a great question! Well, the research shows categorically that dieting is bad for you in the long-run. In fact, researchers such as Traci Mann have shown that if you track dieters over time (between 2-5 years) you find that most of them have put on the weight they originally lost, and in ⅔ of cases end up heavier than when they started.
So when you understand the science, it’s clear that a different approach is needed rather than focusing on restricting food. What I help my clients focus on is “health promoting behaviours” to help them feel good in the long-run. These are behaviours like getting more movement into your day, eating more fruit, vegetables and fibre, getting more sleep and working on mindset and habits. It’s certainly no “quick fix” like many of the diets and healthy eating plans promise, but if you are after long-term health, then this type of approach is best.
You talk a lot about diet culture ‒ what is it, and why is it so toxic?
Diet culture refers to a set of beliefs that values thinness and shape above everything else, including mental health. It therefore shapes our perceptions about weight, health and appearance. The diet culture lens warps our view of beauty and our own bodies and impacts how we treat ourselves and others.
Since diet culture idolises thinness, there’s an assumption that health has a perfect look – which is lean and toned, with abs. It has us believing that our bodies must be changed, that the only way to be worthy is to fit certain diet culture standards. And unfortunately this standard of perfection is one that most people can’t attain, reinforcing the constant disappointment with your body.
Diet culture is particularly toxic because it perpetuates a disordered relationship with both food and exercise. The rhetoric within diet culture is focused on restricting food (whether calories or food groups), labelling foods as either good or bad and normalises speaking badly about ourselves and our bodies. It also sees exercise as a form of punishment to atone for our eating sins, which misses the other health benefits of exercise (such as for your mental health).
We’re exposed to diet culture everywhere – images on social media, in advertising and on TV, all reinforcing the idea that in order to be healthy and happy we must look a certain way and be a certain size. I see diet culture as having a very clear influence on the rise in eating disorders, including in children.
I think it’s a powerful and counter-cultural thing to start to accept your body. When I work with people to release body shame, we focus on body acceptance. It’s hard to focus on improving your health if you come at it from a place of hate. If you have negative self-talk and you are always berating your body, then it’s hard to change. We are better able to focus on positive growth if we at least accept the body that we are currently in, and say positive things to ourselves.
What are your top 3 tips for someone wanting to move towards food freedom and heal their relationship with food?
Top 3? Hmmm, well if you are just getting started on your journey to food freedom, then I would probably say…
1 Ditch dieting and diet culture. This is one of the very first things that I work on with clients to help them free themselves from restriction and stop categorising food as either “good” or “bad”. By neutralising food in this way, it becomes less alluring which leads to less binges, emotional and over-eating. It’s important to relax food rules. Somewhere along the line we got the message that in order to be healthy, we need to eat perfectly all the time. This isn’t the case – in fact, stressing over the sugar in a cookie is way worse for you than eating the sugar in the first place. My approach is about helping clients eat in a way that’s both nutritious and enjoyable, but without guilt, stress or shame.
2 Decouple “health” and “weight”. Like I mentioned earlier, we receive the message from diet culture that health has a certain size or look. It’s important to know that it’s possible to pursue health without dieting or intentionally trying to lose weight. You are much better off focusing on health promoting behaviours, which is how I support my clients. Also when we examine the research we see that things like cardiovascular fitness is way more important for long-term health than weight or BMI, so more reason to focus on behaviours and not weight.
3 Build trust between you and your body. Through diets we receive the message that we cannot trust our own bodies and instead, we must rely on healthy eating plans to tell us when to eat and in what quantities. I remember when I was constantly dieting that I didn’t trust my own hunger. It was something to be dismissed or ignored, especially if it was outside my “eating window”. In healing your relationship with food, it’s important to start tuning into your body’s hunger signals so that you can build trust in your body again. Your body has an incredible inbuilt ability to eat intuitively – in a way that is nourishing to your body. But over years of dieting, we ignore these cues over and over again, so often people start on their journey of food freedom by learning to re-feed their body. Eventually, this leads to the point where you think about food less and less because you are better able to tune into hunger and fullness.
Can you tell us more about your signature program ‒ Food Freedom Matters?
Over the last 5 years I’ve spent thousands of hours reading research papers, books, attending courses and seminars. I wanted to really understand why diets don’t seem to work in the long-run and exactly why people resort to binges, emotional and over-eating. When I started coaching as a food freedom psychologist, I was finding that I was working through the same issues with most of my 1:1 clients – getting behind the why of binges and emotional eating, working through body image issues, helping them tune into their bodies and then learning how to eat in a way that isn’t restrictive, but promotes health in the long-term. It made sense to create an online course that included all these elements so that people can go through the program in their own time.
So my signature program – Food Freedom Matters – is designed to help women feel in charge and confident around food, to eat dessert without guilt, and to find “healthy” without the obsession or constant monitoring of calories, grams of sugar and labels. It’s for anyone who is feeling frustrated with feeling out of control around food to help them find the freedom and joy in eating again in a health-promoting way. They never have to start over again on a Monday!
You mentioned a (free) masterclass for readers ‒ could you tell us a bit more about it and where to find it online?
This is for anyone who is curious to find out more about food freedom. Perhaps you’re currently feeling out of control around food, or you want to heal your relationship with food.
It’s a 35 min training to help you
Understand why you've struggled with binges, emotional eating, and feeling guilty when you eat something "naughty"
Discover the mistakes you're probably making that have you feeling out of control around food.
Identify how to fix these mistakes now so you can stop feeling guilty each time you fall off the "healthy eating" wagon
Finally feel in charge & confident around food
You can sign up here.
Thank you for your time today, Lara. If people want to find you online, where should they go?
I hang out on instagram here, I release weekly videos on YouTube here, and my website is here. Feel free to reach out to me, I always reply to my messages!
