Struggling with Healthy Eating Habits

My best advice is to try and listen to your body and eat the things that your body wants you to eat. I have observed that my body does really well and I feel good when I have oatmeal in the morning, so I’ve started eating oatmeal in the morning. Or if I have a cookie after dinner I don’t feel yucky. I don’t know exactly how to explain this, but I have been trying to eat as my body wants me to instead of constantly classifying foods as bad/good, every food is neutral and I eat What I believe would make my body feel good in that instant

My first advice would to be never count calories. That can take a long time as a lot of us ha certain numbers memorized, but that for me at least was the most important first step. Another thing I had to do to remove my food guilt to a decent extent, some is certainly still there, is I changed the genre of food I eat entirely. I'm American and grew up in a household that eats predominantly American food, and I had so many rules and so many feelings and judgements around those foods that I didn't have a lot of hope that I could stop feeling those ways. So I stopped eating American food. It wasn't easy but I bought cook books and a lot of basic ingredients and started cooking south east Asian food. I also have chronic pain but I'm very lucky that I'm able usually to at least find some times when I can cook and meal prep, a lot of it is about timing for me. My last tip is to start trying to fill any time that would usually be spent obsessing over food. I used to spend hours doing it, abd doing crafts, art, spending time with people, doing stuff related to a hyperfixation/special interest was all really important because for me recovery was about remembering that there is a world outside my ed and my body image.