02 Dec How To Heal Your Relationship With Food
How do you know if you need to heal your relationship with food?
- If you feel guilty after eating cake because it’s bad for you
- Carbs make you nervous as they go to your stomach
- You freak out if the scale jumps up overnight
- You think you have to eat as little as possible to be lean
- After overeating you need to do extra exercise to make up for it
If you relate to any of these, before going on a fat loss journey I highly recommend you begin healing your relationship with food.
I’m going to show you how in this article.
Understanding Food
The first step in healing your relationship with food is to learn how to understand it.
Food is food. You need context to give it more meaning.
It’s not clean or dirty, good or bad, unless you have context.
If you’re allergic to nuts, then nuts are bad for you. If you don’t have allergies, they’re not.
Yes, some foods lack nutrients. You might want to eat these less frequently.
However stressing about “bad foods” and fearing eating them isn’t good for you either.
Chronic stress is bad for the body.
If you’re stressed out but seeing your kids face light up after sharing a slice of cake with them brings you peace, is cake bad for you in that moment?
Start to see food for what it is.
I get majority of my clients to track their macros because it can help you do this.
You’ll learn what foods are mostly protein, what foods are calorie dense etc.
If you track your food whilst starting a weight training program you’ll start to see that you can change your body for the better even if you go over your calorie needs occasionally and even if you eat dessert every night.
This will help you begin to heal your relationship with food.
Understanding Your Body
One of my friends once said she didn’t want any bread because carbs go to her stomach.
Carbs don’t go to your stomach and make that area fat.
If you get bloated after eating certain foods, it’s due to a gut issue.
It isn’t food getting stored in your belly area as fat.
To heal your relationship with food you also need to learn to understand your body.
Do you know the difference between bloating and fat gain?
They’re not the same thing.
We’re not taught how to properly understand our body or food in school.
Instead we’re taught how to judge our body and we collect a bunch of useless information about food.
This is how we end up with so many limiting beliefs about it.
You have to begin changing these beliefs in order to heal your relationship with food.
When The Scale Spikes Up
Without getting deep into the science I want to explain how fat gain works.
When you understand this you’ll be less likely to think you’ve gained fat after overeating one day.
If you’ve ever tracked your calories you would know that 3500 calories is a lot of food.
This is how many calories you need to eat in a day to gain a pound of fat. That’s on top of what you’d normally eat to maintain your current body.
Even if you’re used to restricting your food and eating 1200 calories a day… this means you’d have to eat almost 5000 calories in one day to gain a pound of fat overnight.
This can happen. But most likely it’s NOT happening when you go out for a big dinner and drinks then wake up a few pounds heavier the next morning.
There’s a difference between overeating a little and overeating enough to gain a noticeable amount of fat.
Now if this is happening day after day its a different story.
But there is no need to freak out if it’s an infrequent occurrence.
When the scale spikes up overnight, especially if it’s by a pound or more, it’s most likely due to water retention.
You don’t need to eat less the next day or do extra exercise to burn it off.
How To Heal Your Relationship With Food
To heal your relationship with food and enjoy it freely, you need to work on your mind whilst you’re working on your body.
How you see food, how you see your body, HOW YOU THINK- this needs to shift.
You can get older and gain fat or you can get older and get leaner.
You can live your life feeling controlled by food, or you can live your life feeling free around food.
It all comes down to what you believe.
Step 1. Challenge Your Beliefs
You need to challenge your current beliefs around food and fat gain to change them.
Restricting yourself whilst doing this won’t help you.
You have to eat more. Face your fears and eat the food you think will make you fat. Then see for yourself it doesn’t.
If you’ve spent your life in a calorie deficit you need to come back to maintenance calories.
You need to come out of that restrictive mindset by not restricting.
Once you heal your relationship with food, you can start focusing on what foods you should eat more of for health and what foods you should eat less frequently. You can even go back into a calorie deficit if you need to.
Step 2. Get A Professional To Guide You Through It
There will be days your mind will mess with you and make you think you are gaining fat when you’re not.
Working with someone who understands the body and has been through the journey themselves can help you keep going through the tough days when you want to self sabotage.
They’ll help you see the difference between bloating and fat gain. If you can’t see it, they’ll help you stay the course until you can.
I’ve had so many clients who have said they would’ve given up far earlier if it wasn’t for my guidance.
That’s how you DON’T get your dream body- by giving up too soon.
You have to keep going even through the days when you don’t feel like it’s working.
Step 3. Understand It’s A Non Linear Journey
There’s going to be some days where you’ll feel great, like you’ve completely healed.
Then other days you’ll feel like you’ve stepped backwards because those negative thoughts about your body and food become dominant again.
Those thoughts can be there. It’s what you do with them that matters.
You can question them, reframe them, let them go, OR you can buy into them again.
It can really help to TALK out your negative thoughts.
Talk them out to a coach or to someone else. You will hear how silly they sound when you say them our loud and it’ll be easier to let them go.
When they come up, don’t stress.
It’s normal for them to come back but over time, if you keep doing the work, they should come back less frequently until one day they just don’t.
Step 4. Expect To Be Tested To Trust The Process
If you catch yourself wanting to go back to eating less food ask yourself if this is coming from a reactive place or from a place of safety.
Remember change is hard and your nervous system wants to keep you safe.
When things feel uncomfortable, it is usually a sign you’re on the right path.
If you go back to what you’ve always done, it might feel easier and comfortable. But it will keep you stuck.
You have two choices:
- to trust the process and stay uncomfortable OR
- you can go back to safety/comfort and never get what you want
If you knew exactly how it would work or if it felt easy, there would be nothing to trust.
Healing your relationship with food requires you to trust the process before you get to the outcome. It’s normal to not be able to see clearly if it’s working or how.
Knowing this can be enough to help you keep trusting the process. Talk to your coach for reassurance.
Step 5. Learn To Embrace Yourself Fully
Everything is a reflection of your inner world.
That’s your superpower.
It’s not what you look like. It’s who you are being.
Start focusing on what your body can do if it’s fuelled properly.
I would highly recommend getting into a sport or weight training- anything you can improve in will help you feel empowered in your body.
If you don’t like sports or gym right now, it’s possible to learn to love it as you get better at it.
I was never into sports and hated gym for my entire life up until 29 years old.
Then I got myself a coach to learn how to do it properly and never looked back.
I got obsessed with seeing what my body could do in the gym and how it carried over to every day life- climbing stairs is easier, travelling is easier, carrying groceries, putting together furniture, keeping up with my nieces, even yoga class is easier.
She Healed Her Relationship With Food
My client Sarah came to me after trying to go down the weight loss path herself.
She reached out for some advice initially, but went against my recommendations and put herself into a calorie deficit.
She ended up losing weight, but as I warned her, she found out she didn’t need to- she still wasn’t happy with her body.
The belly fat she wanted to lose was still there. And thanks to the restrictive dieting methods she used, she was struggling with binge eating too.
When she came back to me for help she was ready to really change.
Sarah and I have been working together for a year now.
She’s eating 2250 calories daily and still getting leaner. She doesn’t feel restricted around food and as a result her relationship with it is improving. When she comes home she doesn’t feel the need to binge on snacks. She can recognise she’s not hungry and say no to the cake that her boss offers her at work. When she feels like it, she can also say yes to treats and eat them in moderation without feeling guilty.
Sometimes you have to try things on your own to realise that getting sustainable fat loss results is not as easy as eating a certain number of calories and exercising.
For some people it can be, but for many of you it won’t be. So don’t feel bad if you are struggling to change your body on your own!
Dealing With Bad Body Image Days
No matter what size you are, you’ll likely have days where you don’t feel good in your body especially whilst you heal your relationship with food.
It’s funny how we compare ourselves to others, often those who are skinnier and smaller than us, thinking they have the best body.
You don’t realise most of those people are insecure in their body and are scared of eating food.
I know a lot of girls who are skinnier than me. Many of them are not as confident in their body as they make out to be.
I wasn’t either when I was super skinny. In fact I was the most insecure and unhappy in my body when I was at my smallest.
It’s possible to feel secure and confident in a bigger body than you’d expect.
It comes down to knowing yourself and being so good in who you are plus what you’re DOING in this world.
Then what size you are doesn’t matter anymore. It’s the last thing you think about.
Focus on getting to know yourself. Focus on becoming your best self.
Yes some of this might involve changing how your body looks.
But you need to do this with the right intention- not to become smaller and nothing.
Instead, become your best self, whatever size that is.
What About Ultra Processed Foods
Some say highly processed foods are bad for you and coaches like me are irresponsible for telling you otherwise.
I can see where they’re coming from.
However having had an eating disorder myself, I can also see how painful it is to live in fear of food.
Whilst working to come out of this mindset I don’t think it’s helpful to label certain foods as bad.
Clearly whole foods are going to be better for you from a health standpoint but health is mental too.
Finally…
Becoming your best self will involve more than working on your body and physical health.
It will involve working on your mindset and mental health too.
There is no point having a lean body if you can’t fully enjoy life because you feel restricted or because you’re scared to eat certain foods incase they make you fat.
Healing your relationship with food takes time and isn’t easy but it is worth the effort and your patience.
If you need help healing your relationship with food or your body you can reach out for coaching here.