Tips for Developing a Better, Healthier Relationship with Food

What’s your relationship with food like? Would you call it healthy? How do you feel when you think about food? When you eat? When you look at a restaurant menu? Many of us have less-than terrific relationships with food in general, or specific foods. It’s no wonder. America is rife with fad diets, reality television shows about weight, celebrity trainers and diet gurus and also the land of easily accessed, inexpensive, highly processed fast foods. It’s a perfect storm for unhealthy thoughts about, and relationships with, food.  

A healthy relationship with food looks like this: eating feels effortless. It’s not fraught with inner dialogues about calorie count, what others will think if you eat that or whether or not that food is allowed. Instead, you feel connected to your needs around hunger, food, pleasure and fullness. You honor your body’s needs for nutrition and food. You enjoy meals and stop eating when you feel comfortable, not stuffed.

If any of the following resonates or feels familiar, you may want to work on your relationship with food:

Food is always on your mind. If you think about food constantly because you don’t know where your next meal is coming from, that’s one thing. You can find a list of food pantries and resources here. However, if you’ve got plenty of access to food, even when you’re not hungry, thoughts of food should not be taking up much of your mental bandwidth. If thoughts about food are constant, or if they disrupt your productivity, you may be flirting with disordered eating.

You think of food as something you have to work off. If you plan your meals based on how much exercise it will take to burn the calories they contain, that’s trouble.

You’re either on a diet or blowing your diet. There is no in-between. One cookie, one cupcake and, in your mind, since you’ve already blown your diet you may as well eat half a large pizza for dinner. 

Some foods make you feel shame. Do you feel ashamed or guilty if you eat, say, an ice-cream sundae with all the bells and whistles? Even if you really wanted it and it was delish? If you set hard, fast rules about what you can and cannot eat, and beat yourself up when you ‘slip up,’ this article is definitely for you.

You obsess about eating in social situations. Are you anxious about possibly ‘having’ to eat cocktail snacks at a reception next month? Do you take forever to analyze a restaurant menu before ordering a much-modified version of the lowest-calorie items you can find? Maybe you carefully scrutinize menus online before you arrive at the restaurant to hatch your plan. 

You silently judge others. Did your friend order a bigger meal than you think she should have, especially at her size? AND dessert? In response, did you order the tiniest meal possible to ‘lead by example?’

It’s clean eating or nothing. So anxious about only eating wholesome, pure, unprocessed food that you won’t allow yourself anything else, even at a restaurant or gathering? 

Certain foods are not allowed in your house. Why? Because if you’ve got a pint of ice cream in the freezer of a bag of kettle chips in the pantry, you literally cannot stop thinking about them until you eat them.  

No matter what, you clean your plate. Even if you’re stuffed, your plate will be sparkling clean by the end of the meal. Every single time. It’s how you were raised.

Your grocery list never varies. And it’s full of ‘diet foods.’ Rigid, repetitive diets can leave us low on certain nutrients. Is it possible you only buy diet foods because you’re afraid you’ll gain weight if you don’t?

Bingeing happens. When you’re out to eat, you say no to dessert. When you get home, you rip open a bag of cookies and go to town. Or maybe your binge looks like this: one minute you’re having a few chips and the next you’ve eaten two party-sized bags without thinking and seemingly with no control over doing it. 

You’ve cut entire foods group out. Zero carbs? No fat whatsoever? Not healthy. 

If you recognize yourself in one or more of these behaviors, it’s possible that your relationship with food could use some work. Healthy attitudes toward food involve removing the pressure to eat perfectly from your list of things to worry about. You eat when you’re hungry and stop when you feel comfortably satisfied. Food is a source of nutrition, yes, and also pleasure. You choose what to eat based on what you would like to eat, not by what’s got the lowest calorie count.

Here are some ways to work toward a healthier modus operandi when it comes to food and eating.

Edit your social media feed. Diet culture flourishes on social media. Search the word diet one time and suddenly your feed is full of influencers, many claiming expertise in fitness, wellness or nutrition. They may or may not be experts in any of that. Many of them are young, able-bodied, thin and fit into a stereotypical standard of beauty. It’s easy to start the comparison game – they post their supposed meals; you feel bad about yours. They post their purported workouts; yours don’t measure up. It’s a vicious situation, and one to avoid.

Practice relaxed eating. It may truly take some practice, but getting to a place where relaxed eating is our norm is a great goal. What’s relaxed eating? The National Eating Disorders Association defines as “the ability to be at ease with the social, emotional and physical components of food and eating. Relaxed eating is attuned to the body’s hungers and intuitively provides for its needs. It is the ability to listen and satisfy your hunger allowing for pleasurable and whimsical eating with flexibility and the absence of remorse. It allows you to eat when you are hungry and stop when you are satisfied. It affords you the choice of eating more or less or differently than usual without judgement, punishment or the need to compensate.”

Know this: it’s about the diet culture, not your own personal failing. The diet industry is a multi-billion-dollar machine designed with scientific accuracy to make you feel bad about the way you eat, how much you eat and why you eat. Acknowledge this. Now set about freeing yourself from its grip.

Be aware of how you talk about food. If you’ve gotten in the habit of constantly talking about good or bad foods, superfoods, forbidden food and so forth, work on removing such language from your vocabulary. Consciously keeping an eye on such self-talk can help you chip away at the diet industry’s unhealthy power over your relationship with food.

Try taking food risks. Did reading these words fill you with unease? You’re not alone. Taking food risks is a method for removing the stigma around foods that have been deemed forbidden for whatever reason. It’s a simple concept, but simple and easy aren’t always the same, are they? The idea is to reintroduce forbidden foods to your diet. Gradually. When you eat them, focus on your senses and how they are engaged as you eat. Be curious. Ask yourself what you like or dislike about the food, whether it brings back any memories and anything else you think of. Would you enjoy the food more if it was prepared another way?

Get help from an expert. Healing a long-broken relationship with food is a big challenge. It can be more than you can reasonably expect to handle on your own, especially living – as we do – in a culture that is at its core pretty disordered about food. Find a support group, counselor or trusted professional to talk with.

For more health and wellness content, visit the INTEGRIS Health For You blog. Everyone at INTEGRIS Health wants to extend an invitation for you, and all Oklahomans, to enter into a health care relationship with our INTEGRIS Health family. Contact us today for your health care needs.