3 Steps Closer to a Healthy Relationship with Food

by Lizzie | 21 Dec, 2015

Imagine a life free of food rules, without dieting and calorie counting, without “good” or “bad” food, a life where food is morally neutral and you can have your cake and eat it too. Sound too good to be true? Let me tell you, it’s not. It’s all about having a healthy relationship with food, and yes, you can have it too…with a dollop of whipped cream on top if you like. 

A healthy relationship with food is one where we can give ourselves unconditional permission to eat & enjoy all foods without judgement or guilt. Unconditional permission to eat means you can allow yourself to eat any food you like at any time…no emotional strings attached. This means no guilt or anxiety, no skipped or “light meals” to make up for it, no long sessions at the gym to burn the extra calories, no judging or “shoulding”* on yourself.

Having a healthy relationship with food can create a sense of inner-calmness around food as well as a healthy relationship with your body, and who wouldn’t benefit from that?

Read on for 3 steps to get you started on improving your relationship with food.

1. Let Go of Food Rules

Food rules are rules or guidelines that people create around food and eating. For example…”no carbs after lunch”, “no food after 7pm”, “only low-fat everything”, “cut out all white foods”. You get the picture.  You might be surprised to know that food rules also include dieting, meal plans and calorie counting or restriction.

When faced with the idea of letting go of food rules, many people experience some level of fear about losing self-perceived control. A common thought might be: “But if I give myself permission to eat whatever I want I will exist entirely on chocolate/hot chips/cake/cheese/[insert any other pleasure food** here] and then [insert perceived catastrophic event] will happen”. Unlikely. Existing on one singular food will get boring quickly. Yep, even chocolate will get boring after a while. Still not convinced? It’s like when you hear a new song on the radio that you love, you download it and listen to it on repeat for days on end. After a week or so, you start to grow tired of the song. Because you have unlimited access to it, you no longer wait in anticipation for it to come on the radio. It is no longer new and exciting…it’s lost its spark. It is the same for food. When you give yourself permission to eat your pleasure foods whenever you want, they will become less attractive. They’re simply just not as exciting anymore if you can have them whenever you want.

If you live by a lot of food rules or have done so for a long time, letting go might be difficult…even scary. So choose just one rule to start with that won’t cause you too much discomfort. It might be as simple as allowing yourself to have a piece of bread with your lunch.  Once you’ve conquered some of the easier food rules you can start to move on to the more complex ones.

When you let go of food rules, you can begin to allow yourself permission to eat all foods.

2. Focus on variety & enjoyment

When people follow food rules, they often focus on avoiding certain foods because they believe they might cause weight gain or some other negative health consequence. The list of “good” foods gets smaller and smaller as your list of “bad” foods grows. When you follow food rules, the list of “good” foods often aren’t foods you truly enjoy, you just eat them for their perceived health benefit and get very little satisfaction or pleasure from them.  This in itself can lead to cravings for and even binges on pleasure foods or foods on the “bad” list.

People who have followed food rules for a period of time often have quite restricted diets. Because of this, they are missing out on key nutrients. A healthier relationship with food involves more focus of variety in the diet and less focus on avoiding certain foods for whatever reason. Eating a variety of different foods every day ensures you are getting all the key nutrients your body requires to perform at its best.

There are a few different ways to do this. One might be trying to eat at least one food from each food group each day (fruit, vegetables, grain foods, meat/alternatives, dairy/alternatives)***. You might know you are not eating enough of one of the food groups so you might just like to focus on one food group at a time. For example, you might eat plenty of fruit and vegetables but lack dairy in your diet…so you might focus on having one dairy food you like every day, even if that food is custard. Another fun way to try increasing the variety in our eating can be to try eating a rainbow of foods every day by eating one food of each colour of the rainbow every day. The key to success here is choosing foods you like to eat. This will help increase satisfaction after eating and stop you from looking for something else.

When you take the focus off restricting foods and instead focus on increasing variety, your enjoyment of food will increase.

3. Change the way you talk about food

How many times have you self-confessed to your friends “Oh, I’ve been so bad lately” and go on to tell them how you’ve been eating so much junk food the past couple of weeks and it’s definitely going to go straight to your thighs? Or what about “I’m going to be naughty and have the carbonara pasta tonight” when you’re out for dinner? Or told your work mate how good she is for bringing salad for lunch? Although subtle, these types of comments about food and eating imply that food can be morally good or bad. By making these comments, we are reinforcing the way food, eating and the body are portrayed in the media. The media idealises thinness or leanness as healthy and most attractive and teaches us to be constantly pursuing weight loss. By labelling food as good or bad we start to define ourselves and others by the food choices we make. For example, when we eat a food we have labelled as bad or unhealthy we might judge ourselves and feel guilty for making that choice.

Here’s some food for thought: You are not defined by the food choices you make and food is morally neutral.

You should never feel guilty or bad about the food choices you make, it takes away the joy of eating. The best way to reduce feelings of guilt or anxiety around your food choices is to first start by changing your language around food. This includes self-talk about food. The first step is just to notice when you make a comment or have a thought that labels food as good or bad. The next step is not engaging in diet talk or food labelling with others. You might choose to say nothing at all when these conversations are happening or, if you are feeling brave you might want to explain to those you are with why you would prefer to talk about something else. A comment such as “I’m trying to improve my relationship with food and this type of conversation is not helping. Let’s just enjoy this meal together”.

When we start to change the way we talk about food, we judge ourselves less on the food choices we make.

These 3 steps are just the beginning of a journey to an improved relationship with food. If you think you would benefit from a healthier relationship with food, an Accredited Practising Dietitian who works with the Non-Diet Approach will be able guide you through a tailored journey specific to your needs. TO book an appointment or be put in contact with a Dietitian who works with the Non-Diet Approach close to you, please contact me.

Do you have any other tips for improving your relationship with food? What has worked for you?

*“Shoulding” is a term I adopted from my ever-wise & self-aware Mumma-Bear. You won’t find it in a dictionary but I take it to mean telling yourself you should or shouldn’t be doing something based on unrealistic standards we hold ourselves to.

** When I refer to “pleasure foods” I am referring to those that you gain great pleasure from eating. A pleasure food can be any food from celery to chocolate, but they are generally the foods that people restrict themselves from eating for fear of losing control or gaining weight.

*** To find out more about the Australian Dietary Guidelines, please go to eatforhealth.gov.au. Please note these are guidelines only. They can easily be misconstrued for another set of food rules to follow, but if you look at them as guidelines only you can use them as background information to help guide your food choices.