A healthy relationship with food
At the heart of a good relationship with food is the principle of eating competence.
Eating Competence simply means being confident, comfortable, and flexible with eating as well as matter-of-fact and reliable about getting enough to eat of enjoyable and nourishing food.
How and why we eat have a big impact on our relationship to food and ourselves. In fact, the way we treat ourselves regarding our eating is key to creating peace with food. If you are like many of my clients, you know all you need to know about food, nutrition, and healthy eating. And this knowledge may have negatively impacted your relationship with food.
Eating Competence simply means being confident, comfortable, and flexible with eating as well as matter-of-fact and reliable about getting enough to eat of enjoyable and nourishing food.
How and why we eat have a big impact on our relationship to food and ourselves. In fact, the way we treat ourselves regarding our eating is key to creating peace with food. If you are like many of my clients, you know all you need to know about food, nutrition, and healthy eating. And this knowledge may have negatively impacted your relationship with food.
To reflect on your own eating competence, here are a few questions to ask yourself.
Do you feel good about food and eating – and feel good about feeling good?
Do you like a variety of food and enjoy learning to like new food?
Do you trust yourself to eat enough for you?
Do you take time to eat? To have regular meals (and snacks) and pay attention when you eat?
Unfortunately, a dieting mentality (or restrictive mindset) to change one's size, shape or weight makes you a less competent eater and can often leads to....
- increased rigidity regarding good and bad foods
- restriction leading to increased binge eating
- distrust of self with food
- feelings about not “deserving” food
- social withdrawal due to not wanting to mess up the dieting plan
- shortened duration of dieting episodes (meaning sticking to a plan gets harder and harder).
Many of my clients have already been trying to change their eating habits (maybe for years), and their difficulty sustaining such changes has created feelings of shame and self-doubt, interfering with their ability to make good choices for themselves going forward.
Healing a negative relationship with food and body takes practice, kindness, and self-compassion. When you can feel more confident and relaxed about eating, this in turn makes the experience of eating more pleasurable. When eating healthfully tastes good and it makes you feel better, you are more likely to continue honoring your health with your food choices.
Tips for creating harmony between your wants and shoulds with eating.
If you have questions about eating competence, or you are curious to learn more, please contact me.
Tips for creating harmony between your wants and shoulds with eating.
- Focus on feeling good about your eating.
- Be reliable about feeding yourself meals and snacks throughout the day.
- When you sit down to eat, eat as much as you are hungry for.
- Have “forbidden foods” at meals and snacks will make them ordinary foods that you can eat in ordinary ways.
- Not making yourself eat fruits and vegetables will turn them into foods you eat for pleasure.
- Big servings won’t make you overeat. You will eat it all if you want to, not if you don’t.
If you have questions about eating competence, or you are curious to learn more, please contact me.