“Our minds are powerful.”
This is something clients hear me say again and again in our sessions. The stories we tell ourselves guide our inner narrative. This applies to many different aspects of life, including our nutrition.
Our nutrition and mental health exist in a bit of a feedback loop. How we nourish our brain directly impacts how we feel which influences our thoughts, in turn impacting our food choices.
The Foundation of Nutrition: Having a Healthy Relationship with Food
A fundamental aspect of living is being influenced by the environment around you. The media shares many different messages about how we should look, or what we should be eating. This content can creep into our minds in tiny ways we may not even realize is happening:
“I need to be thinner.”
“I shouldn’t eat that.”
“That will make me fat.”
“If I eat like them, my body will look like theirs.”
Eventually, this becomes our default inner narrative, the stories we tell ourselves over and over until we believe it.
Of course our food choices matter and it is important to nourish ourselves to maintain healthy and happy bodies and minds. However, if food choices are constantly filled with guilt or restriction, or are guided by arbitrary food rules, the shame felt from this has a negative impact on our mental health.
Shifting this mental loop to be a positive one around food is foundational to being able to properly nourish our bodies and navigate health conditions.
4 Techniques to Create a Positive Relationship with Food
1. View food as neutral, rather than good or bad
This can help reduce that shame felt around eating. If you are wanting a snack, allow yourself to have that snack without calling it a “bad food.” Instead, remind yourself that it is okay and normal behavior to eat a snack. (Check out some healthy snack ideas & recipes here.)
2. Stay objective
Focus on the components of a meal or snack and their function in the body such as, carbs give me energy, protein fuels my muscles, fat keeps me fuller for longer and supports my hormones…etc.
3. Give yourself unconditional permission to eat
If you are hungry, eat. If you want a certain food, eat it. I often have people come to me feeling out of control around food, but in reality, they are just hungry.
They try to have this made up “will power” around food that is often restriction in disguise. When we try to consume regular balanced meals and give ourselves unconditional permission to eat foods we find satisfying, the “food noise” often begins to fade away.
“But Ashlyn, I will just choose to have cookies and chips for all of my meals.”
This is a common misconception. When you first begin applying this mental reframe, there’s often increased consumption in the restricted foods. Why? Naturally when we restrict foods the brain wants more of it. We want what we can’t have. Eventually the food loses its novelty, and your body asks for a wider variety of nutrients.
4. Get curious & try to be an outside observer of the emotions that influence behavior
Why am I eating?
Am I actually hungry, bored, sad or stressed out?
Try to tune into hunger fullness cues to better determine your level of hunger. Getting curious about emotions tied to eating allows us to better understand our reasons for eating, that we often ignore.
It can help drive the decision of when it may be more beneficial to find an outlet other than food to manage emotions. This could be journaling, watching a video, going for a walk, reading a book, playing a game, calling a friend, etc.
Seek Support When You Need It
If you want to dive deeper into how food impacts the body & mind, how our thoughts impact food choices and/or improve your relationship with food, I would love to offer my support in this journey.
Reach out to the front desk to book an appointment and get started.
