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Episode 11. Today’s episode I dive into 3 tips to improve your relationship with food that you may not have considered.
Free Resources Mentioned in this Episode
Anti-Diet Pep Talk: Struggling to regain control of your eating? Grab this audio guide to walk you through the steps to regain control and get in touch with your body in an anti-diet way.
1. Consider Your Environment, But Not in the Typical Way
Yes, our food environment 100% matters. However, I want to talk about your social environment. You often hear me talk about autonomy as a key psychological need for long-term habit change.
My question for you is, is your environment supporting your autonomy? Or is it consistently thwarting it?
Have the Conversations with a Plan
I often talk to folks who are in relationships where they don’t feel free to be themselves, or they feel constantly criticized or judged for their decisions, food or otherwise.
If you have people in your life playing the “food police” and you haven’t taken the time to calmly explain to them why it’s unhelpful, now is a great time to do so. Even if they don’t change their behavior, you have calmly asserted yourself and given yourself the message that your feelings matter, as does your autonomy.
I also often talk to folks about assertive communication. Assertive communication often gets confused with aggression or confrontation. But assertiveness is actually the exact opposite of this. It’s communicating in a way that’s respectful of the other person and of yourself.
It isn’t blaming or shaming, but simply stating the facts based on your experience.
Assertive Communication Example
Instead of angrily saying, “that isn’t helpful! You are just making things worse!” you could try something like:
“When you comment on my eating, it makes me feel self-conscious and anxious. It would be more helpful if you could not say anything.” or “I have a hard time not judging myself and trusting my body and it’s important for me to learn to do this. I know you think you are helping, but the best way to help is to [help me plan the meals at the beginning of the week]” (Or enter in whatever would be helpful to you).
As essential component of gaining autonomy is having the freedom of choice without excessive pressure to behave in a certain way.
I recently did a podcast interview with Annyck Besso, MA, RD, a registered dietitian with a master’s in dietetics and we talked all about Health At Every Size and some of the myths about it. Although with any community and social movement there can be polarized views, the messaging is that fat and body size acceptance is a way to decrease the focus on weight and size as the sole measure of health, and broaden the circle to what actually impacts health.
2. Recognize Where the Lack of Trust Comes From
“But Shawn, I can’t control myself with food. Look at how often I’m binge eating.”
Often, this lack of trust truly comes from being physiologically undernourished. It also often is caused by repeated dieting even at calorie levels that we have been told for years is “healthy” (e.g., 1200 calories, 1500 calories).
In a few more week’s my podcast interview with Annyck Besso, MA, RD will come out and we debunk the myth that 1200 calories is “enough” food.
Additionally, it can come from years of feeling that (and often being told that) you “failed” because you failed to lose weight and keep it off (like 95% of others as well, yet most often we blame ourselves).
3. Speak Your Shame (in Trusted Places)
There is a reason so many people eat in response to stress. When I ran my group called the “Healthy Living Group” it was often also called the stress eating group. I have never had so many people self-disclosure that they needed my group. Often in a joking way, but stress eating is incredibly common.
The more I do this work and reflect on how we are doing as a field and on my personal experience and work with clients, I realize that a HUGE driver of eating and weight difficulties is shame. I sometimes use that term with clients. While some totally agree, some are a big skeptical.
“I’m not ashamed of myself, I just need to lose weight.”
It’s More Than Just the Strategies
I love research, evidence-based practice and strategies. They are important, and they often work. However, when your relationship with food is so steeped in shame, it can be hard to break through some of the rigid beliefs about self-worth to really experience self-trust and autonomy as mentioned above.
As hard as it is, reaching out, sharing with trusted people in your life and/or professionals is an essential component. We are social beings are meant to be connected. We will judge each other, it’s what we do, but we have to work to become aware of this pattern and break it. Or apologize when we mess up.
The more I work in this space of health, weight, body size, body shame, the more I realize how polarized we are. I judge too, and I get judged. I’m biased and so are you. BUT, we can catch ourselves and work to improve. There’s SO much to be learned here.
3 Unexpected Ways to Improve Your Relationship to Food
- Consider your social environment. Take an honest look here and consider what you might not be considering. Then, can you make a change. Sometimes this requires assertive communication, other times it may mean ending or changing relationships that aren’t serving you.
- Recognize the source of the lack of trust. Are you assuming you are out of control and there is something wrong with you and discounting the system? Are you discounting that you might be underfed. This is where working with a trust professional can be incredibly helpful.
- Speak your shame (in trusted places). This is a big deal. Whether or not you struggle with significant binge eating or depression, or just more mild dissatisfaction with your weight and occasional binge eating, we all have shame. We all have stuff. When we say we don’t, it’s serves no one. Definitely not ourselves. Speaking your shame and becoming vulnerable is hard, but so incredibly powerful. And also can be incredibly freeing, at least in my experience. 😉
Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and are not a substitute for individual professional advice or treatment, including medical or mental health advice. Additionally, this podcast and any information provided by me on my website does not constitute a provider patient relationship.