Do you overeat?
Do you feel out of control of your food choices in certain situations?
Do you have trigger foods that you can’t have around?
Do you always “need” something sweet in the afternoon?
Do you have night-time eating patterns?
Do you turn to food for comfort?
Do you starve and/or binge?
Do you feel like you have to compulsively control everything you’re eating?
Do you obsessively count calories, weight and/or measure every bite?
If you answered yes to any of these questions then your relationship with food needs some healing.
Women have an unhealthy relationship with food for the following reasons:
~ When we were young, we were given food (especially sweets) as a reward or as a way to keep us quiet/behave, so we learned to use food to reward ourselves after a hard day.
~ When we neglect our own needs we turn to food, the symbol of nourishment, to try and “feed” our neglected needs.
~ When we have feelings that we do not want to feel, we use food to numb ourselves and soothe our painful feelings.
~ We either saw our moms dieting or we were put on a diet as young girls, resulting in feeling guilty after we eat and looking at food as “bad” and the “enemy”.
~ We are bombarded with messages about what and what not to eat by the many experts and diets in the health industry, leaving us confused and not trusting ourselves and our body’s wisdom.
~ For the compulsive eater and food addict, eating can be an attempt at self-care, turned into self-harm. It can become a painful cycle of promises to do better that are repeatedly broken when our compulsion takes over, making us feel defeated and discouraged.
The road to healing your relationship with food is long and multi layered. There is no one approach that works and there is no quick fix. But every step you take towards healing is important and significant. We are so conditioned to look for results like weight loss and complete control over what we eat that we can miss the signs of progress we make and think that it’s not enough.
The fact that you are reading this post, the fact that you keep trying is already a sign of progress and a victory.
Here are 4 steps that have helped me heal my relationship with food and have helped many of my clients.
Step 1: Food is good!
Food is not the enemy. It is nourishment. It is life. We have a built it pleasure of eating and it is OK and good to enjoy food. We need to stop looking at food as something to fight and start looking at it as a blessing, like the air we breathe.
Step 2: Listen to your body.
Your body is part of nature and has inner knowledge that will lead you to your most vibrant life if you learn to listen. Just like a plant knows how to lean into the sun for nourishment, your body knows what food it needs to thrive. Listening to your body’s hunger and fullness signals is a good place to start.
Step 3: See yourself healthy!
It is hard to create something if you don’t know what it looks like. Having a vivid picture in your mind of a healthy and vibrant you, will help you make choices that will take you there. Think about the following: What activities and exercises would you like to be able to do? What delicious and healthy meals would you like to eat? What will your healthy life look like? You can visualize it, journal about it and I highly recommend to making a picture collage of images that reflect this goal and saving them as screen savers on your device so you can see them many times a day.
Step 4: Get support.
Perhaps the most important step is to not do it alone. When you start changing deep rooted patterns they tend to fight back and make you feel discouraged, bad, upset, depressed and defeated. None of it is true, but you will need the help of a strong support system that will get you through the difficult stages and reflect to you your light and strength and capabilities with a lot of love and joy and encouragement.
I love this quote by Zig Ziglar (I slightly rephrased it): “Don’t give up what you want the most for what you want at the moment”. Remember that what you want the most is a healthy, energetic, strong, vibrant, radiant life and that you deserve every effort in making it happen.
I will be thrilled and honored to support your health journey. I am putting together women health groups that will meet locally (in Brooklyn NY) or online (global). Please fill up the form at the bottom of this page and I will get back to you with more information.
xoxo
Rachel
