5 Game-Changing Tips for a Healthy Relationship with Food
5 Game-Changing Tips for
a Healthy Relationship with Food
Let me tell you a quick little story... This is a few client experiences tied together.. so we're going to nickname her Jenny.
Jenny always struggled with her relationship to her body and with her relationship to food.
It felt like she had tried absolutely every diet. Carnivore, low carb, juice cleanses, you name it, and she has given it a go. She would always see results at first, but then the cravings would start to kick in and she would fall off track.
And now this is a cycle that has gone on for longer than she can remember. If Jenny's experience sounds familiar to you, you'll want to keep reading so you can learn how to break this cycle.
Jenny would always start a new diet or a new fitness program or download a new PDF with all this enthusiasm and so ready to get going. She would stick to the plan for a few weeks or maybe if she was good a couple of months and she would be hyper aware of the numbers on the scale changing.
But then, you know, eventually something would happen. It would be a stressful day at work. It would be a fight with her partner, a night out with her friends, a holiday. Whatever it was, it would start to trigger Jenny's cravings and she would give in to them.
She would tell herself like, oh, it's just one meal or it's just one day. It's just one week. I'll get back on track tomorrow. But then tomorrow would come and she would have that familiar feeling that could only be satiated by food.
And before she knew it, Jenny was back to her old patterns, her old way of eating. She would eat whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted, and she would do that partially out of frustration. Stop going to the gym. She would stop tracking any of her food or counter calories.
She would stop stepping on the scale. She would stop any mindfulness habits and little rituals and routines that she had been building. And eventually the weight she had lost would come back. And the habits and routines that she had started to create were gone.
It was a pattern that had repeated itself so many times that Jenny had just completely lost count. She felt hopeless, defeated, like she was stuck in this never ending cycle, and it was just like a yo -yo that she couldn't get off. There is a way that you can break that cycle, and there is a way that you can build a healthy lifestyle to actually laugh the rest of your life.
Today, I wanted to give you some actionable tips, some pieces of advice that you can take with you on your journey, so that you can stop feeling on track, off track, going, starting, stopping. I don't want you to feel like that. So, you know, over my years as a practitioner, there are definitely certain trends that I have noticed in people who have been able to stick to this consistently, and I wanted to share those with you.
Define Realistic Goals
First up, and this is a really important one, we actually want to define realistic goals. None of this nonsense of, “I want to lose X amount of kilos in this many weeks”, or, you know, pinning up a picture of someone else's body and expecting that that's what you'll be able to achieve.
Setting realistic goals is really, really crucial when it comes to establishing a healthy relationship with food. It's essential to set goals that not only align with your lifestyle, but also with the eating habits that you would like to have.
So, as a really rough example, if you're following an influencer who's, let's say, a bikini competitor and she's posting her What I Eat in a Day videos, those are for a specific purpose, which is for her to maintain a top tier physique, because that is something that she gets judged off.
I'll use myself as an example as well. My personal goal with my nutrition is to be able to feel healthy, have no PCOS symptoms, have good energy so that I have mental focus and attentiveness for my clients, but also achieve a good, strong physique while I still feel balanced.
So, I think this is why it's really important to identify yours, because if you're throwing yourself into an eating pattern or a food pattern that doesn't align with the lifestyle that you want to live, it's going to feel really, really hard.
And this is going to be crucial when it comes to taking steps with changing your nutrition too, because we don't change overnight. Habits change gradually. So, if you're someone who currently gets fast food or takeaway meals multiple times per week because you have a busy schedule and you aren't often organized with your meals, it's probably not going to be realistic to say, okay, I'm going to cut it out and I'm never going to eat it again.
What we need to do instead is start to strategise, make some more meals from home, maybe gradually reduce that amount, but then also change the options that you're picking when you're there.
So, answer this question, maybe journal it out somewhere:
What do you want to achieve by establishing a better relationship with food?
I want you to make it mean something to you, personally.
Maybe you want to improve your energy levels, maybe you want to improve your training.
Once you have a clear idea of exactly what you want to accomplish, it's going to become a lot easier to set goals that align with that.
You know, I see this in clients all the time, but often people can find themselves pressured externally to do these things.
“I have to do this.”
“I have to lose this weight.”
“I shouldn't eat like this.”
There's a lot of that language where they're not in control and they're not the ones making the decision, but that motivation is not going to last long.
Remove the timeline
This might be controversial to some of you, but I want you to take away the timeline. This is something that I preach so much. It will take so much longer than you expect it to take and there is no point getting frustrated when we can only do what we can do.
We can put in our best effort and then we just have to wait. I honestly feel that timelines are one of the worst things that you can put in place when it comes to your nutrition because it puts so much pressure and you can start to get too restrictive in an attempt to keep up with this timeline.
And then it's worth asking yourself that restrictive, like overly confined lifestyle where you have to take meal prep everywhere and you can never go out to eat with your friends. Is that the lifestyle that you actually want to have?
If you want more tips and advice, I would recommend jumping over either onto my Instagram where I do post some things sometimes or there's a lot more resources, materials available for you in my more membership.
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Plan and/or Prepare Meals
Now, I know I said we don't need to eat meal prep all the time, but we do need to at least plan our meals and prepare either the meals or some ingredients. This is going to help you make more balanced choices when your hunger does arise.
So you could make like a weekly layout for yourself or you could plan each day. Or if you want to track macros, you can track macros. If you want to just like eyeball portions, you can do that. We need to find a way that aligns with you.
It works for you and do that. And then also take some time to either prep out meals in advance or what I like to do is when I'm cooking one meal, I'll cook a few others at the same time. Or, you know, every now and again, I like to do a batch prep of basic ingredients.
It could be cooking up a bunch of rice. It could be cooking a bunch of potatoes, making sure I've got one or two protein sauces ready to go, prepping some overnight oats. You basically want to make it as easy as possible for yourself to make choices that you know align with your goals and are going to make you feel good.
We want to take away as much of that resistance as we can. And if you know, oh, I could easily go and pick up this meal here, or I have to spend 20, 30 minutes cooking, like realistically, which one are you going to choose? We're all busy.
We all have a lot to do. Make it easy for yourself. I know some of these tips aren't necessarily exactly to do with the food itself, but there is a reason for that, because I think falling off or getting out of sync with your healthy lifestyle habits is not so much to do with the food, but it's more to do with what the food means to you, or what does that represent for you, or how does that food help you emotionally regulate?
We fall into these patterns and behaviours so easily because it serves a purpose for us. So it's worth looking underneath and going, what purpose is it serving, and how do we make sure that we meet that need in a way that supports us physically, mentally, emotionally, rather than taking a shortcut and sort of using a bandaid.
Manage Your Stress
Stress can have a significant impact on our relationship with food. I know for me, it really did for a long, long time. Stress is going to trigger a cascade of mechanisms which on top of your body actually craving these foods, which are faster releasing, usually not the best options because our body wants something that's going to give us a glucose spike immediately.
We'll have that emotional void that we want to fill. Maybe there's a level of discomfort there with actually sitting with that feeling and actually dealing with the stress or even getting to the bottom of it and realising what is that significant contributor within your lifestyle.
Sometimes we don't want to address where it's actually coming from because it's easier just to be like, oh, I'm a bit stressed out, and kind of push it to the side, right? When we're stressed, our body's going to turn to comfort foods. They're usually higher in fats, sugars, and therefore calories.
Everything in moderation. But when we're stressed, it's hard to listen to our body's natural appetite cues and to eat an appropriate amount. These foods can often give us temporary relief, but in the long run, we're sort of left off feeling worse for it.
And then we can start to get in behavior loops where that becomes the automatic choice that our brain wants to make when we're put in that situation. It could look like wanting to order a meal after a stressful day at work.
It could look like wanting to just numb out, watch TV, and eat a bag of chips or crisps when you've had like an emotionally heavy day. But by learning how to effectively manage your stress, I'm not saying we can get rid of it from your life completely, but we need to learn how to deal with it.
You can improve the relationship with food, and then we can become more consistent with our nutrition. And consistency is going to be the biggest thing that gets us where we want to go. It's not about what you can do for two weeks, three weeks, four weeks.
It's about what can you do for two years, three years, four years. That's what counts.
Ditch the Idea of Perfection
Now within my coaching, this is one of the biggest things that I have to help people untangle, and that is overcoming the idea of perfection. So many of the women that I work with are like high achievers, they're go -getters, they're doing so well in their career.
Educated, they're smart. Like so many of them are so switched on, so intelligent, creative. They're doing so many things in their life, and they feel like this is the one thing that they just can't get down pat.
And often perfectionism or that idea of trying to be the best at something can come into play here. But it's important to remember that a healthy relationship with food and a balanced relationship with nutrition is not about being perfect 24 seven.
It's not about viewing it as being on or off. The key is to learn how to maintain balance and moderation. And again, this is going to go back to setting an appropriate goal for yourself. Are you trying to live a lifestyle and habits that are out of alignment with how you actually want to live, or have you set them up in a way that feels liveable?
By allowing yourself some flexibility and some freedom, you're actually going to avoid feeling deprived and restricted. And this is going to help you stick to it for the long run, because like I said, it's going to take years, not weeks.
I hope that by incorporating some of these tips, you can start to create a more balanced relationship with your nutrition and improve the relationship that you have with yourself and your relationship to food. Of course, none of this is personal advice, because I don't personally know you.
Hey there, I’m Rachel!
NUTRITIONIST, PERSONAL TRAINER, WELLNESS COACH
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