7 Hints from People that have a Healthy Relationship with Food
There’s a fine line between thinking carefully about what we put into our bodies and obsessing over it or restricting it dangerously.
Whether our issue is emotional eating, binge eating, disordered eating, or we just can’t seem to get a handle on the whole nutrition thing, we can all stand to learn a few things from the people for whom healthy eating just comes easily. (Lucky Bitches)
Here are a few Hints for what they do differently:
1. People with a healthy relationship to food eat mindfully. Our body have built-in cues to tell us when to eat — and when to stop eating. But we’re not always listening.
2. They swear by everything — yes, everything — in moderation. “No food is forbidden” “Foods are not intrinsically ‘good’ or ‘bad.'”
3. They eat when they’re physically hungry.
“Emotional eating is typically to soothe unpleasant emotions” Unfortunately, stress and anxiety often cause us to crave higher-calorie, fattier foods, and most of us don’t need additional caloric intake.
When we use food to try to soothe an emotion, we mask what that emotion is trying to teach us, and instead replace it with regret or guilt for eating whatever we grabbed.
4. They don’t keep problematic foods in the house.
Once you know your specific patterns of emotional eating, you can take small steps to redirect them. One strategy I recommend is no longer keeping a particularly tempting food in the house, so you’d have to leave home after dinner to get a taste. If, for example you really love ice cream, rather than having it sitting in the freezer calling your name consider “out of sight out of mind”.
5. They don’t sit down with the whole bag.
Hitting up your local ice cream shop also has the benefit of providing your treat in a single serving size. “If you have a cup or a cone you know when you’re finished, as opposed to sitting there having one spoonful after another” straight out of the carton. Buying single-serving packages of your favorite chips or cookies can also help, as can simply serving yourself in a cup or bowl rather than sitting down with a whole family-size bag of chips.
6. They don’t eat to see the scale shift.
Ideally, we’d all eat what makes us feel good. We’d pick the foods that gave us energy to fuel our daily activity, and we’d avoid foods that, say, gave us indigestion, regardless of how good they tasted, rather than restructuring our eating plans to make the number on the scale change.
7. They know the difference between a snack and a treat.
Letting yourself get too hungry is a recipe for overeating — especially those foods you want to keep to smaller portions. Snacking is a smart way to make sure you’re not in starvation mode come dinnertime. But snack choice is crucial to both keeping you full and keeping your healthy eating plans on track. A treat is purely for enjoyment, while a snack is something you eat between meals to stave off hunger. Nuts or fruit or cheese could be a good snack, but chocolate? A treat.