Your relationship with food begins to develop in childhood and encompasses your thoughts, emotions, and behaviours surrounding food. It’s influenced by various factors such as your upbringing, home environment, school, culture, and religion, as well as the meanings and associations attached to food.
To gain insight into your own relationship with food, consider asking yourself these questions:
- Do you avoid certain foods for reasons unrelated to medical or religious factors?
- Have you been told that certain foods are “good” or “bad” for you?
- Did you receive special foods when you were sick as a child?
- How did your parents approach their own eating habits?
- Were you ever forced to finish everything on your plate as a child?
By answering these questions, it may become clearer how our relationship with food is shaped throughout our lives and is entirely unique to each individual.
What is a healthy relationship with food?
A healthy relationship with food involves having a balanced attitude towards eating. It means having a varied food intake that provides the necessary nutrients for good health, while also listening to your body’s hunger and fullness signals and eating in response to them.
A healthy relationship with food is flexible, allowing for spontaneous food choices, and is free from rigid food rules, guilt, shame, or anxiety. It involves enjoying food without fear of judgment or punishment and using food for nourishment and pleasure, rather than as a coping mechanism.
Self-compassion and kindness guide a healthy relationship with food, ultimately supporting both physical and emotional well-being.
6 Signs it’s improving!
As you work on your relationship with food, so much can change. Here are six signs that you are healing and moving in the right direction:
1) You start to feel more comfortable eating with others and outside of your home.
2) The number of food rules are reducing, and you’re becoming more flexible with your eating.
3) There’s more mental energy for other things, as you are no longer thinking so much about food.
4) You start to develop a healthier inner dialogue that centres around self-compassion.
5) You recognise your hunger and fullness cues, and can honour them without guilt.
6) Eating takes its proper place in your world, supporting a balanced and wholesome life.
Whether this is something you have achieved, or this is something you are aiming for – we are rooting for you!
Our goal is to ensure recovery warriors do not have to experience disjointed treatment. Our multidisciplinary food relationship specialists help you navigate the emotional and behavioural side of recovery, in addition to the nutritional side. Helping you to create a healthy relationship with food and body image for years to come.
Let’s pave the way to your healing. Click here to take the first step.
