People and our relationship to food is a complicated subject. Food is a thread through our physical, mental, social, emotional, and spiritual wellness. Each individual human has our own body and our health is shaped by the way our body digests and stores what we eat, our genetic background, our culture and family of origin, our budget and access to food, our geographical location, our experiences with food and the messaging we internalize about it, and our needs, preferences, and desires. Each part factors into what ends up going onto our mouths and how in is assimilated into our body. Learning to eat in a way that balances all those parts of ourselves seems natural and built in for some folks, and for others it can be an incredibly difficult journey often fraught with confusion, discouragement, and shame. Wherever you land on that spectrum, let’s talk about this dynamic relationship we are in with ourselves, the world, and our nourishment. My hope is that as we embrace seeing how wide this topic really is, we can move towards a little more understanding, motivation and freedom in our relationship with our food.

I have spent many years of my life in constant experimentation with food and nutrition. I have read many books and studies, become certified as a Culinary Nutrition Expert, taken a Functional Nutrition course in Mental Health and Neurology, and gotten certified as a Health Coach. I have talked to lots of people, coached people, fed people, and fed myself and I have come to the conviction that there is no “right” or “healthiest” diet.  There are people in all their complexities and seasons of life and there is food in all its varieties. It can be more complicated to deal with food and human beings as a relationship, but I think it can be extremely life changing and empowering as well. You are NOT just what you eat; you are so much more than that, and food is so much more than fuel.

Letting food and diet be this complicated can sound really overwhelming to some of us, but I also think it can free us to trust ourselves and our bodies about the choices we make. There are experts coming from every direction and the narrative of health and nutrition has changed countless times over the years. It often gets tied in with political sides of a very polarized system here in America. It is all worth learning about. There are many sides of the complex and ever-changing world of health and nutrition. However, the core truth is that you are the one that knows what is best for your body. There also isn’t a magical, ultimate knowing place where you feel supremely confident in what to eat if you just trust yourself perfectly. The kind of knowing I am advocating for is the one that comes from being the only being that has lived in your body and brain all these years. You have fed yourself A LOT. You are an expert in being you and feeding you and you learn more about it every day. You are in a relationship with yourself, with the world, and with your food.

So, what have you learned about feeding yourself so far?

To give you an example of what it looks like to work with this in a step by step way let me share my journey lately. Your way is going to look differently than mine and that is a good thing. One of the main things that overwhelms me about food right now is how often my family and I need to eat it. It involves so much work and decision making and can feel like the chore that never ends. I also really want to feel healthy, feel “in shape”, and feel good from the food I eat. I am pre-diabetic as 1 in 3 Americans are, and have always had some form of blood sugar issue. We all have our own bodily sensitivities and predispositions and this is one of mine; some combination of genetics, my birth mother’s alcoholism, and the culmination of all my ongoing habits. This means that I have learned over time that for my personal body, I tend to feel better when I eat less carbs and more protein and fat. Carbs and sugar are still some of my favorite things and I am learning how to have those in my diet in a way that does my body good instead of harm.

 Lately, have been experimenting with intermittent fasting and carb cycling for my hormone cycle. I have been reading about combining the ideas of blood sugar balancing, woman’s hormone cycles and the dietary and lifestyle needs that go along with that, and the needs of the specific person with their predispositions and various conditions they are working with. I have experimented with intermittent fasting through the years but I think that understanding our hormone cycles as women is essential for building a supportive lifestyle with when and what we eat. I don’t want to have a restrictive food mindset, I want an exploration of what my cyclical body is asking for and how to support her best. I am taking some ideas from my own schooling and research AND I am also listening to my body’s responses and shifting my experiments accordingly. I am learning that my personal nervous system is very easily disrupted by changes in my diet and I have anxiety around any sort of food restriction, so I am giving that a lot of gentle care. I have my blood sugar fluctuations that I am tracking as I go and trying to help balance out. I have a lot going on in my life with four kids and have just a certain amount of attention I can give to food preparation and experimentation. All of that is factoring into what I am experimenting with, when, and also what I am choosing not to focus on diet-wise at the moment. I am noticing that I am feeling more confident and less emotionally reactive about when and what to feel myself. It is feeling good, my body is feeling better than it was before, and so I am continuing to explore this area of my relationship with my food right now.

 Thinking about my background, I grew up in America’s diet culture. The 90’s body shaming media intensity was not easy for my body image and self-esteem. I was naturally bigger boned, taller, and relatively thin as a kid and teenager and didn’t get hit with a lot of the shaming and bullying heavier set friends did, but I internalized the extreme importance of having a “perfect” body and hardly ever allowed myself to feel good about how I looked. I was always comparing myself to women on magazine covers and girls around me and finding myself sorely lacking. I have always loved treats and food, and have always worried that I shouldn’t. The women toted as healthy and pretty were the ones that deprived themselves, that only ate enough to survive and usually only ate bland and boring things. Occasionally, when dressed adorably, they could indulge in something delicious but it couldn’t be a common thing. Cravings were things to indulge usually alone with abandon and then with shame. We were supposed to operate from a survival based standpoint, and not be overindulgent or gluttonous. At the same time eating disorders were seen as a bad thing to have, and being too obsessed with what you looked like was considered vanity. I came from high control, evangelical christian culture so that adds on a whole other element of what was considered “right” and “wrong” for a woman to think and feel and worry about.

To see our bodies as good with the good need of nourishment can often be harder than it sounds. I am convinced that the more we can build a compassionate voice towards ourselves as we learn to care for ourselves, the more we can make progress that will actually stick and build into a lifestyle that nurtures our health and wellness. We have this one body, and it carries so many stories of life and trauma and messaging and culture and religion and place. So much of that is tied to what we do and don’t put in our mouths and when and how we do that.

So back to the question; What have you learned about feeding yourself so far?

This is a surprisingly hard question to answer for many of us.  It can be hard to put into thoughts and words that which has been habit, instinct, survival, and programming. Picture eating a meal; what is it? What do you enjoy? What feels like you “should” eat it? What brings you shame when you eat it? What feels like a cheat food? What feels like healthy food? What foods comfort you? What do you eat when you are sad? Which ones are fun to eat? What do you crave? What snack or drink do you have as part of your routine when you wake up or before you go to sleep? What do you wish you could eat but don’t let yourself? How do you feel in your body when you eat certain things? How do you feel about your body when you eat certain things? What did your parents feed you? What do you feed your kids? What foods remind you of home? Which foods are part of your culture?

If you have some time, it could be worth sitting down with a notebook or journal and answering a few of these questions. You and food go way back, and it might take some self-reflection time to see how much you already know about that. As you think back, can you see how hard you have worked to take care of yourself? Can you see what things have gotten in your way or led to you giving up on certain aspects of your health? Can you see yourself as a good person in need of nourishment and doing your best to give yourself that?

It is important to see how wide this relationship with food is to then be able to give ourselves permission to focus on the specifics one step at a time. There is no one-size-fits-all answer to any of this. I think it is essential that we break free of constantly trying on new diets and food philosophies like they have all the answers to our problem and getting discouraged when they don’t fit us perfectly. Many of them are going to have great information and ideas you can try. Try them! But listen to your own body and it’s response to them. Let’s cultivate an ear for our bodily intuition and a relaxation towards the changes our body is going to go through.

It’s hard for it to feel like an adventure when we are dealing with illnesses or just not feeling good and it’s hard when we don’t have much time to devote to food preparation and experimentation. I think that it can be really helpful to invite a dietician or a health coach into your food journey. Some are going to make a plan of exactly what you should eat and if that feels helpful and you have the means to do that, then by all means give it a try! As you eat the way they say to, cultivate your listening ear to how your body is responding. Always feel free to tweak the plan; accordingly, you are always the final expert in what your body needs. A health coach is going to help you think through and feel out what your plan is and coach you in your weekly experimentation. Both kinds of guidance can be extremely helpful and motivating.

I love coaching folks as they work towards confidence in their food and health behavior choices because I have become truly amazed by how many parts of themselves a person is pulling together and bringing healing and understanding to when they make changes in any health behavior. Getting an understanding of the vastness and interconnectedness that this relationship we have with food contains can be really awe inspiring. We are doing big things for ourselves and those we are connected to when we give our bodies, minds and habits some of our valuable attention! Within all the work and everyday busy-ness of life, we have many moments that contain the privilege of focusing on what we need and want, one small step at a time. As we take hold of those opportunities, we are stepping into what we hope and dream for ourselves and for the world.