A glimpse into disordered eating, diet culture, and why healing your relationship with food should be a top priority.
What is Disordered Eating?
Disordered eating is a group of conditions used to describe irregular eating behaviors, which impact quality of life, physical and emotional health.
Sidebar: Disordered eating differs from clinically diagnosed eating disorders, such as anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder (etc.).
What are characteristics of Disordered Eating?
If you ever find yourself thinking …
- This is a bad food I shouldn’t be eating it.
- Oh well I should just eat the rest of it.
- This has too many calories, I can’t eat it.
- I ate too much, I blew it.
- I’m being good today, I can’t eat that food.
- I’ll have this now but I’ll be good again on Monday.
How does Disordered Eating develop?
Disordered eating stems from diet culture.
Sidebar: What is diet culture? Placing value in weight, shape, body size. Praising a specific body image. Diet culture’s message is achieving health and happiness can only come from losing weight and following a diet. (Read:Not True.)
Diet culture reinforces negative thought patterns about food and our body. Diet culture is perpetuated by media, magazines, film and can be instilled at an early age from parent to child or socially from friends thus fostering a rocky relationship with food and body image.
What are the side effects of diet culture?
Diets and diet culture can increase the likelihood of…
- Disordered Eating and increased risk of developing an eating disorder
- Weight gain
- Loss of innate hunger and fullness cues
- Headaches
- Muscle Cramps
- Binge Eating
- Slowed Metabolism
- Loss of Muscle Mass
- Bowel irregularity
- Poor sleep quality
- Shame guilt and anxiety
- Low self-esteem
- Preoccupation with food and body image
What does a healthy relationship with food sound like?
A healthy relationship with food sounds like…
- I am content with my mid-day snack.
- I feel satisfied with my lunch.
- I enjoyed the dinner with my friends.
- I am confident in my ability to make food choices.
- I am at peace with my body.
How to build a healthy relationship with food and your body?
Opening up the conversation is the first way to identify disordered eating tendencies.
Start by paying closer attention to how you speak about and relate to food and your body.
Building a healthy relationship with food takes being vulnerable, honest and aware of what is going on internally (thoughts, criticism, praise, insecurities) and also externally (the conversations, media messages, environment).
A peaceful relationship with food and our body, also requires an understanding of the science backed concept, that “diets don’t work”. Diets are not the solution to weight loss, achieving success or happiness.
In fact, utilizing diets for weight loss can result in weight regain, lack of energy, mood swings and increased risk of mortality. Feelings of guilt and failure are also common in those who engage in dieting which can lead to emotional distress.
Healing starts with your mind.
Changing your perspective and healing your relationship with food as well as being to understand and trust your body is possible.
Mindfulness practices develop the capacity for self-directed attention to hunger and satiety as well as emotional, social, and environmental triggers for eating. Self-acceptance, body awareness, and mindfulness based approaches can restore emotional, physical and mental health (1).
Mindfulness strategies are correlated with decreased anxiety and depression and have been linked to improvements in disordered eating related cognitions.
While it may take time to unlearn habits, and recreate new thought patterns, every effort is well worth the freedom you will feel from cultivating a peaceful relationship with food and your body.
Need support with cultivating a healthier relationship with food & your body?
You’re not alone. Shifting our mentality from a space of calorie counting, food/weight obsession, to perceiving food as a way to nourish our body, mind, soul is possible and will help with creating lasting lifestyle changes.
Does disordered eating or diet culture resonate with you? If you’re interested in personalized Nutrition Coaching Sessions to begin healing your relationship with food, Start your health journey by applying for my Nutrition Coaching Program “Nourish” here.
With Gratitude,
Jamie
”Awareness is the first step in healing.” – Dean Ornish
Resources:
- Lizabeth Roemer; Cara Fuchs; Susan M. Orsillo. (2014) Mindfulness-Based Treatment Approaches Clinician’s Guide to Evidence Base and Applications. A volume in Practical Resources for the Mental Health Professional Book ; 2nd Edition. 10.1016/b978-0-12-416031-6.00005-0
- Nightingale, B.A. & Cassin, S.E. Curr Obes Rep (2019) 8: 112. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13679-019-00333-5
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