And why healing this is perhaps the most important part of your wellness journey...
What is your food relationship?
As with everything else in our lives, we have a relationship with food and this can be positive or negative and can change at any time.
I have spoken before about my negative relationship with food when I was a teen and this is such a common occurrence, with 1 in 3 teens starving themselves. As women, and as mothers we need to be aware that our daughters pick up on everything we do and say and as eating disorders are the third most common chronic illness in young women, we must be responsible for change.
It is so common that my clients have the goal of weight loss and I work on nutrition with most people I see to reach a range of goals. However, something has to shift in our society for a large-scale change to happen.
We have moved so far away from an everyday friendly diet and into the realm of mono-diets and food fear, that I am often coaching people and giving my permission for them to have a piece of fruit each day. I nearly always end up telling people that they need to eat MORE food to lose weight!
So, what the hell is a mono-diet? When you only eat one food. That’s right, be it bananas or potatoes. Or one type of food, for example only vegetables or only meat.
And what is food fear?
More and more I see people who have come to fear a food or food group. This is what was done to fat in the 50’s and it is being done to an array of foods now, including sugar. But we are not happy to just hate on sugar itself, so it has been split into its halves with fructose being attacked on all sides.
When will we learn?
Whenever we isolate a food from its whole, it changes the way the body sees it. A common misconception is that full cream milk has added sugar. This is not often the case, but taking the fat from the milk (to change it to low fat or skim), turns it from a whole food with a balance of nutrients, into primarily a carbohydrate. This is the sugar macronutrient and therefore the body will see and use it differently to its fatty counterpart or the whole milk left untouched.
If we continue down this path of extreme diets we will be left with no food! So what’s the answer?
It’s always the same song I am singing; Whole foods, real foods, unprocessed and well-balanced. Check your plate; Do you have protein? Do you have fat? Do you have carbs? All of the macronutrients should feature in our everyday lives to allow us to live the healthiest life we can.
I would love to help you navigate your way to a healthy food relationship. You can book your appointment with me here.
Please seek further help from a medical professional if your relationship with food and your body is negatively impacting your life.
You can also contact the Butterfly National Helpline here. For crisis cases, please contact Lifeline on 13 11 14.