Most of us know what an unhappy relationship with food feels like. We may feel frustrated or annoyed or out-of-control or embarrassed or secretive.
But what causes that unhappy relationship?
In my experience, it is one of three things:
Restriction — you choose to ignore signals about hunger, fullness, or what foods you might like to eat. This is typically done for weight loss, but also for other reasons (e.g., a feeling of control).
Disconnection from bodily signals about food — you are unable to notice bodily signals about hunger, fullness, cravings, or how certain foods make you feel. If I were to ask you: “how hungry were you when you started eating that peanut butter from the jar last night? How did it make you feel in your body?” — you might not know the answer.
A tendency to frequently use food to solve non-food problems. “Emotional eating” is significantly more complex and subtle than crying over a pint of Ben & Jerry’s when you’ve been dumped.
It’s important to say a couple of things about these three causes:
A. Any of the three can trigger the others.
For example, some people actually start with #3 — a tendency to frequently use food to solve non-food problems — perhaps as children. They may not even notice it because for many years, it doesn’t affect their weight. But at some point (perhaps their metabolism changed, perhaps they started a particularly intense job and stopped exercising), they put on weight, and decide to “get smart” about managing their eating.
This, in turn, triggers #1 and #2 — they are restricting in some way in order to lose weight, and the longer you restrict, the harder it is to notice bodily signals because you are ignoring them. And, of course, it makes #3 worse, because when you feel deprived of food, you are more likely to overly valorize it.
B. A complete solution must address all three
In my experience, a lot of “experts” (even experts who have bestselling books or very large social media presences) focus on only one or two of these causes. They’ll focus on restriction (#1) and suggest just eat whatever you want! That will solve the problem! But if you are frequently ignoring your hunger signals, you aren’t going to feel great in your body.
A more sophisticated approach focused on both restriction (#1) and disconnection from bodily signals about food (#2), and suggests just eat whatever you want while paying attention to hunger signals! But this will be very hard to do if you are still frequently eating for reasons that have nothing to do with food — and, frankly, most of us are doing this, far more than we may currently realize.
A complete must address “body” awareness (can you sense when you are hungry? full? How different foods make you feel?), restriction issues (what are afraid will happen if you trust yourself with food? Is it actually true?), and “non-food” issues (why do you eat when you are not hungry? What needs to change in your life so that food has less of a hold on you?).
C. Weight is the elephant in the room.
Many people will only start taking action on these issues when it affects their weight — or they feel fearful that it will affect their weight.
This is why some approaches or influencers just skip straight to solving body image issues (Love your body! Stop worrying about what you eat!). I believe that for some people, that’s all they need — in which case, great!
But in other cases, a body-image-only approach is like focusing only on eliminating restriction. It does address some very important issues. But even if you feel good about your body, if you frequently eat for non-food reasons (#3)…you may not feel good in your body a lot of the time.
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So here’s my question for you this weekend: In your personal experience with food, do you experience all three of these causes? Which do you feel like was the first one you experienced?