How to Improve Your Relationship with Food
I want to talk about something different for me: my past eating disorder (for lack of a better term?) and how I have overcome this. This topic was inspired by a member of our community who asked for help on his problem with binge eating (something I once struggled with). So today, my goal is to provide 5 tips/pieces of info that helped me overcome my past negative relationship with food. As I have improved my relationship with food, my daily energy, mental space and self-confidence, performance, aesthetics, and overall health are at an all-time high.
Today, as 75% of Americans are overweight or obese (and rising in other countries around the world), it is likely that you or someone you know has a difficult/complicated relationship with food. From personal experience and what I have seen, losing weight is the easy part… keeping it off is the hard part. Some people are the inverse and struggle to put on weight for a number of reasons. For a several-year stretch in my life, I constantly yo-yo’d with my body, gaining weight, losing it, and then gaining it back. I couldn’t figure out my “formula” for aesthetics and health, and I was not at peace with food. Personally, there was a time in my life when I would feel guilty for eating certain foods, occasionally binge, or make myself throw up after a big meal. This may seem extreme for some people and minor for others. Regardless of where you are, I know that improving your relationship with food is extremely beneficial for overall mental and physical health.
If we do not eat, we die. Food and water are essential in supporting so many different life functions. Furthermore, food has historically been a centerpiece in human culture, allowing us to converse, get together, and celebrate life. Today, it is sad to see how such a vital piece of life has become so contentious and difficult to manage mentally and physically…
I don’t blame people for struggling with their relationship with food today for many reasons, but one being that most of the food sold and consumed today is highly processed and engineered to be highly addictive. Many of the foods today are designed to be hyper-palatable to the human body through added sugars, industrial seed oils, unhealthy fats, and other chemical compounds – and not to mention, many of them are devoid of nutrients and minerals. This means they are easy to overeat and rarely leave your body feeling energized and nourished. No wonder you keep going back for more!
Unfortunately, as major food companies today have essentially hijacked our health through addictive foods (and I know factors like social media make our relationship with our body/food difficult as well), we cannot place all blame there. At Whealth, we believe that at the end of the day, your health is YOUR responsibility because ultimately, you are the only one that can change it. When you don’t know why you struggle with food, it is hard to understand how to get out of it. Education and knowledge are key; following it up with action is the most important.
So, what helped me overcome binge eating and the negative relationship between food and my body? (I believe these principles can still apply to all sorts of types of “disorders,” but may not encompass everything)
1. Set identity-based goals rather than outcome-based goals
This is an idea from New York Time's Best Selling Author, James Clear, from his book Atomic Habits.
An example of an outcome-based goal is: “I want to lose 10 pounds” or “I want to have a 6-pack.”
We often set outcome-based goals because we believe that the outcome of ___ fill in the blank___ (having a six-pack, losing 20 lbs.) will make us happier. Outcome-based goals are cool and all, but if your goal was a “cover-up” for something else, you might not actually be satisfied when you achieve this goal.
For instance, most people set the goal to lose weight or get a 6-pack when it really is an increased sense of confidence they are after. Of course, confidence can come from improved aesthetics, but it can also come from other domains.
When setting (nutritional, aesthetic, or health) goals, start with the goal in mind and then work backward. Ask yourself, who is the TYPE of person that would achieve these results? Then, you must work to become that type of person. This is called an identity-based goal. Identity-based goals focus on the who rather than the what.
Maybe upon pondering this question, you realize that a person who has a 6-pack year-round makes a lot of sacrifices. They like being consistent with their diet, don’t drink alcohol, cook most meals at home, skip out on social events, sleep 8 hours/night, and work out 5x/week. If you don’t want to be the TYPE of person that gets those results, you don’t really want that goal, it won't fulfill you, nor will you sustain it for long.
Rather than just wanting a 6-pack, maybe you want to be an energetic person. You want to feel good and recover well. You want to feel in control. You want to feel active. You want to be able to pick up your kids, etc.
This is not to say that looking good is a wrong goal – I believe everyone wants to look better naked. I am just saying that it may not be everything you think it is! Switch those outcome-based goals to realistic identity-based goals, and you will be happier.
When I looked my best in college, I had the worst relationship with food and my body. After every meal, I would walk into the bathroom, lift my shirt, check my stomach, and occasionally throw up my food. Back then, I was only focused on my looks; I didn’t care all that much about BEING a healthy person. Today as I have learned much more about nutrition and what happens inside my body as I eat good foods, I center my goals around my BEING the person who has energy, performs well, and is enhancing his overall health- and interestingly… my aesthetics are at an all-time best.
TLDR: Focus on being the TYPE of person that gets the results you want rather than the specific goals. Pure aesthetic goals may not be everything you’re after.
2. Learn to read food labels. Become familiar with portion sizes, but do not become a SLAVE to food.
*Macros are protein, fat, and carbs. Protein and carbs have four calories/gram while fat has nine calories/gram*
Some nutritionists argue that tracking your food isn’t necessary and can actually cause more harm than good, as it can distort your relationship with food. Their argument is that if you eat whole nutrient-rich foods, your body will be nourished, and you will be able to eat intuitively. I won't go too much into the science but good quality food helps to control hunger hormones, leaves you feeling satiated, and allows you to eat intuitively.
The problem today, however, is that the food that humans used to eat intuitively 100's of years ago (meats, veggies, fruits, whole unprocessed foods) is no longer the norm. Today, the majority of food eaten is processed, which leaves most people completely out of touch with how much food they actually eat in a day.
While I no longer weigh my food and track my portion sizes, there was a point in my life where I did for several months, which I found to be highly beneficial. Like I said earlier, food companies engineer food to be addictive and take up as much “real estate space” in your stomach – so learning serving sizes of both processed and unprocessed foods helped shed insight on how much I shoulder generally eat. In addition, knowing that these foods were actually engineered to be addictive provided me mental freedom, as I was able to understand that my past binge eating was at least partly due to the addictive qualities of the food I was eating (cookies, dessert, highly-palatable carbs).
My advice is that whether or not decide to continue tracking your macros for the long haul, do not become a slave to the numbers. This leads me to my next point.
3. “Calories in vs. calories out” is not the ONLY thing that matters in nutrition, and may even matter less than you think. Quality of food matters – so educate yourself upon which foods are good for you.
Understand this: food is more than just one measurement (a calorie or a macro), and it is certainly more than what you look like in the mirror! Food is meant to NOURISH your body.
Food supports your immune system, bodily repair, hormones, muscle growth, performance, energy, mood, sleep, health, longevity, etc.
Do not just eat and obsess over calories. To me, asking myself a simple question of “is this food serving me?” has been super helpful. Does the food you are eating align with your goals? Do you want to perform better? Do you want to have energy?? If so, your looks don’t matter as much as you think they do. What is going on the INSIDE of your body at a cellular level doesn’t always show immediately in the mirror. Also, your stomach and weight can fluctuate day to day, meal to meal – so don’t get hyper-focused on those changes.
The quality of food that you eat matters. In Whealth Limitless, we teach you some of our favorite foods from a quality perspective, in each category spanning from Protein, Fat, Carbs, and Fiber. Below is our “Limitless Food Pyramid” and it is pretty much how I eat 90-95% of the time!
4. Don’t fear protein!! Prioritize it: around 1g/lb/day. Fill the rest of your meal around fruits, veggies, fats, or carbs to support your goals and activity level (a skill that we teach in Limitless)
For instance, I am 195 lbs and I eat around 195 grams of protein/day.
Back to the macros, I don’t count my protein EXACTLY day today, but I have become so familiar with my routine that I know between collagen, eggs, whey protein powder, meat, fish, and poultry I eat day to day likely gets me +-5% of that goal daily. Eating protein as a massive priority is something we teach in Whealth, as protein will help you stay full, feel nourished, support muscle growth, decrease inflammatory fat tissue, recover from workouts faster, and stabilize blood sugar.
You may be wondering, how did this help me with my binge eating?? A few things. It makes eating simple and less stressful. There are fewer unknowns, as I know how to create a plate of food that will nourish me and leave me feeling satiated after. From another perspective, if you are eating whole protein sources, you essentially “crowd out” the ability to eat other crap. Don’t overcomplicate your eating decisions, and you won’t deal with as much anxiety around food!
5. Moderation is key. Ditch the all-or-nothing mindset.
The best workout program is the one that you will do. The same goes with (I don’t like this word) “diet.”
If you have binged before, you know the difficulty that being on an “all-or-nothing” and highly restrictive diet can cause. For example, several years back, one cookie would result in 10-20 cookies being eaten.
Don’t put yourself on some crazy diet that will cause anxiety, deprivation, and complete restriction. There is more to life than following a strict diet. Sometimes cake, cookies, dessert, or other amazing foods can “serve” you in other ways than physical health – such as social health or celebration. Have a moderate serving here and there, and move on.
You will not fall off your diet in a day or weekend… hop back on right after – I promise, it will be okay.
Food is an amazing gift in our lives. While it once controlled me and caused restriction, lack of self-confidence, and stress, today, I am happy to say that I have turned that relationship around.
While I know I didn’t hit on all the complexities of eating struggles, I hope I provided new ways to think about food. If you are still working to improve your relationship with your health altogether, you are not alone! The fact that you are actively working on it is what is important.
Until next time,
Cam at Whealth
