8 Steps to Healing Your Relationship with Food and Finding Joy in Eating Again
Over 10 years ago, I weighed close to 200 pounds. I woke up every morning and was disappointed and ashamed of what I saw in the mirror. On the precipice of reaching a size 1xl, I realized something needed to change. My path from there was filled with lots of mistakes, most notably getting sucked into diet culture and believing that restricting myself so I could feel more worthy was the answer.
“But I also learned a lot about myself on that journey, and about what was wrong with the way we try to relate to food.”
Food had become something that was stressful and shameful, that you should somehow feel bad for eating certain kinds of foods, even if they made you feel good. And that was hard for me.
Because I always loved food, even as a kid, and some of my most cherished memories are centered around food. Around the holidays, I got to help my grandma bake the pies that we took to our gatherings and it lit me up with joy to be able to feed others. I loved to try new foods and frequently went back for second helpings. And somewhere along the way those feelings all got warped because my relationship with food became broken, thanks to diet culture and our obsessions with being “thin”.
The road to healing my relationship with food didn’t start out that way, but when I realized that dieting wasn’t actually helping me, I set out to understand the true elements of a healthy relationship with food. And I decided to put all 8 mindset shifts in this blog post so other women wouldn’t have to learn it the hard way like me, lol!
So without further ado, here are the 8 steps I had to take in order to finally heal my relationship with food and find joy in eating again.
Step #1 Love Your Body
Why would loving your body be important in healing your relationship with food? Well, let’s just say this- when you diet, you’re essentially punishing your body for not being skinny enough, right? When your actions (restricting your food intake) feel like a punishment, you’re not going to want to continue that behavior for very long. In fact, you might be counting down the days until you can stop punishing yourself, yeah?
Well that means that your gains are only going to last as long as you’re restricting yourself, which as we’ve said, is pretty short-term.
Imagine instead if you decided to change you habits because you love yourself so much that you want to nourish your body and take care of it so you feel good being in it. Learning this meant that I was working towards something that I was excited and felt good about, instead of dreading, and trust me, this makes a big difference.
Step #2 Embrace Hunger
When I was looking around me at the people who had a healthy relationship with food (that I was trying to emulate), I realized that they didn’t feel the need to eat all of the time. In fact, many of them didn’t snack very often, if at all. This was definitely a learning curve for me, as the food industry has basically tricked us into believing that we should eat a snack at the slightest sign of hunger!
Now don’t get me wrong, hunger can be a sign that your body needs to eat for sure, but it can also arise because of many other things that don’t actually have anything to do with true hunger, like stress or boredom. Learning this mindset really helped me get to understand my actual needs better, and learn how to anticipate those needs so i could take better care of myself.
Step #3 Practice Mindful Eating
This step was a big one for me because emotional eating was a very ingrained bad habit of mine. I’m sure you’ve experienced it before- that overwhelming urge to eat something when you’re feeling stressed so you can get a little bit of comfort and relief. My go-to was the McD’s drive-thru for a box of french fries. But I realized that when I did this, I was so focused on relieving my discomfort that I didn’t actually even enjoy the food!
So I had to learn how to slow down and truly pay attention not only to my food, but also to my state of mind so that I could assess what I was actually needing in that moment, instead of just reaching for the easy comfort of food.
Step #4 Balance Wants and Needs
This step was such a relief when I finally figured it out and was a key piece in me discovering how counterproductive dieting is. So it goes like this, your body has nutritional needs, right? You need to consume a certain amount of calories and nutrients each day to keep your body running optimally, and when you don’t get those things, your body responds with a number of reactions, such as tiredness, constipation, cravings, etc.
Then I realized, if you make sure your nutritional needs are taken care of, sticking to your new healthy habits becomes so much easier because you get everything your body NEEDS (so you feel a lot better), plus you can feel great about eating the things you want (like pizza or ice cream) in moderation. Because the flip side is that you only eat things that taste good, but they leave you feeling crappy and nutritionally deficient, leading to higher cravings and constant hunger because you’re not actually getting what you need, continuing that tricky cycle. Trust me, it’s much better to take care of those needs first!
Step #5 Drop the Judgments
This is a biggie, because we make judgements about our food and therefore ourselves all the time, with disastrous results. If I put a piece of chocolate cake in front of you and you ate it, how would you feel afterwards? Guilty? Shameful? That’s because we’ve been tricked into believing that there are “healthy” foods and “unhealthy” foods. But the reality is that while, yes, different foods have different nutritional profiles and should be enjoyed in appropriate amounts, ALL real foods can be a part of a healthy diet.
Step #6 The Real Roles of Stress and Exercise
We’ve all heard it before, stress is bad for you, right? Well if you’ve ever eating an entire sleeve of cookies after a long day of work just to quelch that feeling inside, you know why it’s so true. But I realized that I actually had the power to impact my stress, both in the long-term and in the moment, by just practicing presence and having a set of tools that I could use that didn’t include food. While this may seem difficult, it’s totally doable and totally worth it for your long-term goals. And speaking of tools, let’s talk about exercise…
“Because man do we have it wrong!”
The amount of calories you can actually burn through exercise each day is somewhere around only 10% of your total intake because most of those calories are actually burned up by your body just doing what it needs to do to operate. Exercise is not for weight loss, despite what we’ve been told. But hold on! That’s no reason not to do it- exercise can actually be one of your most useful tools for stress reduction! Plus it just helps your body feel its best. So if you hate going to the gym, take my advice and cancel that expensive membership and try moving your body in a way that brings you joy because that’s really what it’s all about.
Step #7 Eat Real Food
This step was a tough one for me because I grew up eating a lot of processed food. But the reality is, processed food is filled with a bunch of additives and in order to make it hyper-palatable and therefore addicting (so you’ll keep buying more) they load it with tons of calorically dense ingredients that make the food taste extra rewarding to eat, but don’t actually offer a lot of other value. When you cut out processed foods and focus on eating more real food, it will make reaching your goals much easier. Plus, if lots of that real food is made up of plants, you’re getting the added benefit of nutritionally dense food, helping you feel great.
Step #8 Cultivate an Attitude of Abundance
Lastly, all these changes can make it feel like you’ve got to change everything about how you eat and that might feel like you’re missing out. But the truth is that you’re actually getting more, and by focusing on all that extra variety and good-for-you food, you can see how much it’s adding to your life. This is all about attitude, because as we talked about with step #1, if you feel good about what you’re doing- you like doing it and want to keep doing it, you’re going to be able to do that thing for life, and that’s really what it takes to heal your relationship with food.
When you can take these 8 steps and turn them into the mindset shifts that will help you ditch dieting for good, you’ll be able to get back to enjoying your food again, yes, but also get to feeling happier, healthier, and more confident as well. And you deserve that, all of us women do!
So if you’re ready to see the life you’ve been missing out on, check out my masterclass course (only $21!) and learn how to embrace these mindsets. Trust me, it’s going to change your life!
Are you tired of restrictive diets and guilt-driven eating? The Food Freedom Masterclass is a transformative program designed to help you cultivate a sustainable, joyful relationship with food. Through 8 actionable mindsets, you'll learn how to nourish your body with love, manage cravings, and break free from food judgments—empowering you to live a life full of confidence and well-being.
XO Sarah Elizabeth
