9 ways to begin healing your relationship with food

Here are nine ways you can begin to heal your relationship with food.

1. Vulnerability

Share your struggles openly and vulnerably with someone whom you deeply trust. It’s important to choose a confidante who can listen, encourage and gently support. You won’t appreciate the ‘food police’ or other well-intentioned ‘help’. 

Being open and authentic with yourself and trusted others helps you to take responsibility for change and to acknowledge the truth of your situation. This is necessary for healing. It can feel difficult and empowering to do.

2. Prioritise

Make recovery a valued priority. You may be guilty of talking endlessly about change, whilst your actions do not follow through. Look at how you spend your time across the week. This will clearly indicate your priorities, and you can choose to make some shifts in a recovery direction.

3. Explore ambivalence

Write a pros and cons list about change. You’ll likely feel deeply ambivalent about letting go of using food to cope. Be compassionate with yourself for clinging to the life raft of emotional eating or restriction that has felt safe through troubled times. Also, get real about the consequences if you continue with the old ways of coping.

4. Starting your day

Begin your day with a proactive recovery focus rather than jumping on the weighing scales or scrolling on your phone. Journal, walk in nature and/or set intentions for today that align with your deepest values. What is truly important to you in this life?

5. Content choices

Replace ‘What I eat in a day’ content with recovery podcasts or other stimulating interests. You will be profoundly impacted by your content consumption choices, so decide carefully on the information you digest.

6. Social media   

Deep clean your social media feed with ruthless discernment. Just one sneaky triggering post offers the potential for your brain to ruminate for hours after viewing.

7. Regular eating

Establish a regular eating pattern, offering a scaffolding of stability and safety with food. Begin where you are and build on this. Any structured eating is extremely beneficial compared to starvation and restriction.

8. Self-awareness

Journal your emotions throughout the day and note the correlation between disordered food behaviours and body image worries. What is your general state of mind? Are you feeling calm and peaceful? Are you often frustrated, anxious or unsettled? There is no judgement here but instead, an opportunity to develop self-awareness and understanding.

9. Body image

Banish or work to reduce behaviours that are sabotaging your body image daily. Eg: Compulsive weighing, body checking in the mirror or comparing endlessly on social media. Dilute and limit these behaviours and you will notice a reduction in your body critical thoughts.

Bonus point!

Find like-minded souls who are one recovery step ahead of you to inspire and keep you going. This will remind you that recovery is possible for you too.

It is so easy to look at the Everest summit of recovery from the distant valleys below and to feel a deep sense of overwhelm and helplessness. Recovery is not an overnight fix but a stumbling, rocky journey, which certainly isn’t linear.

As CS Lewis so aptly says “Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when we look back everything is different.” Hold this in mind and start taking steps today.

You can do it! If you’re feeling stuck in starting the journey, you might wish to reach out and get support through counselling.