This One Thing Can Help You Lose Weight In The Long Term
Weight loss and food editing can impact and affect your relationship to food and your relationship to yourself in either a negative or a positive way. And it all depends on the relationship you have with yourself.
Keep reading if you want to know why it's important to be in a good place with your relationship with yourself when you're going to begin to embark on a weight-loss program. Especially one that might require you to count calories or count macros.
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What is a food relationship?
The dictionary defines the term relationship as ‘the way in which two or more people or things are connected’. Essentially, if you fuel your body with nutritious foods and goodness, your body will thank you in return. It is all connected.
Your relationship with food is vital. It encompasses so many aspects of life, including your mood and wellbeing, and holds the potential to prevent conditions like diabetes. Moreover, relationships tend to only work to their fullest potential when both sides are cooperating. So if you take the time to consider what types of foods would best fuel your body, it’ll result in a more positive food relationship.
Negative vs positive food relationship
If you have a positive relationship with food, you behaviors might be the following:
The ability to be at ease with the social, emotional and physical components of food and eating.
Eating is neither the best nor the worst part of your day.
You enjoy the foods you consume but not worship them.
There are no strict rules surrounding the food you eat or your eating habits.
If you have a negative relationship with food, you might experience some of the following behaviors:
You have anxiety relating to the social, emotional and physical components of food and eating.
You feel guilt, shame or judge mental towards yourself during or after eating.
Specific foods become your only options, creating an obsessive mindset around food
You have rigid rules about food like specific times for eating, what food you can eat and the amount of food you eat.
Attitudes and emotions
When it comes to her clients, AK doesn't actually fold in macro counting, food editing or calorie counting until her clients have established a really solid foundation of their relationship with food. This is because it's really important that your relationship towards food is one that's coming from a place of neutrality. That your relationship with food isn't a reflection of certain unprocessed emotions, or certain dynamics that you have in your relationships with people.
It's important to understand the root cause and the root of what your attitude about food is, especially if weight loss is your goal. And weight loss as a goal is totally valid. Whether you're looking to lose 100 pounds, or you're looking to lose 10 pounds, there's no judgment on anybody who wants to lose weight.
We just want to make sure that the motivation for losing weight, and then the actions that you take to lose weight, keep you in a healthy mental state. It’s important that your motivation for losing weight also keeps your emotional body healthy and your nervous system healthy, so that life can be experienced from a place of joy.
Scarcity in your eating
The one thing that is super important to understand when you might actually be editing your food, meaning that you might be cutting out certain foods or creating certain meal plans that are around calories and macros, is scarcity. It's important to know when you're in a place of scarcity and understand why you are there.
You’re typically in that place of scarcity if your relationship with yourself and food is coming from a place of fear or scarcity, or your relationship to food is one that isn't so healthy. This means that you're using food perhaps as a way to soothe, or you’re using food as a way to feel connected. And if you are doing that and then you immediately start to calorie count or macro count, then you're going to feel deprived.
That deprivation that you will soon experience will then lead to guilt, shame, and that whole shame spiral that we most definitely do not want. Whereas if your relationship to food is good and your relationship to food is not codependent with your relationship to people or yourself, then when you start to calorie count and macro count it's coming from a place of abundance. When you do that and you do food edit, it feels like accountability.
Accountability and abundance
This is really all about feelings. So the success of a program that involves any kind of metrics like calorie counting or macro counting, is not so much about those metrics but about feelings. Though the metrics are still really important. The metrics are important for anyone who is looking to lose a specific amount of weight. It’s important when the outcome is to know your specific measurements, know your specific metrics and specific metabolic rate or calories, to know how the macro breakdown should be. However…
the measure of the success is going to come from your relationship to that editing.
And it also comes from how you see your relationship to your food editing. Are you going to see it as deprivation that is going to cause you to go down a spiral of guilt and shame once anything is triggered within? Or is it going to come from a place of abundance and accountability?
How does it relate to guilt and shame?
So when you start to calorie count and one day you decide to have a dessert for lunch, and you want to go to a friends birthday dinner, but there's a dessert for dinner and you are unsure what to do, try this. Say to yourself ‘actually I had a dessert for lunch, so I already had my allotted dessert for the day’. And it doesn’t just have to be for desserts, it can be ‘I already had my allotted carb’ or whatever it might be for that macro that's in your plan.
So you then need to ask yourself, are you going to see that as accountability and let it be a source of empowerment for you, or are you going to see it as deprivation and let it be a source of guilt and shame. Are you going to let your relationship to it be from a place of scarcity and disconnect, or are you going to be empowered from it.
Taking the time to get there
So really taking the time to unpack and integrate and install this healthy relationship with food is so worth your while, and it's so important to get to that place where you truly feel like food is something that is more of a neutral sensation. You want to get to that place where it doesn't cause you to have extreme highs and it doesn't cause you have extreme lows either. You want to get to a place where it can be something that is enjoyed and celebrated, and of course can be appreciated and savored. And though you want to get to these places, you don’t want to do so where it's used in a way of creating a sense of safety for you, because if it's creating a sense of safety then it can create a sense of unsafety.
Lifestyles more susceptible to deprivation, guilt, and shame surrounding weight loss
While anyone can be susceptible to deprivation, shame and guilt surrounding weight loss, there are certain lifestyles that are more likely to attract this. Once you recognize that you fall within one of these lifestyles, you will be one step closer to conquering and taking control of your relationship with food and long term weight loss. However if you don’t relate with one of these lifestyles, and still find your experiencing deprivation or shame or guilt, it does not mean that you still can’t take control.
Bad eating mindsets
Those who possess bad, or negative, eating mindsets are more likely to find themselves susceptible to deprivation, guilt and shame surrounding weight loss and a relationship to food. Those who have a bad eating mindset often have fixed rules about the food they allow or don’t allow themselves to eat. This in turn then creates that place of scarcity, and then becomes easy breeding ground for guilt and shame, making it hard for those in this lifestyle to have long term weight loss.
Ignored emotions
Those who tend to ignore their emotions, or who have unresolved emotions that have not been dealt with, are more likely to find themselves susceptible to deprivation, guilt and shame surrounding weight loss and a relationship to food. These ignored emotions make it difficult for a good relationship between yourself and food to develop. Without that developed relationship, those who fall within this lifestyle are going to find it impossible, or extremely difficult, to find success in their programs.
Eating disorders
Those who currently have or have had a previous relationship with an eating disorder like emotional eating, binge eating or compulsive eating, are more likely to find themselves susceptible to deprivation, guilt and shame surrounding weight loss and a relationship to food. These eating disorders often create a negative connection between your feelings and your relationship to food, which can then cause that place of scarcity and fear to become present. Those within this lifestyle might even be food editing in this scarcity without even knowing it.
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Weight loss and food editing can impact and affect your relationship to food and your relationship to yourself in either a negative or a positive way. Remember that you need to first work on your relationship with yourself and food, along with getting in tune with your emotions and attitude. Only then, when you are about to view your relationship through a light of accountability, will you be able to have successful long term weight loss.
Extra tips for a good relationship to food
Practice knowing your motivation for eating. This mindful eating tip can help you to acknowledge the third question, ‘why do you want it?’ Knowing your motivation will help you to better understand your why.
Keep a food journal. Keeping track of what and when you eat, along with any impactful or emotional events that happen, can help you connect your eating patterns and emotions.
Don’t get too restrictive with the food you eat. If you make your diet too restrictive, you are more likely to develop a stressed relationship with food. It’s okay to allow yourself ‘cheats’ if you are doing it for the right reason.
