How to eat better and improve your relationship with food.
News flash! Your food choices and your self worth Are. Not. Related.
I spent this weekend eating burgers, chips and cookies and that is exactly what is going to be fueling my lifts and runs today. Is that good quality fuel? No. Do I regret it? Also no. We make decisions based on how we want to feel, and if sometimes we accept that we won’t feel our best if we enjoy the odd burger, that is a trade off we are willing to make in order to enjoy a hearty meal with family and friends.
Below I list a few mindset tricks you can try to improve your food choices.
#1. Choose foods based on how it will make you feel
One of the most empowering things is knowing that what you choose to eat is how you choose to feel. Just imagine the power that gives you: to know that the decision you make will impact how you feel later. You are responsible for how you feel, think about that for a second.
Now, because some of us also make decisions based on how we look, this is what the other scenario will look like. Just for arguments sake, lets pretend I’m someone with insane abs - I say ‘pretend’ because I have never and will never have insane abs. I had a blurry two pack once, it required too much cookie sacrifice for it to be sustainable for me, so bye.
#2. Stop restricting foods.
Back to our scenario though. So I restrict a certain food not because of how I think it will affect me in my lifts or runs the following day, but I restrict because I don’t want to lose what little abs I had. Because I haven’t allowed myself to eat chocolate in a week, I cave, I eat it and well….. I’ve just had 1 square, it won’t hurt to have 2. Next thing you know, you’ve had the whole bar and you’re raiding your cupboard for every. single. processed. food. there. is. Sound familiar?
This often happens when people expect themselves to eat healthy food everyday. You don’t have to eat healthy food everyday, but you should try to eat better everyday. See the difference?
The type of restriction where you are giving up everything that you love including those processed foods, often leads to a negative thought pattern, one that often impacts your metal health considerably because when you do choose to eat those foods, it results in the feelings of guilt.
“I’m such a failure, I can’t even stick to a diet”. Shift that thought pattern, place your priority on how the food will make you feel physically rather than how you look.
#3. Eat your favourite foods in moderation.
If this is your relationship with food (restricting and bingeing) I won’t lie, it’s going to take practice, lots of healing, and it won’t be easy. I’m not saying eat whatever you want whenever you want, you’ve got to strike a balance but eating things that make you happy from time to time and allowing yourself to do this without restrictions is certainly better than spending years of your life second guessing yourself and nitpicking every fault you see in your body.
Eat everything, anything, in moderation. Choose fresh when you can but live life a little! Have chicken nuggets, M&Ms, fish and chips or twinkies even, but strike a balance, and stop telling yourself that your self worth diminishes when you choose foods that others consider “bad” because it doesn’t.
#4 Understand that YOU are worthy and your food choices do not reflect on you as a person.
Your self worth is based on you as a person, not how you look or how you eat. Whatever body goals you have is your business and no one else’s, don’t let anyone take that from you. Start by shifting your mind to the things that matter and then learn to dial in your nutrition with that same positive mental attitude.
Your food choices do not define you.
In conclusion
You don’t need a strict diet plan, you need a healthy eating plan that outlines some of the habits you can incorporate like:
creating a shopping list and filling it with 80% whole foods
increase vegetable intake by 2 portions today
swap 1 dessert today with 1 piece of fruit
These are just ideas, but you get the point. It’s not about clearing out your entire kitchen and getting rid of all the processed foods, its about slowly implementing small incremental steps towards your goals.
Have a fantastic week dear reader, and if you need help with your nutrition, check out this freebie I made here that will outline how to eat for increase performance and improved body composition.
