The Connection Between Mental Health & Your Relationship with Food
Nutrition is physical. What you choose to eat goes into the body, is transported around, used up, and maybe stored for a later day. Right? Well, not exactly. That’s partly true. Nutrition does physically support the body. It strengthens our muscles and allows us to continue to be physical beings doing our life’s work but to end there is leaving out a major part of what nutrition and food really is. Food is community. It is culture. Food is a celebration. It brings people together. It highlights differences in tastes and preferences. It is income and stability for families across the world. It serves so many purposes that our fast-paced world can be quick to gloss over.
One of the most commonly glossed over aspects of food is that it is emotional. A dish has the ability to take us back to a cherished memory. Eating a certain way can even make us feel superior or inferior to others. It can be a trap of comparison. Food can be viewed as a punishment, a weakness, a problem. Food holds weight over our mental health.
Our relationship with food is deeply intertwined with who we are.
Our society complicates this relationship by equating food and hunger (both normal things) to failure. Often trying to keep up with these pressures and ideals by controlling food and our hunger leads us into restriction and food rules. We create lists of “good” and “bad” and attempt to force our bodies to work within the “ideal” parameters that we have allowed to be created for us. This imbalance with food can lead to a world of poor mental health overwhelm. Instead of more control, we give it away. What we get is stress, anxiety, guilt, shame, sadness- trying to make an unattainable plan work. We get caught in comparison and a preoccupation with food and our bodies.
Ultimately, striving for control & perfection robs our time & capacity for real life because we have already spent our mental capacity, time, energy, and attention on food. Can you relate? This is an unhealthy relationship with food. But can you actually have a healthy relationship with food? Do you get a healthy relationship when you finally achieve perfection in your diet?
Yes and no. Yes we can all have a healthy relationship with food but that doesn’t come from finally perfecting our diet because perfection in food doesn’t exist. Human perfection doesn’t exist.
The reality is that we are not in control to create our idea of perfection, we never were, and we never will be.
That stands true for our bodies as well. We are all given one unique body to care for and the thing that we do have control over is our choices. But the above scenario doesn’t sound like the choices made are actually providing good care for the person as a whole, does it? Good news. There are ways to create a healthy relationship with food such as practicing intuitive eating principles, letting go of control, not giving food morals (good vs. bad), and challenging food rules. We can release the overwhelm, guilt, shame, anxiety, and sadness that we feel from endlessly striving for perfection and “failing.” We can take food out of the control seat – decreasing preoccupation and comparison with the foods we’re consuming and our bodies.
A healthy relationship with food returns our mental capacity and our time. This means less time striving, more time enjoying. Less time analyzing, more time tasting. Less time scrutinizing, more time laughing. When we take our power back by practicing a healthy relationship with food, it allows us to exercise freedom of choice and feel empowered to make a decision with confidence.
This may seem far off from where you are now and may be something to stumble through at first. It takes time, patience, and working with a professional but is possible (see more on Rock’s recovery programs here). With daily practice, you too can develop a healthy relationship with food and positively impact your mental health in the process.
Desa Crews is a registered dietitian nutritionist living & practicing in the Washington D.C. area. In her practice, Desa Crews, RD, she provides evidence-based & weight-neutral nutrition education and counseling through a non-diet, intuitive eating, and health at every size lens. Learn more about Desa on her website at https://www.uncoverednutrition.com/.