How to Create a Healthy Food Relationship in Menopause!
Plus: Do YOU need to repair your relationship to food?
Your food relationship matters in menopause.
This is not the time in life to be restricting calories. As we age, our digestion is impacted. We need nutrients more and more!
Do you have a healthy relationship to food?
Having a healthy relationship to food matters to your menopause health! What do we even mean when we talk about our relationship to food?
How do you know if you need to “repair your relationship to food”?
Many of us have never thought about having a food relationship. Relationships to people, yes, but FOOD? We all have a relationship to food. Women in their 40’s and 50’s have a particularly interesting one because most of us have been dieting since … forever.
Talking diet talk for most of our lives changes the relationship to food.
Let's back track a bit, and talk about the word RELATIONSHIP.
If we were to look at the Oxford Languages definition, relationship is defined as: the way in which two or more concepts, objects, or people are connected, or the state of being connected.
So a food relationship is how you connect to food.
We have people relationships that may be harmonious, negative, conflicted, nurturing, physical, professional, and controlling. There are people that we spend time with, and leave their presence feeling so joyous, and happy, aren’t there? There are also people we see that leave us feeling negative, or unworthy.
These people may be relatives, siblings or parents. Now, isn’t this is a conflicting relationship? And may of us have had people in our lives that we feel may not be the best for us, but we keep going back for more, because there’s some excitement there, or some subconscious unmet need.
Food can feel like this too.
Just conjure up your favourite comfort food right now. Maybe it’s Mac and Cheese, or Chocolate. How does this food make you feel?
Warm?
Satisfied?
Less lonely?
Nostalgic?
What about your favourite dessert?
Guilty?
Joyous?
Rebellious?
Without Control?
If we have a harmonious relationship with food, we feel balanced, and without conflict.
We don't look at food or foods as something that has good or bad qualities. We may see it as something we enjoy, as a means for energy, connection, and health. A harmonious, holistic relationship, if you will. We can interchangeably choose foods for nourishment, meaning, joy and nutritive value, all with ease.
When our relationship to food is more on the negative side, we feel the need to control what we eat, or shame ourselves for our choices. That conflicted relationship to food can live here.
We can love certain foods, and feel uncomfortable with those foods all at the same time. That was very much like my relationship with my mother.
So do you need to look at your food relationship?
Perhaps asking yourself some questions might help you decide:
Do you worry a lot about your body size, when choosing foods to eat?
When we do, one of the first things we target is the food we eat. We start to label foods healthy, unhealthy, good or bad.
*I prefer Fun and Functional.
We have beliefs that certain foods will make us gain weight and unfortunately, we live in a fatphobic world. We carry fatphobic bias that we don’t even know about, subconsciously.
If you want to explore your own bias, start here with the Weight IAT test.Do you worry that a certain food, even if you eat it once a week, will make you unhealthy?
There is no end to information about the nutritive properties of foods.
We technically know that kale and greens are good for digestion, or carrots have Vitamin A.
But when we over worry about the quantity, or type of food, or that one donut means we’ve doomed ourselves to ill health, it might be time to look at your relationship to food.Do you worry about what others will think of our food choices? This adds another layer of guilt to our eating experience, and complicates our food relationship. Some people in our lives make judgements about the things we eat. Strangers do too. Food and fitness become moral entities, and they should’t be.
Do you believe you lack willpower? We believe there is something flawed in ourselves because of what we DESIRE to eat. Just ask anyone who can’t get enough chocolate, over eats it, and the blames themselves for not having any willpower.
Willpower and food relationship do NOT belong in the same sentence. Blaming yourself for overeating is one way to stay stuck in a conflicted relationship with food. THIS IS A DATED WAY OF THINKING.
Feeling uncomfortable with food and body, has us denying ourselves certain foods, based on the relationship we have developed with the food. We also deny food based on the relationship we have with ourselves.
When I think of a relationship as PHYSICAL or EMOTIONAL, I think of food relationships like this too.
I remember a client I had, who saw food as fuel. That’s it. He was a triathlete, a corporate executive, and a parent. For him, food was the easiest way to get energy into his body to go from morning workouts, full time job, family obligations and evening workouts.
Bars, drinks, whatever gave him energy with the least fuss.
There seemed to be no EMOTIONAL relationship to food at all, other than it was an inconvenient necessity.
Food IS emotional.
Have you been to a birthday party, a holiday, a wedding or funeral and felt the emotional connection of food and community?
I thought so.
Food is also survival.
In this blog post, I touch on my experience with food scarcity, and how it was part of my own conflicting relationship to what and why I eat. Not having enough food growing up can play an important role in your eating habits.
If you want to explore your relationship to food, start to just NOTICE, without judging yourself, how you feel about certain foods.
NOTICE how you feel about food in general.
What do you feel when you decide to eat a brownie?
Guilt, pleasure or a mix of both? What about broccoli?
In my Mini Guide to Food Peace & Health, the Non Diet Way, I share how diets stress your body, at a critical time of life, as well as Body Neutrality, and Perfectionism
This Guide is one step in making peace with food! Want to hear more?
Tune in to The Fullness Podcast on iTunes, or Spotify!