What is a healthy relationship with food anyway?

In my opinion, a healthy relationship with food means that you eat enough, eat the things that are good for your body and also allow yourself to enjoy food regularly (without feeling guilty). A healthy relationship with food is not the same as 100% healthy eating in my opinion. It is more about a good balance between 1) getting the nutrients that your body needs, and 2) sometimes consciously enjoying a piece of chocolate, a cake or something else.

When I look back at where I came from (when I didn’t have a healthy relationship with food), for me, dealing with food in a healthy way is mainly about not having unnecessary judgments about what you put in your mouth. That you basically have a good diet, but also that you can listen to your body when it craves more food, when you are staring at that one cake with your mouth watering or when you have no appetite for what is in front of you. And that at those moments – without judging your body or what you eat – you make choices that make you happy.

Small disclaimer: I am not a dietician or nutrition expert. So all information in this article is based on my experiences during my recovery from anorexia and the many years of nutritional guidance from a dietician that I had during that time. If you yourself struggle a lot with food, I always recommend seeking help from a psychologist. Know that you never have to fight the battle alone.

Not having a healthy relationship with food – what does that mean?

I myself have had an unhealthy relationship with food for years. Since I have fully recovered, it strikes me even more how many people – in one way or another – have a difficult relationship with food. This can manifest itself in all sorts of things:

• You feel guilty (just like I did back then) when you eat certain foods . For example, because of diet hypes or because of the judgment you have placed on that food yourself.
• You suffer from emotional eating and, for example, you start snacking more or suffer from binge eating when you don’t know what to do with stress or emotions.
• You deny yourself a lot of foods. It is possible that you do not eat a complete diet or that you get intense cravings for those products.
• You’ve gone overboard in wanting to eat only 100% healthy . (This can lead to orthorexia – a relatively unknown eating disorder that this documentary was made about.)
• You yo-yo a lot in terms of weight and may also have a negative body image.
• You don’t dare to eat everything you want in the presence of others .
• You give up a lot of things because of the ideal image you have in mind, even though that ideal image and this diet may not be healthy for you.

Sometimes it makes me sad (and angry too) that in December every year the Christmas menus are advertised on every magazine cover and that it can’t be crazy enough, and that the first week of January the covers with diet tips are in the shops. One person finds one food absolutely evil, another thinks you shouldn’t eat something else, and yet another sees another diet as the holy grail . Especially when you are already insecure about your appearance , all the fuss about food and diets can make it even more difficult. At least that is what I noticed at the time.

You really can build a healthy relationship with food

If you are reading this now and thinking “Yes, but I have such a twisted view of food. That healthy relationship with food is not for me”, please don’t give up. You don’t want to know how often I used to think that I would see food as something functional for the rest of my life. Something you just do, and then on autopilot. But with a lot of help, eating challenges and guidance from a dietician and then gaining a lot of pleasure from eating myself, my relationship with food has also become completely fine.

When people now throw around diet tips, I can easily ignore them. It doesn’t bother me that much when someone says to me “Should you eat product X now?” and the “Oh well, I’ll exercise it off tomorrow” comments from others at Christmas dinner go in one ear and out the other. And yes, it took a long time to get there. But if I succeeded, you can do it too.

These are 11 tips that have helped me to have a healthy relationship with food. Maybe you can use them if you recognize even a little of my story.

1. Experiment with new dishes

My best (and also funniest) tip to improve your relationship with food is to treat yourself to a few cookbooks or add a few food blogs or Pinterest pages to your favorites. If you look at food in an unhealthy way, you are often not so concerned with taste. When I looked at food, I mainly thought in terms of “I eat it” and “I don’t eat it”. The fun was gone. I have developed a much better relationship with food by seeing food as something fun and tasty. I started experimenting with food again and throwing things in my basket every week that I had never cooked with before.

Don’t be too quick to assume that you’re not a good cook. Everyone can learn to cook or bake. You don’t have to immediately try stews that have to simmer on the stove for 2 hours or conjure up cakes worthy of Heel Holland Bakt from the oven. Start with dishes that are ready in half an hour or with simple cupcakes. If you notice what you can do with ingredients, you may just start to appreciate food more.

2. Realize that what is healthy for someone else may not be healthy for you

Never try to compare your diet to that of someone else. Every body works so differently. And what is good for someone else, is not necessarily good for you. One body needs much more food or completely different nutrients to be healthy than another body. This is certainly true if you need to gain weight , for example .

Are you recovering from a broken relationship with food? Then tell yourself that your eating pattern during your recovery will be different from everyone else’s. You may have to eat more than average, take on eating challenges or have that cake that your uncle and aunt just turned down. For your aunt who is on a diet, a cake with coffee may not be so healthy. But when I was trying to overcome my fear of sugar, it was very healthy for me to have that cake. And also realize: you never see everyone else’s complete diet.

So never judge your eating habits based on what others eat. Focus on what is good for you right now, and what helps you build a healthier relationship with food.

3. Go for balance (and not 100% healthy)

In my eyes, healthy eating is not the same as 100% healthy, unprocessed and perfect food. If you deny yourself EVERYTHING that is not labeled ‘healthy’, then there is often an unhealthy thought behind it . During my eating disorder period, I actually ate completely healthy. Everything I ate was largely unprocessed, pure and was neatly listed in the Wheel of Five. But the thoughts with which I did that were not healthy.

Only later did I discover that a truly healthy diet means that you also sometimes treat yourself to chocolate, cakes, sweets, cookies or creamy sauces. Especially when you notice that you stay far away from these or that you are never allowed to eat a cake on birthdays, it is good to take a look at “Why am I so adamant about this?”.

Also realize that it is perfectly normal to eat healthier one day than the next. There is nothing wrong with eating a takeaway pizza sometimes if you just serve a vegetable meal the next day. It is okay not to faithfully eat your two pieces of fruit every day, to have pancakes for breakfast once or to eat more and unhealthier than usual at that one cozy brunch.

Do you find yourself dreading things like eating out? Seek professional help or talk to people about it. The sooner you get there, the less difficult it often is to break your patterns.

4. Try not to deny yourself things

When I read online about crash diets or diets where you go through life low-carb ( man, I get dizzy just thinking about it ), I can sometimes get a little sad. Of course, you’re not supposed to be eating chips and cookies all day long. But it’s the other extreme when you completely deny yourself foods. Often you get huge cravings for them or you might overdo it on healthy eating.

Instead of completely denying yourself food, it often works much better to allow yourself to eat it sometimes. So don’t make agreements with yourself like “I’ll never eat cake again” or “I won’t eat chips”. But allow yourself to eat something of that now and then and try to enjoy it extra.

5. Visit a dietitian for nutritional advice

What helped me a lot during my recovery is to look at food more rationally . I had countless associations with food: loss of control, healthy/not healthy, gaining weight, being less than perfect, not good according to person X or Y, opinions of others, fear of growing up… I stuck countless labels on it, while – well – it is also just food. A dietician helped me tremendously to change my view on food. She showed me what a normal diet looks like and that my image of many foods was wrong. Thanks to her, I learned a lot to make my own plan regarding food and not to be guided too much by opinions and hypes.

Thanks to the nutritional advice, I can still look at food in a very sober way. I know exactly what I need in a day. For example, if I’m at a lunch spot and notice that I’m still hungry, I’ll happily get another sandwich at the supermarket. Ten years ago, I would never have done that and I thought “A portion is a portion”. And when people talk about diet hypes, I’m more likely to think “Huh, but how can that be healthy?” than I would ever go along with it.

6. Eat consciously (and enjoy consciously)

Don’t eat your dinner or lunch quickly, quickly. Don’t eat breakfast in a hurry with the first colleague of the day already on the phone. Really try to taste what you eat, think about whether you like it and make a moment of the meal. If you always eat in a hurry, it is difficult to see it as a moment of enjoyment. When you consciously take your time, it gives you more positive associations with food. It can also help you feel better when you are full if you eat a little more slowly.

And if you eat something extra tasty? Then do that very consciously. Take small bites of your piece of cake or really make a moment of it when you buy that one tasty chocolate cookie for yourself. Then you can associate tasty things more with “a special moment” or “treat” instead of with negative things.

7. Learn to trust your body

Your body often indicates what it needs quite well. It just sometimes takes time (and eating mindfully) to recognize those signals. See what it does to you when you give in to your body’s signals. Are you hungry? Try to eat something, even if it’s just a small one. Are you really full? Listen to it and don’t hesitate to say ‘no’, even if you’re only on course six of seven. Are you really craving a croissant when you’re walking past the bakery? Treat yourself to one. And do you sometimes feel like having lunch earlier or need snacks more often than usual? Adjust your eating pattern for that day accordingly.

Listening to my body was terrifying to me at first. I was afraid of losing “control” or seeing my scale numbers skyrocket. None of that happened. Eating intuitively has brought me a lot. It taught me…

• …that I can easily have another helping if the rest don’t, without feeling like a glutton. “My body just needs it,” I knew then.
• …to sometimes turn down dessert when, just after a six-course meal, I felt my stomach almost burst out of my skirt and I couldn’t stand the sight of food anymore.
• …to sometimes have breakfast at home before a family brunch, because I know that otherwise I will be grumpy from hunger.
• …to occasionally eat vegetables while someone else orders fries, because that’s what I need at that moment.
• …only to be the other way around and start eating chocolate while a friend sticks to just a tangerine.

8. Think about what a healthy relationship with food brings you

What would it bring you if you could look at food in a different way? Write that down somewhere for yourself or even visualize it. For example, could you go to cozy dinners with friends more often? Would it give you peace of mind if you were less concerned about 1 kilo more or less? Would it give you a lot more free time if you no longer had to exercise fanatically, but tackled it in a slightly milder way? Would it help you become healthier if you looked at food in a different way?

For example, a healthier relationship with food helped me to really live again. I spent a lot of time and energy every day on eating, not eating and all the thoughts about it. I often missed dinners or fun things with friends. A healthy relationship with food meant more enjoyment, more togetherness and simply more life for me at the time.

In this way, list for yourself what a different view on nutrition brings you. Why is this worth doing your best for – even when it is difficult? It is precisely at the moments when your old patterns are lurking that it can stimulate you to go against them.

9. Cook or bake with people who have a healthy relationship with food

Fortunately, there are also many people who do approach food in a healthy way. It helped me enormously in my recovery to eat, cook or bake with people who looked at food very differently than I did. People who didn’t even bother to look at the list of ingredients, but simply dumped a cake on their plate. Or who poured a lot more olive oil into the pan than I did at the time. It was precisely by watching how others do it that I was able to recognize my own unhelpful thoughts and patterns.

We often compare ourselves negatively to others. You may look at people who, in your eyes, have the perfect body. Or people who, in your eyes, eat better or have a stricter exercise regime than you. But compare the other way around. Find a positive source of inspiration. Someone who, in your eyes, has a very healthy relationship with food, and who eats healthily but can also enjoy tasty, unhealthy things. Talk to each other about food or (even better!) cook or bake something tasty together or visit a restaurant together.

10. Look at what’s underneath your relationship with food

“An eating disorder is never about food” is the most heard sentence during my recovery. I firmly believe in that myself. Most people do not have a problem with food itself. They can physically eat. They also really like things. Often there is a pattern behind it and you use too little/too much/too healthy/too controlled eating as a means to deal with difficult things.

For example, my eating disorder was about perfectionism, fear of growing up, fear of failure , insecurity and low self-esteem. Dealing with food in an unhealthy way was my outlet to deal with all of those things.

I believe that restoring your relationship with food also lies in research into where that distorted view of food comes from. For example, why do you want to have control over what you eat? Why do you only consider yourself perfect if you fit a certain size? Why do you have to stand on the scale so often? Why do you need food to cope with emotions? Why does it affect you when people say things like “Man, would you really eat that?”? What is underneath? Can you figure that out (possibly with the help of a coach or psychologist)?

It helped me tremendously to tell myself every time I struggled with something: “My fear is not about this cake or those few extra pounds.” It was about other things. By looking at that, I was able to grow step by step into someone who no longer needed the disturbed relationship with food.

11. See yourself as more than what you eat or how much you weigh

If you once reached the bottom of the chip bag faster than you intended, that does not make you a failure. The fact that you are a few pounds heavier than before is no reason to suddenly look in the mirror with dissatisfaction. And if you are the only one who eats dessert while the rest refuse, that does not mean a lack of discipline. It simply means that you allow yourself to do so and that you enjoy it.

Regardless of whether it is sometimes necessary to lose or gain weight, it is important to separate your self-confidence from what is on your plate, what number the scale shows and whether or not you turn down this cake. Two kilos more does not make you a different person. Losing weight to a healthy weight does not make you unsociable and stupid. And gaining weight does not make you less disciplined. Often it is a sign of discipline that you can become more relaxed with food than you were.

In the end, you are always so much more than what you eat, how much you weigh, how often you exercise, and what’s on your dinner menu. You are good enough. Even now.

Have you or have you ever suffered from an unhealthy relationship with food?