Hi everyone! welcome back. As you all know by now, the holistic health nut is centered around health of the entire being. Spiritual, mental and physical. Today, I want to talk about an issue that has plagued the health community and even the world at large for years. This issue has affected both our lives and the way we think about food. What is this issue you may ask? Dieting! Dieting has been a trend for many years. Unfortunately, dieting has gained so much traction and has sort of redefined what being healthy is. My goal with this blogpost is to shift our minds away from diet culture. I decided to team up with a long-time friend and colleague in the field to bring to you this post. Her name is Noni Vaughn-Pollard. She is an NYU graduate and is now a dietetic technician at Mount Sinai Hospital Eye & Ear Infirmary. We met in 2016 at a nutrition event in the city. She is also the author of the blog titled, Afro and Appetite which deals with healthy food relationships, positive body image and ripping diet culture to shreds. That was a lot more graphic than I intended (lol). Anyway we met up a few weeks ago and had an in depth conversation about food relationships over a hearty meal. We decided to break down the conversation into six topics listed below:
1. Food Relationships
2. Orthorexia
3. Forbidden Foods
4. Dieting
5. Judgement
6. Intuitive Eating
Food Relationships
In order to fully understand this phenomenon, we wanted to first define and understand food relationships. Our relationship with food goes beyond physical food. It encompasses the emotions and thoughts that come up when we think about food or when we eat food. It affects how we eat, what we eat and how we feel about what we eat. Many of us believe that certain foods are bad for us and certain foods are good. This is also known as “all or nothing” thinking, where either one eats completely healthy avoiding all "unhealthy foods" or they don't eat healthy at all. There is also the relationship of assigning status to food. Someone may feel that they are at the top of the social ladder if they eat healthy, whereas someone else may think another person is "bougie" because they eat healthy. I'm sure there are many other types of food relationships that exist, but these were a few of the most relevant I think.
These relationships can affect both our mental fitness and our physiology. They can lead to a major dieting cycle where a person restricts themselves and as a result of not being
physically and emotionally satisfied they end up binging. Following this, guilt presents itself, and one may find themself in this hole of "I'm not good enough" "why did I mess up my diet?", "What is wrong with me?" These thoughts turn into stress which may lead to an eating disorder if you are not careful. I think in order for us to really live a healthy and fulfilling life we need to pay attention to the relationship we have with food. In my opinion, the ideal food relationship is one where a person understands food for what it is (a resource to fuel the body), remove their identity from their food choices and is mindful in the moments where they are eating.
There are several factors that affect the way we eat: Nature vs nurture, popular culture and our social groups. All of these factors have one theme in common, they are the environment in which we are socialized. Maybe growing up, your mom would say “eat your veggies or you won't get dessert or don't eat this you'll gain weight”, or, all your friends eat salad because it is "cool" and so you eat salad because you want to be cool, or, popular culture tells you to go on this diet because your favorite celeb is propagating it. These types of outside sources can negatively impact our health and we see this in the number of teens who suffer from eating disorders or people who are constantly dieting because they want to get skinny. In a world where our eating habits are constantly under attack and being thin is glorified, it is up to us to take control and start to heal. For our own health. This can be done by respecting ourselves. Noni brought up an incredible idea. She said, "We need to become comfortable enough with ourselves, so we don't use others' opinions to validate our food choices."
Orthorexia
Now that we've explored food relationships. Let's talk about one of the extremes. Orthorexia is a relatively new type of eating disorder. "It is an obsession with the quality of food that one eats," Noni says. This way of eating tends to fly under the radar when it comes to eating disorders because the orthorexic is usually eating food that we consider to be healthy. They will always go for Wholesome foods (fruits and vegetables, whole grains and the works). You will NEVER catch them with a donut or anything that is deemed unhealthy.
Now, you may ask why this would be considered an eating disorder when the person is eating healthy. Here's what Noni and I think: an eating disorder is usually a culmination of restriction and obsession (or an obsession with obtaining and maintaining optimal health by restricting major food groups from a diet). An anorexic is obsessed with being thin and they constantly restrict, a bulimic is obsessed with being thin and so they purge after a binge. In the same way, an orthorexic is obsessed with eating healthy foods because they think eating anything outside of what is supposedly healthy will make them unhealthy. It dictates who they are and without it, some may argue that they don't know themselves. With any unhealthy food relationship, life becomes stressful and a person may begin to isolate themself. One may find themselves declining social invitations because the food available at the gathering may not meet their needs or criteria.
Forbidden Foods
Forbidden foods is also a central theme in unhealthy food relationships. Forbidden foods are those food items that everyone thinks is bad for you and should never be eaten. If these foods are eaten it is usually named "cheat meal" (I think this is ridiculous, but I digress) or guilt is felt afterwards. Diet culture helps fuel this fire by "using fear-based tactics to scare people into changing their eating behaviors," as Noni puts it. They advertise all these diets claiming to do things that they really are not doing or they package foods with the phrases like "____" free (you can fill in the blank) or guilt free. First off, why is guilt associated with food? Health has become "trendy" making it easy for manufacturers to manipulate us with health phrases on food packaging and also by using celebrities to advertise their items. Noni adds that, "Certain foods may be reasonably avoided for people with food sensitivities, but for the rest of us, there should be no off-limit foods." Restriction can have a negative effect on our ability to live a healthy fulfilling life because instead of living freely we end up policing every little thing we eat.
Dieting
Our diet is our personal way of eating. As I mentioned earlier, health has turned into a trend and as a result numerous diets are cropping up every day. Typically, they claim to operate by a certain mechanism when in reality they do not. We call these fad diets because they are usually unsustainable. I asked Noni when it would be a good idea to diet and we both agreed that if you have a disease such as diabetes or renal (kidney) disease or celiac etc., then it is necessary to live by a certain diet. Otherwise, a regular healthy diet is what we would prescribe. This does not mean that we will be restricting “bad foods”. I think a lot of individuals go on diets in order to lose weight and often times it is because they feel inadequate at their current weight. When someone is trying to start a healthy journey it is destructive to have weight loss as the priority. I think your health should be the priority. Otherwise, people tend to enter into a cycle of questioning their worth when they are not losing the weight or seeing results fast enough. They get discouraged and soon quit. In addition to that, being thin does not automatically translate to being healthy.
Judgement
Judgement is another major factor that affects our food relationships. "There is this idea of a person being obsessed with becoming the perfect eater," Noni says. "Striving for a perfect diet causes unnecessary stress which comes from a combination of both internal and external pressure," she says. This external pressure comes from the people around us and society at large. We are constantly bombarded with the newest diet in the media as well as pictures of the perfect body. As a result of this external pressure we add to the equation by being overly critical of our own eating habits and food choices. I explained to Noni the idea of morality and food choices posed in a podcast titled "Nutrition Matters" by Paige Smathers (Dietitian). In one episode, Paige explains the necessity to detach morality from our food relationship. She says that a person may think they are perfect or a good person if they are able to eat healthy for a week straight or longer and think the opposite if they "mess up" their diet. This way of thinking should not be. Noni and I both agree with this principle because we understand that self-worth has nothing to do with what you eat. Food sustains life but it is not EVERYTHING.
Intuitive Eating
Now that we've thoroughly explored the concept of healthy food relationships. Let's talk about a solution! Intuitive eating is an idea coined by Dietitians Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch back in 1995. Intuitive eating refers to the ability to listen to your body's internal cues so that you can know what you want to eat and when you want to eat. This method is used to heal our relationship with food because it reduces anxiety around choosing food. It helps us to understand our body's needs, and the need for restriction will be removed. This results in improved emotional and mental health because when we listen to our body instead of external voices we are able to fuel our body with what it needs and we begin to respect it and claim more self-control.
Many people have an issue with this concept and you will usually hear questions like: " What do you mean eat what I want whenever I want?" This however, is not the case. In the age of social media, it is easy to miss your body's signals of satiety and hunger because we are usually so consumed with our technological devices while we are eating. Often times people compare what they eat to what they see others online are eating. I’ll talk about the dangers of comparison in another post. Additionally, looking at pictures of fit bodies can cause us to feel inadequate and enter the dieting cycle. Intuitive eating encourages us to be mindful. So it is not that you will be eating whatever, whenever, but that you will understand your body and become familiar with its signals of hunger and satiety. Here are three ways you can use to eat intuitively:
1. when you feel like eating, pay attention to why you want to eat. Is your mouth salivating, is your stomach rumbling? or is it that you are bored and feel like eating to pass the time? If the answer is the latter, consider doing something constructive like going for a walk or reading etc.
2. When you have a craving is it because you need it to comfort you, or are you physically
craving it (have a taste for it)? If you realize that you want that piece of cake because you are sad, consider processing your pain and working through it instead of using food to cover it.
3. Put away your devices and any distraction when you are eating. This helps you to concentrate on chewing your food properly and allow your digestive system to work effectively. When you eat while scrolling on your device, you tend to chew faster (mindlessly) and you swallow food that your body cannot adequately digest. As a result, you cannot absorb it and then you end up feeling hungry shortly after.
I hope this helped you realize that your relationship with food is necessary to live a healthy and fulfilling life. It is definitely going to take work and lots of trial and error to eat intuitively. Please remember, your food choices do not determine who you are. Do not tie your worth to what you eat. I often hear "you are what you eat" but I would like to pose an alternative "You are more than What you eat!" Stop dieting!
Special Thanks to Noni Vaughn-Pollard for helping me explore this extremely complicated topic. Check out her blog here:https://afroandappetite.wordpress.com
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Blessings!
Thanks @Rebecca.mcpherson , its definitely important!