Information for Inspiration.
A resource for Intuitive Eating, eating disorder recovery, and body acceptance
How to Stop Feeling Guilty About Food
Food guilt is one of the most common challenges my clients report.
Regardless of age, body size, or specific eating patterns, for so many folks, nagging food guilt is persistent and unrelenting.
It shapes what, when, and how much they choose to eat, how they feel about themselves after they eat, their ability to enjoy social events and holidays, and how they show up in their day-to-day life.
So why is food guilt so pervasive, and what can you do about it?
Can You Heal Your Relationship with Food Without Gaining Weight? Let’s Talk About It
Usually, by the time someone is sitting with me, they’ve been struggling for quite a while. Sometimes months, often years. They are exhausted by the amount of physical and mental energy they are spending on trying to manage food and control their weight.
At some point they will often say something like, “I really want to heal my relationship with food, without gaining weight.”
Or, “…but I can’t gain weight.”
Or, “…but I really need to lose weight, too.”
Sometimes it’s this very concern that’s kept them in a place they don’t want to be or delayed them from reaching out to get support sooner.
So, is it possible to heal your relationship to food without gaining weight? Let’s get into it.
Food Noise: What Causes It & How to Quiet It
For as long as I’ve been a dietitian, clients have sat before me and, often tearful and desperate for relief, described intense, persistent, and distressing thoughts about food that consumed far too much of their mental energy.
This phenomenon is not new. But the way we’ve come to describe it is. They were experiencing food noise.
Becoming an Eating Disorder Dietitian: Best Resources for Building Your Skillset
Most dietitians will work with eating disorders, whether they realize it or not. Yet few of us receive real training in our dietetic programs to do it well.
I would love to see our field lift up, empower, and support other dietitians who have an interest in working with this population to gain the knowledge, skills, and confidence to do that!
If you are that dietitian who maybe doesn’t know a whole lot about working with eating disorders yet, but you want to learn more, below are my recommendations for truly excellent resources and support to get you started.
What is Intuitive Eating, Really?
I remember when I picked up the book Intuitive Eating for the first time. It blew my mind.
The idea that weight was not inextricably linked to health, that pursuing intentional weight loss was correlated to future weight gain, that dieting was a primary predictor of eating disorder development, and that meticulously measuring and tracking every morsel of food that crossed one’s lips was disordered eating was all brand-new information to me.
So much of my training to become a dietitian centered around how to help people control their food more. The notion that, a key to building a healthier relationship with food was actually to control less was kind of mind-boggling.