Can You Heal Your Relationship with Food Without Gaining Weight? Let’s Talk About It
I start every session with a new client with the same question: “What makes right now the right time to seek out this kind of support?”
And by “this kind of support” I mean, support from a dietitian and support for all things related to food, nutrition, and eating.
Of course, everyone I see is a different human, with different lived experiences, and a different story. But while I sit and listen to these clients share about:
their parent who took them to Weight Watchers when they were 10, or
the comfort they found in food when they were little and their caregivers were emotionally unavailable, or
the middle school health teacher that scared them into believing that sugar is toxic, or
the positive attention they received when they were able to starve themselves into an “acceptable” body size,
I’m always struck by how much these stories are more alike than they are different.
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.
They want help.
They want space from the constant mental chatter about when, what, how much, where, and with whom to eat.
They like the idea of Intuitive Eating.
And…they do not want to gain 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.
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Before we go further, I want to name something important…
Weight gain (or not losing weight) is a valid concern
I mean, of course!
If much of your life has been spent feeling like, or being told that, you are too big or you’re just an ice cream cone away from being too big, then of course this is going to be on your mind.
And, while I will absolutely, 100%, validate the feelings my clients are experiencing in this moment, I will not reassure them that they won’t gain weight. Because I don’t have a crystal ball and, the truth is, I do not know what will happen with their weight.
I am not saying they will definitely gain weight. I’m just also not saying that they definitely won’t. And, I’m not promising that they will lose weight, either.
I will reassure them that we will address their body concerns as they come up. And that all the feelings that arise along the way are welcome.
Most people aren’t surprised that I can’t make promises about what will happen with their weight. Perhaps a little disappointed, still.
So, the answer to…
Can you heal your relationship with food without gaining weight?
Yes, it possible for some people to heal their relationship to food without gaining weight. It is also possible that they will gain weight. Or that they will lose weight.
What happens with your body depends on many factors. Like:
Where your body weight is currently in relation to where your body naturally wants to be.
If you are adequately nourished or if there are nutritional deficits that need to be addressed.
If you have a long history of weight cycling or yo-yo dieting
What beliefs and behaviors need to be addressed to help you heal your relationship to food.
Ultimately, body size just is not within our direct control as much as we’d like for it to be (and been led to believe it is). That is a bummer, I know.
Healing your relationship to food means letting go of trying to micromanage your body.
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Moreover…
Healing your relationship to food can look like many different things
It often includes working on resolving disordered eating patterns, like restricting or bingeing or both (and others).
Some people may already eat a balanced diet and get enough to eat overall, but have a lot of fear, anxiety, or guilt around specific types of foods. In this case we may focus on neutralizing those foods and expanding intake to include some of those foods.
We may also work on building body trust and increasing your confidence in your ability to listen and respond appropriately to body cues – like hunger and fullness. And how to get your needs met when those cues are absent.
It might mean increasing your comfort and confidence with food planning and preparation.
Or figuring out how to manage chronic health conditions through dietary interventions without turning those interventions into a rigid and restrictive set of food rules.
Or being able to eat a salad without feeling like you are on a diet.
Depending on what healing your relationship to food means and looks like for you will likely play a role in whether weight change, in any direction, is a part of that.
It’s also essential to acknowledge that…
Your body image matters!
While weight change may or may not be an outcome of doing the work to heal your relationship to food, it is OK if you still hold hopes and desires about what will (or won’t) happen to your body. In my experience, the vast majority of people do!
It’s for that reason that body image work is a pretty inextricable part of the making peace with food work.
Body image struggles are so connected to our relationship to food. Sometimes they are even at the root. So, they must be considered and attended to.
Contrary to popular belief, manipulating your body into meeting some societal ideal about how bodies are “supposed” to be is not a prerequisite for healing your body image.
And body image healing happens across the size spectrum.
Photo by Gab Audiovisuel on Unsplash
The takeaway
It makes sense that that you might have some concerns about what will or won’t happen with your body as a result of healing your relationship to food. If body changes weren’t a concern, I suspect far fewer people would be struggling with their relationship to food to begin with!
So let me say it loud and clear one more time: It is OK to feel this way.
AND…
It is also true that making a specific weight outcome the focus of this work really is not compatible with healing your relationship to food. In fact, for most folks, it’s going to directly interfere. You won’t be able to really do the work if it is predicated on achieving or maintaining a particular weight.
That’s why body image work is such an important piece of healing your relationship to food.
The good news is, healing body image is not size dependent, either. You may not learn to love the way your body looks. (I mean, diet culture, beauty culture, and anti-aging culture all have a vested interest in making sure that you don’t!)
But you can still learn to live your biggest, fullest, most joyous life, free from constant food noise and body preoccupation, even if your body size doesn’t land exactly where you’d like for it to be.
So, as you move on from this post, here’s what I invite you to consider:
If you weren’t worried about gaining weight, what do you imagine healing your relationship with food would look like?
What might be different about life if you could free yourself from constant food noise and body worry?
And, what if this could all be possible even if your weight doesn’t land where you imagine it needs to be?