Mostly everyone I know has a turbulent relationship with food.  We’ve taken the pleasure out of eating, we’ve made eating a battleground of willpower and we’ve made food the enemy yet we can’t live without eating!  If we have to do it, let’s make it enjoyable and stop fighting it.

There is no good or bad food – it’s just food.  Yes, limiting or eliminating genetically modified, chemically enhanced and over-processed food is a wise decision but relegating food to enemy status isn’t an effective strategy to stop bingeing or overeating.  Doing this mystifies food, makes it untouchable and we find ourselves wanting more because we want what we can’t have, right?

What if you decided to allow yourself to eat food freely, enjoy the act of eating and stopped beating yourself up about it?  I suspect this is a VERY different strategy for most which is good because stigmatizing food hasn’t worked to decrease the rates of obesity in this country.  It’s just made us crazy because we’re struggling against our most basic need as a human, it’s counter-intuitive.  There is so much fear around eating the wrong food, following the wrong diet and gaining weight that we’ve scared ourselves out of nourishing our bodies and enjoying the eating experience.

This approach is only part of the equation when trying to achieve a healthy relationship with food but, once mastered, can be pivotal in maintaining a permanent change.