Do I Really Have A Problem With Food? 9 Questions To Ask
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Have you ever wondered if you have a problem with food? If so, it’s time to get clear.
We're gonna get into how to know what's going on in your relationship with food- perhaps you know something is off, you know something is not right. But you're not really sure. And you're asking yourself questions like:
Am I a binge eater?
Am I an emotional eater and over eat?
Or am I just crazy?
I remember being at that point of just sheer confusion and just not knowing what's going on. Feeling like I am absolutely losing my marbles. What's wrong with me?
I want to help you get clear because the first step towards navigating this journey to food freedom and body confidence and feeling incredible in your own skin is to understand where you're at.
We have to raise our level of awareness and really get clear on what is going on. Clarity brings a lot of peace, even though it doesn't necessarily solve our problems, it shows us what we have going on, which allows us to then figure out how to begin navigating it.
Why I hate labels
So as we dive into this and we start getting very clear on what's going on in your relationship with food, I want you to do everything in your power to refrain from labeling yourself. I don't want you to carry that weight anymore. Let go of it, release it and say, “hey, yeah, maybe I'm dealing with something in my relationship with food and my body that needs my attention. But I am not this thing.”
You were born as a natural, intuitive eater, somebody who's able to effortlessly listen to their body, and eat when they're hungry and stop when they're full. When you were a baby, you didn't have these struggles, you naturally lost interest in food, when your body and brain registered satisfied, and you cried and whined when you're hungry. That's just how it went. That's how your biology is designed, but through years of behaviours like dieting and trying to force your body into a certain mold, and all the societal pressures and a whole host of other things, you may have come in and contributed to why your relationship with food and your body has gone south. But that's not how you were born, it's not part of your identity. It's now something that you're potentially dealing with.
Questions to start asking yourself
In order to really know whether or not you have issues with food that need your attention, I'm going to ask you some questions. And I want you to think about this and ask yourself, is this true for me? Is this resonating with me? Because if you can answer yes to any of the following questions, you're not going to claim, “oh I'm a binge eater or emotional eater, compulsive eater, an overeater” you're just going to know that something in your relationship with food is not maybe ideal, is not balanced, or is not how you were designed to be.
Do you ever feel guilt for eating?
Do you ever feel anxious around food?
Do you ever feel a sense of a loss of control or impulsiveness around food, like that feeling like maybe you're being pushed or driven by some outside force to eat?
Although you intellectually know you don't want to or you're already full, do you still feel a drive to keep eating? Almost like this external drive that feels like it's pushing you? Or perhaps it doesn't feel like a push, it just feels like this mental tug of war (like, oh I don't need more of it. But, yes, I actually do)?
Do you ever judge yourself for what you eat?
Do you feel like you did good or you did bad? Or this food is good, and this food is bad- just this sense of judgment? Or maybe you shouldn't have eaten that or you don't deserve to eat that- any type of self judgment around food?
Do you use food to cope?
Do you use it to distract, or numb out? Do you use it as a coping mechanism (which, by the way, is not always a bad thing)?
Are there certain foods that give you more anxiety?
Are you afraid you're going to spiral out of control with these foods? Do you label certain foods as good or bad?
Do you ever feel like you are on a roller coaster ride when it comes to your eating?
Like some days things are fine. It could even be weeks, it could even be months, that some days are fine. And other days. You find yourself elbow deep in a tub of ice cream or a bag of chips or you know with your head inside the pantry and you can't get out right that feeling of I can't stop myself.
Do you feel like there's no way you could trust your body and your intuition to guide your eating?
Even that idea just sounds crazy. If I listened to my intuition, it would probably tell me eating an entire sleeve of Oreos every day is perfectly normal. Right?
Do you feel like sometimes you can't even distinguish your body's hunger, fullness, and satisfaction cues?
You really don't know if you're feeling hungry, and you have a really hard time distinguishing if you're full. And maybe you have a really hard time ever feeling satisfied.
If you could answer yes to any of those questions, one, maybe two, or maybe all of those questions are hitting a nerve and resonating with you. But if you answered yes to even one of those questions, here's the deal. Something is off, and something is not right. Something's not how it should be. It's not how you were designed to function. Something in your relationship is out of balance. And that might be causing you to feel stress and anxiety and overwhelm when it comes to food and your body.
If you could answer yes to any of that, your relationship with food and your body needs your attention.
If you want to reach this place of peace, this flow where you are off the all or nothing rollercoaster, you're no longer experiencing these high highs met with these low lows, but you're actually climbing to a place that's stable at the top, where you feel comfortable and confident in your own skin. Where you have an easy and normal and effortless relationship with food. You have to start investing your intention and your focus on healing, and what is going on in your relationship with food.
The reality is, it's not just going to go away unless you focus your intention on retraining those thought cycles, those habit patterns and those behaviours that have become habitual. Once we have these habit pathways wired into our brain that send us these impulses to binge or overeat, white knuckling it isn't very effective. If you don't give it what it wants, that urge will not leave you alone. And that's when you really start to feel like you’re losing it.
The brain is hardwired to move us towards pleasure and away from pain.
If the direction your brain is moving is towards something that's pleasurable, but also harmful (AKA binge eating), that's when we start to have problems. And so it's very normal and natural to like binging if you're in it, but also at the same time hate the fact that you're engaging in these behaviours.
When a habit pathway becomes wired into your brain, it sends you impulses to eat because it remembered that one time that you did it, and it lit up your brain's reward centre. Now, it sends you those impulses, because it wants that feeling again. When that happens, it’s in a different area of the brain- the one that’s responsible for things like reason, rational thought, making decisions, and acting in alignment with your goals, which is your prefrontal cortex. It’s the place that's in charge. But when you're feeling these impulsive behaviours, that's coming from a different area of the brain. That's why it can feel like when you're dealing with these compulsive impulsive behaviours with food, it feels like a mental tug of war, because one area of the brain is saying, no, don't do this, and the other area is saying do it.
Awareness brings healing
The beautiful thing is when you start to understand what's going on in your brain, you don’t feel as powerless anymore. Understanding the science of what was happening can help you go from victim mentality and labeling yourself a binge eater to being more strategic about it. It helps you learn that you’re not broken. You’re not weak willed, you’ve accomplished some awesome things in your life, you’ve tackled some incredible things, you’ve pushed through hard challenges in other ways. So that's the place I want to start in helping you understand what is potentially going on in your relationship with food to help you feel hopefully a lot less crazy, a lot less alone, a lot less broken, and a lot more empowered.
After reading, I hope you have some clarity on what exactly is happening in your relationship with food. Remember, don't label yourself, just recognize, hey, these are behaviours that I’m engaging in. These are the characteristics and the qualities of what my relationship with food is looking like right now. This isn't my identity. This isn't who I am. This isn't a label that I need to attach to myself. This just helps give me clarity in what it is that I'm dealing with. I hope this clarity brings you peace and starts your path to healing.
Until next time,
Britt
Join me for The Food Freedom For Life coaching program! This program is for those who know they want to improve their relationship with food and their body, but are afraid of spiralling out-of-control and want a proven, step-by-step system to go from feeling crazy around food to normal again. Book a free consult to learn more.
