How to Shift Your Mindset About Food
Picture this:
You’re at a restaurant. You peruse the menu with sections like “Sandwiches” “Burgers” “Pasta” and everything looks tasty, your mouth is watering, you can’t even begin to decide what sounds best.
Then your eyes wander over to the section labeled “Salads”, or the index with the little leaf symbol that indicates an option that is low-cal.
Your enthusiasm drops a little bit.
You think “Well, I probably should order a salad…” The enticing fried foods are calling your name, the warm carbs and gooey cheeses, but you feel conflicted. You make a list of your top three choices and include a salad in there, to make yourself feel better. The “good” option is still on the table, right?
Then the waiter comes, and you make your decision and it’s… not salad.
It’s fine! You’ll get the salad next time. You’ll skip dinner. You’ll just eat half your meal right now and the other half later. That’s what you tell yourself.
Your food comes, sizzling and delicious, and you eat happily, indulging with some “bad” foods. You’ve worked hard, you’ve been good lately, it’s okay to eat these “bad” foods right now. You’ve had a bad day, you’re stressed out. These “bad” foods will make you feel better.
The meal ends and the guilt creeps in. The “I shouldn’t have eaten so much”, the “next time make me order a salad”. The beating yourself up for the food you just ate. The judgment towards your body and the decisions you just made.
This had become what most restaurant experiences were like for me. Eating was emotional: a reward for a job well done, a comfort for a bad mood, an excuse for not taking care of myself.
Finally, I decided I was sick of it. I was sick of getting upset with myself when I ate some foods and feeling unsatisfied when I ate others. It was time to shift my mindset and the way I looked at food.
First let me start by saying this; Food is supposed to make you feel good! But not in the way that I was thinking about it before. Food is supposed to make you feel good because it should be fueling your body and giving it what it needs to run properly and efficiently. I was using food to feel good emotionally, which was temporary and often led to physically feeling not so good. Plus, the emotional reason for feeling bad in the first place would still be there once the temporary pleasure of the food I had eaten was gone.
There are three main things that I did to shift my mindset about food. I’ll tell you all about them here, and hopefully you can start making these positive changes in your life as well.
I stopped labeling foods as “good” or “bad”
Do we know that some foods are more nutritious and better for our bodies than others? Yes, of course. But labeling some foods as bad ones (things that you shouldn’t eat) and other foods as good ones (things that you should eat) only sets you up for feeling upset and guilty any time you so much as glance at a slice of pizza.
The first thing I did when I decided to shift my mindset, was I tried to eliminate phrases such as “I shouldn’t eat that” or “I can’t eat that, it’ll make me fat”. Restricted eating like this only makes us want those things more. Instead, think of it as choosing not to eat those things because you know that something else will benefit you more in the long run. Choosing something else will make you feel more energized and happy. If the choice is framed in a positive way, it is more likely to be a successful one.
I replaced those phrases that I had become so accustomed to using with positives. Whenever it was time to eat, I would go to the refrigerator and think “What will make my body feel good to eat right now?” or “What can I eat that will fuel my body well?”
I tried to focus on what would make me feel good (physically and mentally) throughout the day, rather than what would fulfill an emotional need or craving in that moment.
I stopped beating myself up if I made a poor decision.
The mentality that many of us have adapted towards eating unhealthy things as “falling off the wagon” is a dangerous one. It puts you in the mindset that healthy eating is only temporary, that it’s a challenging thing we must do in order to stay away from the temptations of “bad” foods. Viewing an unhealthy choice as “falling off the wagon” also sets us up to stay “off the wagon”. It makes one choice feel like we’ve failed at our health journey, so we may as well eat six more cookies — I mean, we’ve already failed, right? Might as well go on a food bender and get back on the wagon tomorrow or next week or who cares I’m a big failure I’ll never be healthy.
But that’s simply not true! One choice does not delete or reset all of the other choices you’ve made that have been positive for your health. One choice is just that: ONE choice. It’s small. Tiny. Don’t let it ruin your day.
I am not perfect, by any means. I try to be healthy and make good choices as often as I can, but there are still times when I reach for that cookie or end the day with ice cream, or choose to eat something that I know isn’t the best for my body.
Before, when I would make a bad choice, I would beat myself up. I would use it as an excuse to continue eating poorly and make more bad choices. If I started my day off with a donut, I was already “off the wagon” so might as well continue eating poorly the rest of the day. I ate poorly on a Friday? Well, might as well eat whatever I want all weekend and start over again on Monday.
But do we ever really start over again on Monday when we have that mentality?
Usually not.
So now, I take every decision one at a time instead. Your entire day is a series of choices, and one poor choice does not derail the entire train. It is one small choice, and the next time you eat you will be given an opportunity to make another choice. Make as many choices as possible that help prevent disease and benefit your health, and don’t sweat the other stuff.
I stopped using the scale as the sole measure of my health.
This one was hard for me. I had always hated what I saw when I stepped on the scale, and I thought that I always would. Even when other people would tell me I looked thin and didn’t need to lose any weight, I would think back to that number on the scale and internally disagreed with them. Anytime I decided to “get back on track” with my health and try to lose weight, I would weigh myself constantly, using that as the only way of indicating whether or not I was doing well.
But in case you didn’t already know, how much you weigh is not necessarily an indication of how healthy you are!
So finally, during this mindset transformation of mine, I decided to stop paying attention to the scale. Instead I focused on eating foods that I knew would help my body run well and make me feel physically alert, focused, and ready for anything. I used my physical and mental state as the scale of how well I was doing, rather than a silly number.
Now does this mean that I threw out my scale, never to weigh myself again? No. I still have goals for that number to be lower, but it’s no longer the only thing I use to determine how healthy I am or whether or not how I’m fueling and exercising my body is working. I try to stick to only weighing myself once a week instead of daily, and I don’t let the number on the scale determine my mood.
And guess what? As soon as I shifted my focus away from the scale and towards how I felt fueling my body with nutritious foods, that silly little number went lower than it’s been in years.
I recently learned the term “Non-Scale Victory”, and have tried to make those the center of my health journey instead of the number on the scale. These little victories (like an increase in energy levels, fewer cravings, feeling more comfortable in my clothes) are what I celebrate more than that number. And often, as I discovered, those victories are often also an indicator that the scale is going down as well. But the number isn’t what’s important, how you feel is.
Incorporating these three things and creating this mindset shift was a crucial step for me in my health journey. For a long time I knew what I should be doing and what I should be eating for me to feel my best, but my mindset and emotional eating habits got in the way. Coming from a place of positivity and forgiveness will always be more successful than coming from a place of restriction and guilt. Your health isn’t a wagon for you to fall off of, it’s a constant journey and process. Everything you do either gets you closer to your health goals or further away, but one choice does not put you all the way back at the beginning. So wake up tomorrow with a new positive outlook and treat yourself as if your body deserves to feel healthy and strong and beautiful — because it does.
As always, restless I roam.
Originally published at http://restless-i-roam.com on August 28, 2020.
