Beyond Dieting - Heal Your Relationship with Food
As a nutritionist, I have learned that people associate nutrition with food and diet. While this is certainly an important component, nutrition includes much more than just what you eat. Another component of nutrition is related to having a well-functioning digestive system and balanced microbiome. This is just as, if not more, important than what you consume because digestion is how the body absorbs nutrients from food. If this system is impaired, dysfunctional or imbalanced, a person may not benefit from the healthy diet they are following. Currently, research supports the need for good digestion and a balanced microbiome.
There is also a third component of nutrition that goes beyond diet and digestion. It is related to a person’s relationship with food or how and why one eats. It includes habits, patterns, emotions and beliefs around food and eating. The reason this part of nutrition can be so difficult to address is because a person isn’t aware that their food choices come from habits, patterns or beliefs. In addition, changing these beliefs means a person has to – well, change what they believe! It is very difficult to change what or how one thinks about something that is already believed to be true.
However, adults commonly develop minor or major health issues as they age, resulting in the need to change what and how they eat. The following example with a hypothetical client provides a good illustration of this concept:
Michael came to see me because he was diagnosed with prediabetes,
wasn’t sleeping well and wanted to lose weight. His
diet consisted of skipped breakfast, fast food for lunch and
pasta or pre-made frozen meals for dinner. He has a sweet
tooth and eats dessert at night while watching TV before bed.
He goes out with friends on the weekends.
After our consultation, I give him a personalized paleo-type
meal plan to follow for a week. He reports back that he’s only
been able to implement a few changes. We begin to realize his
relationship with food is interfering with changing his habits.
The most noticeable patterns are: skipping breakfast, not
making balanced meals for lunch, working through lunches,
being too exhausted and lazy to cook dinner when at home,
succumbing to sweets cravings at night, and social eating on
the weekend (a reward for a long, hard work week). Believe it
or not, all of these patterns come from beliefs.
Take skipping breakfast, for example. Rather than saying,
“I’m going to make myself eat breakfast every morning,” a
better approach would be to find out why Michael doesn’t
want to eat. Maybe he doesn’t feel hungry, maybe he doesn’t
want to get up earlier. Or on a deeper level, this habit may
be tied to negative, or even positive, childhood memories of
breakfast with or without family. The list of possibilities is
endless and certainly different for everyone.
All these issues stem from your relationship with food, not the actual plan or the food. While you have an internal ‘Self ’ that knows what is best, you also have many parts that reflect a lifetime of habits, patterns and beliefs triggered by a memory, sense, situation or stress. These parts then, interfere with being able to change what you eat.
The ‘real’ work with nutrition then becomes identifying parts involved in the habits and patterns that drive the relationship with food and learning more about these parts. By transforming the parts that cause the behaviors, Michael can change the underlying beliefs and his relationship with food so he can easily follow a new eating plan and feel great!
Susan Blake, NTP, MS, CGP, is a nutritional therapist and focused on integrating mind, body, spirit and food. If you are ready to change your lifestyle and develop true health, contact The Whole Body Shop at sblake@thewholebodyshop.net, TheWholeBodyShop.net or 253.778.0684.






