Nourishing your body - a new approach to food and eating
You can’t hate your way to love.
You can’t control your way to nourishment.
You can’t eat your way to feeling nurtured.
But you can care your Self into connection.
‘Nourishing your body’ is Pillar One of my 9-month Vitality Medicine Program. But it’s not a diet or exercise plan, it’s a new approach to relating to your body. What does that mean?
Nourishing your body is about more than what food you eat. It is the process of really caring for your physical body. So that your body, and by extension, you, feel nurtured.
Nourished. Alive. Vital.
We know from decades of science that there are specific ‘keys’ to good health:
Healthy diet
Regular exercise
Don’t drink, smoke or do drugs
Stay socially connected
Connect with the natural environment
Food is essential for our livelihood. It is literally the thing that allows us to be able to function. Without it, we die.
Yet we can get stuck trying to control some kind of ‘ideal’ outcome. An outcome that usually has nothing to actually do with health, wellbeing or even in service of living.
“I need to eat healthy so I can…”
Be thin
Be acceptable
Be attractive
Be successful
Be something other than what I am now.
The concept of having a ‘healthy diet’ is a fraught space. Fraught with self hatred. With control. With cutting out whole food groups. With denial. With reaching to food as emotional sustenance when nurturing is not really available in any other physical way.
In many ways, how or what we eat (or avoid eating) can reflect how we learned to be cared for by others. What we feel like we deserve or don’t.
So that’s why nourishment is such an important concept here.
When we consider what it is to nourish our bodies, our aim becomes more than what food we choose to eat and when. It’s how we want to take care of ourselves and why. What we fuel our bodies with and for what function. How we come together in connection to share sustenance. How we connect with ourselves when we eat. How we enjoy the process.
It becomes a way of relating.
It’s understanding what our body needs to function optimally – enough nourishment, fuel and variety.
And getting to know how our body communicates – what it likes and doesn’t, what we think it likes vs. what it actually likes, and how we attune to subtle, early cues rather than late, big cues that are harder to fulfill.
To do this, we need to understand from a practical perspective, what our body actually needs to function well.
We need to know:
What are the basic building blocks of adequate and healthy nourishment?
How does our body communicate with us what it needs?
What gets in the way?
We know from decades of research that our bodies need a wide variety of nutritious foods (mostly plants) to function well. And many people tell me that they know what they should be eating.
But knowing how we ‘should’ nourish our bodies doesn’t always translate to making this happen easily. Why?
Often, lack of understanding, connection and other things get in the way.
We may not understand how our bodies tell us that they are hungry or full.
We may be stressed or running too fast and miss our body’s hunger cues – then become ravenous and crave high energy, nutrient poor foods (because that’s what our hungry body needs at that moment).
We may have learned to eat quickly because there was not enough time to slow down.
We may have been taught to override our fullness cues so we don’t waste food or seem impolite.
We may have learned to override disgust and to eat things we do not enjoy – to be accommodating, to meet the guidelines, to be ‘healthy’, or a certain weight or shape.
We may also hurry through the enjoyment of things we do like because we are devouring rather than savouring.
We might make food choices based on cravings, tastebuds, emotions and marketing, instead of what our bodies need – especially when we are stressed – simply because we haven’t been taught to tune into what our minds, hearts and stomach are actually saying.
I’ve listened to a lot of people talk about their relationships to food, and I’ve learnt that we need a different approach to understanding all of the contributing factors of food choices – and how to improve this dialogue within ourselves.
I’ve learnt that too much (or not enough) of one thing is not ideal.
That when we approach eating with scarcity or excess we create patterns that involve restriction and/or over-indulgence.
That when we bring virtue into eating, we create morality and shame.
That we can’t do it from a place of hate, control or disgust and call it nourishing.
The reality is – food doesn’t have a moral value – it isn’t good or bad, it’s what helps us to survive and thrive.
Personally, I have slowed down a lot in my approach. I know the guidelines in and out. I’ve worked in the eating disorder space and have heard all the ways humans universally hate on our bodies.
I’ve mapped all the ways I try to avoid my own pain, particularly as it relates to food or movement.
I know when I’m reaching for a biscuit because I feel emotionally hungry, need nurturing, feel like I’ve ‘deserve’ it, didn’t have enough carbs at lunch or because I actually want something sweet and delicious.
I know when my body is tired. When it needs rest. And when I am just avoiding getting up for a walk because I’m sad and I need a hug.
I know the difference between walking up a hill for a challenge that stimulates my cardiovascular system into wellbeing and walking up a hill for the number on the scales or clothes tag to be different.
I also know that through my journey of discovery, my body has changed.
I’m living with a body that supported me to come face to face with some of my biggest emotional depths, fears and pain over the last few years.
A body that has supported me through multiple procedures and heartaches.
A body that helped me find my own sense of inner nurturing, care and support.
That has a distinct sensuality and fullness of being, which did not come from shaping it to be a certain way or from chasing external validation.
It came from being truly with my Self and not abandoning, punishing or berating. Of feeling my Self and my body from the inside out.
It came from approaching myself with the kind of nurturing, kindness, love, consideration and respect everyone deserves.
And creating the relationship with myself that only I knew how to do.
Now when I approach food, I am not asking ‘what is the healthiest option’ but ‘what is the most supportive nourishment for my body right now?’
Upcoming workshop
In September, I will be offering a mini-workshop on how to flexibly work within the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating in a way that is nourishing and caring rather than hateful or punitive.
It will:
Be based on what you can ‘add’ in, swap or incorporate, rather than leave out, exclude or restrict.
Cover what is commonly undernourished, overnourished and how to adjust what you do day-to-day while considering red flags of disordered approaches.
Introduce a mind-body check in for exercise and eating, where you can consider your true motivation and real needs as a first step towards coming into a caring connection with yourself.
I will not guarantee that doing this will change your shape or weight. Because that is not the aim. Eating for health and nourishment is not the same as eating for thinness.
But I will give you more tools to choose for yourself – and what it is that you want for your relationship with food and your body.
And I’ll be delivering this from a place of integrity and authenticity – as someone who has been on this journey of life and what it means to live in a world obsessed with image – right alongside you.
You can expect to hear more about this in the next few months. If the topic calls to you and there are specific ideas you’d like to explore, I’d love to know.