Prioritizing What Matters While Healing Your Relationship with Food
Photo by Elena Mozhvito @miracleday via Unsplash
Healing your relationship with food is challenging!!! The process takes time, patience, self-kindness, practice, and has many ups & downs along the way. This is especially true if you’re healing from a lifetime of disordered eating or an eating disorder. The healing process can be overwhelming at times.
Three common roadblocks during the healing process are:
Trying to do too many things at once or making too many changes at once
Focusing on the outcome instead of the steps
Not being kind to yourself
In this blog post I’ll address the three common roadblocks to healing your relationship with food and offer strategies for prioritizing what matters in the process.
Roadblock #1- Too Much at Once
Trying to do too many things at once is overwhelming. It’s no wonder that when we’re overwhelmed, we freeze or try to escape from the situation. When we try to do too many things at once, we can’t do anything well because each thing is vying for our attention. This is as true in healing from disordered eating as it is in other areas of life!
While there are many areas to address when healing your relationship with food (e.g., food rules, consistent eating, body image, compulsive exercising), it’s difficult to work on all of these areas at one time. They all matter, AND YET they all can’t be top priority.
How do determine what is top priority
Everything can’t be top priority; however, it is possible to determine what matters most right now by carving out time to identify your most pressing needs.
Step 1-Brainstorming: On a piece of paper (or notes app, voice recorder) identify everything that matters to you about healing your relationship with food. Get every goal, worry, concern, fear, and challenge out of your mind and onto a piece of paper. Once you have everything written out, you’re ready to move on to step 2.
Step 2- Immediate needs: Look at your list of what matters and start to determine what needs to be done or addressed today and this week. If you’re not sure where to start, consider your basic needs (e.g., eating, hydrating, sleeping/rest, comfortable clothing, hygiene, etc.). For example, if you’re struggling with a restrict-binge eating pattern meeting your basic need for adequate, consistent food throughout the day might be top priority for right now. Any items that aren’t a priority for today or this week can be labeled as “later” or “in the future.”
Step 3- Narrow the top priority need down: More likely than not, you’ve chosen a fairly broad need to address from step 2. If eating consistent meals and snacks is your top priority need, consider the challenges and barriers you face with meeting this need. Narrow it down and be specific. For example, what is the most challenging meal for you to eat and why? What barriers do you face- are there issues of time, energy, money, meal preparation ability, etc.? Are there any “easy wins” that would boost your confidence level? After narrowing it down, what is ONE area that you can tackle today or this week?
Step 4- Do one thing and repeat: Once you’ve narrowed down what you’d like to focus on right now, choose one thing to do and repeat this one thing over and over until you feel comfortable. For example, if your top priority need is to eat a balanced breakfast (e.g., containing carbs, protein, fiber, and a source of fat) then your focus today might be to plan that meal for tomorrow morning and set a reminder on your phone. You could type in the components that you plan to eat as a reminder (e.g., “Today for breakfast I will have a bowl of oatmeal with raspberries, 2 scoops of peanut butter, and ground flaxseed plus a carton of yogurt”). Set a daily reminder with your morning menu until you feel confident that you can eat a balanced breakfast without needing to set the alarm.
A really important part of prioritizing and focusing on what matters is mastering one skill or step before moving onto the next. Building confidence in your ability to repeat and master a skill is an extremely important part of the healing process!
Roadblock #2- Focusing on the Outcome Instead of the Steps
We’ve been socialized to want results quickly (“Okay I ate more consistently this week, why am I still bingeing?”). Unfortunately, making changes to our behaviors is not a speedy process even though we’d like it to be!
When we’re focused on the outcome it can be incredibly difficult to see our progress. This can lead to the false belief that we’re not making any progress leaving us feeling overwhelmed, frustrated, and demoralized. Our desired outcomes are often too big and too broad. Healing is a series of really small steps that moves us toward an eventual outcome.
Focusing on the steps rather than the outcome allows us to give our attention to planning, executing, and mastering small changes before moving on to the next step. Consider other areas of your life. If you want to learn to play a guitar you have to master the basics about notes, reading music, and the instrument itself before you can learn how to play chords, and so on. It’s the same when you’re healing your relationship with food.
How to keep the focus narrow
When you notice that you’re feeling frustrated, overwhelmed, or discouraged it might be time to check in and make sure that you’re focusing on the steps rather than the outcome.
Are you focusing on too many things at once? What is your top priority today or this week? Remember to choose ONE thing at a time.
Is it possible that your focus is too broad right now? Could you make your focus narrower or more specific (e.g., more simple, easier to plan, easier to execute)?
Trust your gut! If you think that you could use more practice or repetition on something, then you probably do!!
Remind yourself that this is a process. Expect that there will be ups & downs, progress and regression, tougher days and easier days, and so on.
Roadblock #3- Not Being Kind to Yourself
The longest relationship that you’ll have is the one you have with yourself. Living a life at war with your body and mind is exhausting. No matter what struggles you face, mistakes you make, personality traits you possess, and how you feel about yourself, you still have the option to speak kindly to yourself.
Kindness isn’t the same thing as niceness. Kindness encompasses the qualities of generosity, consideration, and concern, while niceness is a quality of pleasantness and agreeability. Generosity, consideration, and concern can encompass many things and needs for yourself and for others.
Self-criticism will stall or shut down the healing process. It’s easy to turn emotions like overwhelm, disappointment, and frustration inward and beat ourselves up. In the short-term we may perceive that we’re “doing something” by criticizing ourselves into action. Long-term criticism isn’t sustaining because it feels awful, produces more suffering, and is energy-sucking.
How do I be practice being kind to myself?
Notice how you’re speaking to yourself. Is your language generous and considerate?
When you notice self-critical or self-deprecating inner monologue, say “STOP” in your mind and rephrase the criticism to something neutral. For example, if you hear yourself saying “You’re such a dummy. Why can’t you do just one thing right?” say “STOP” and “I’m trying my best right now and this is hard. I’m feeling frustrated. Maybe I need to take a break.”
Imagine the kindest person that you know in real life. What would they say to you right when you’re struggling? Say that to yourself!
Self-kindness takes practice just like any other skill or step you take during the healing process. Remember that kindness isn’t the same as niceness. We can be generous to ourselves and considerate of ourselves while we struggle, experiment, practice, and do hard things!