How to Have a Healthy Relationship with Food

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By Lydia Wallie, Nutrition Director

A healthy relationship with food can take a long time to build. So where do you start?

1) First, I recommend starting with nutritional education and bio-individual education. 

Nutritional education: When you know what foods are healthy, then you can make informed decisions about what to eat and have peace knowing what your boundaries are which are helping you live out your health goals.

Bio-individual education: Your body may respond differently to dairy than someone else’s. This is your bio-individuality. Recognizing how your body responds to certain foods takes intentionality and isn’t always easily determined. I recommend completing a Whole30 Nutrition Challenge to help you clear the body of many inflammatory foods so you can test some of the foods which may be creating low-grade inflammation in your body. 

2) The second step is to determine what your relationship with food currently is. Awareness is the first step in change.

What are signs that you may have an unhealthy relationship with food? 

  • Denial that any foods might be unhealthy or impact health in any way

  • Spending hours obsessively thinking about what food might be served at upcoming events

  • A compulsion to “burn off calories” through exercise 

  • Your mind is preoccupied with food

  • Depriving yourself of a healthy amount of food

  • Eating even when full or not hungry

  • Avoidance of eating even when hungry

  • Feeling stressed, depressed, disgusted, ashamed, guilty or upset about your eating

  • Eating until uncomfortably full

  • Beating yourself up about what you ate

  • Giving up on eating well or a “victim mindset”

What are some indicators of a healthy relationship with food?

  • Intuitive eating: you recognize what you’re craving and eat something healthy to satisfy your body’s nutritional needs

  • Eating until satiated, not stuffed

  • Clear boundaries of what you can eat to be healthy, and knowledge of what to avoid to promote health/longevity

  • Able to positively say no to foods that will create an unhealthy response in the body (for example: bloating or fatigue)

3) The third step is to get help with a positive relationship with food.


Find accountability for the journey. It’s not easy to change a lifetime of habits that are both external and internal. Having a Nutrition Coach to guide and strategize (recipes, meal timing/planning, habits, accountability, mindset, confidence) will make a world of difference in the timing of your success in changing an unhealthy relationship with food. Schedule your No-Snack Intro today to get started!

NutritionCrystal JuarezHealthy, Healthy Living, Food, Real FoodComment