Admitting that I have had a painful history with food is hard.
You wouldn’t know it to look at me from the outside because visually it looks like I could be on a poster for the latest wellness trend. I don’t say that to boost my ego, I say it in order to illustrate how we have been socialized to see thinness as health—and desirability.
Many people who see my content at first do observe my pictures of farm-fresh produce, and my body type, and assume I am healthy. Of course, I want to be healthy. For as long as I can remember I have wanted that for my mother too. Growing up I witnessed food shame, and weight stigma leave my beloved mother searching for a diagnosis that would evade her for 20 years.
Doctors don’t ask me about my eating habits.
Therapists only do if I disclose my history of restrictive dieting first.
It has taken me a long time to find the clarity and language that allows me to notice how incredibly pervasive diet culture is. Even still I can be suddenly slapped across the face with it during a conversation with a friend, at a family dinner table, or even in the way I approach my own eating goals. We have been inoculated by dieting ideas and socialized to accept it as normal.
Can you imagine having conversations about food, or setting eating goals, that aren’t restrictive or related to weight? How do we honor restrictions that are required for our health without triggering the diet culture tapes in our brains?
Boundaries–a dividing line that marks the limitations of something.
‘Boundaries’ is a command we give my dog if she is invading personal space. It is usually mine because our love has no bounds, but I do have my limits, and having the ability to communicate those limits to her is mandatory. Without clear and consistent boundaries we face a heap of behavioral challenges. When I uphold my boundaries it creates more capacity to approach my dog–my husband, clients, friends, and family–with more love and kindness.
Brene Brown defines boundaries as what is okay and what isn’t okay. Having the ability to be straightforward and uphold boundaries is a common thread between some of the most compassionate and generous people in the world. In the linked interview Brene talks about how bad we are at setting boundaries–because we care about what people think and we don’t want to disappoint anyone.
In my Empowered Meal Planning Course, I ask students to reframe their dietary restrictions into a boundaries list. As part of this, they need to identify what food boundaries they unconsciously hold for others separately from their own. This topic can be such a muddled mess. Especially for women.
Boundaries and food can overlap in different ways. As we move out of hibernation with the emerging spring and pandemic shifts, I am finding myself grasping at straws for a sense of control. One thing that has always promised that to me is dieting.
Yes, there are habits that I let stick around over the last year unobserved in the name of surviving. But I don’t think the answer is to just be more disciplined and lean on old ways that left me hating myself.
So I am setting a boundary.
What is not okay: counting my calories. What is okay: investing my attention into more scratch-made meals.
Boundaries are not easy. But in them is the key to sustainable self-love.
Our culture is stupidly isolating when it comes to our food relationships. This makes no sense because our food comes from the collective community. How we eat is shaped by the behavior of those around us, our heritage, our lived experiences, and our goals. The more we get clear on these different influences the easier it is to set boundaries and approach our relationship to food with love.
And that dear reader, is the root of it all. Every time I publish this newsletter I am inviting you to infuse your relationship to food with love, joy, and the untethered curiosity of a child.
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