9 Signs You Have an Unhealthy Relationship with Food
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I know from experience when I had the most unhealthy relationship with food I’ve ever had, I actually didn’t realize I had an unhealthy relationship with food at all.
I thought what I was doing was healthy and how I felt was normal.
It wasn’t until I got onto the other side that I finally was able to realize just how unhealthy my relationship with food actually was.
My boyfriend at the time, which is now my husband, pointed it out to me. But that was years into struggling with this unhealthy relationship. While I’m so glad that he did point it out, I could have had someone point it out sooner and avoided years of misery.
That’s why in this episode of Embrace Your Real, I want to walk you through what an unhealthy relationship looks like and the habits and feelings attached to it, so you can get a better idea as to whether or not your relationship with food is healthy.
If you realize you have an unhealthy relationship with food after listening to this episode, let me share what helped me overcome every single one of these behaviors…
It's macro counting.
Once I learned how much my body actually needed daily and that it was okay to eat less-than-healthy foods if I made them fit into my macros, my relationship with food completely changed. I no longer thought about food all the time, I didn’t let food control me, and I definitely didn’t let it make me feel guilty.
That being said, I want to personally invite you to join the MCMS Online Academy Community.
You don’t have to be a slave to the gym and eat boring food anymore!
Macro Counting Made Simple is an online program that will teach you how to fuel your body with macros so you can finally achieve the body you want – without all the restrictions.
You’ll learn how to calculate and customize your macros, create a plan that fits your goals, and overcome fear foods with confidence. Plus, you’ll get access to our private Facebook group where you can ask questions, get support, and share your successes.
Click HERE to register.
TRANSCRIPT:
Hey there beautiful human, you're listening to Embrace Your Real with me, Julie Ledbetter, a podcast where I empower you to just be you. With each episode, I dish you a dose of real talk and actionable advice for building your confidence, honoring your body and unconditionally loving your authentic self. Stay tuned if you're ready to embrace your real, let's get it, let's go.
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Embrace Your Real Podcast. I actually didn't know that when I was most unhealthy in my relationship with food, I didn't even realize how unhealthy and toxic my thought patterns were. I truly thought that what I was doing was healthy. I thought it was normal, I thought what I felt was normal and it really wasn't until I got to the other side of it that I was able to realize just how unhealthy and toxic my thought patterns were.
My boyfriend at the time who is actually now my husband, he was one of the first people in my life that pointed out and asked me blatantly on our first date. If you know our story, you've probably heard this before, but I was pushing the chicken of my salad to the side of my plate. I was pushing the carrots to the side, I was literally picking up the lettuce, the actual lettuce, no dressing with my fork, and that was all I was eating.
And he blatantly asked me, and I remember in that moment my stomach sinking and just feeling so overwhelmed with emotion. So many emotions, first feeling so embarrassed and feeling like, "Oh my gosh, now that he really sees it, he's not going to like me." And it was on our first date. So we had been talking prior and I felt like such a peace with him, and I felt like, I don't want to say I knew it was my husband, but I definitely knew that he was going to be in my life for a long time, if not my husband.
And so I just remember in that moment feeling like, "Oh, he's going to break up with me or this is not going to go anywhere because he truly sees me." And on the flip side of that, I also remember feeling so overwhelmed with almost joy in the midst of this embarrassment because he was one of the first people that not only asked me if I had like a disordered relationship with food, but he had been studying health and exercise science and sports nutrition in college.
So he had the knowledge and expertise to back it up. And so I just felt so much peace in that moment. And so that's why in this episode, I want to share nine signs to look out for that you might have an unhealthy relationship with food because I know if I were in this position 10, 12 years ago and I had a podcast like this, I think that I would've had my eyes opened even earlier, but I believe that everything happens for a reason, and I'm grateful that I went through all of these things so that I can now share my experience in hopes that it might help some of you guys listening on the other end.
But before I dive into this episode, I wanted to share the super sweet review, it comes from Tara Mogan that she gave a five star review and said, "Best ever. This show is the highlight of my days working from home. I started listening to it when we were in lockdown and now I look forward to every new episode since then. Absolutely love the show. XXX." Thank you so much for this review. I appreciate every single one of your guys's reviews.
We have a worldwide community, and it's just incredible to know that we have women all over listening every single week, and so I just appreciate you. I thank you for your words. If you can scooch over to Apple podcast, type in Embrace Your Real and scroll all the way down, you'll be able to rate and review, that really does help us out in the charts, and the only reason we love the charts and love ranking higher is because it's able to reach more women truly. This is a podcast that is completely free.
It's a free resource, and so our just hope is that women can dive into these episodes and find empowerment and find encouragement and find education so that they can go out into this world and embrace their real in all different aspects of their life. So thank you in advance. If you do that, I appreciate you. And if you want to, you can always screenshot that and send it to me in a direct message on Instagram. And I love, love, love sending you guys voice memos back, just connecting with you guys.
All right,, so let's dive into today's episode, Nine signs that you have an unhealthy relationship with food. Number one, you think about food all day long. You are either thinking about how hungry you are or what you're going to eat next, or when you're going to eat next or how much you're going to eat or maybe you're thinking about how much you just ate, and then you're beating yourself up about it. Now in a healthy relationship with food, the thought of food should not consume you.
You'll likely eat your meal, and when you eat your meal, that will be it. You won't waste your energy thinking about food. Instead, you would use that energy towards something more product and other tasks that you are doing throughout your day. Number two, you are strict about when you can eat, you always eat breakfast at a certain time. You always eat lunch at a certain time and dinner at a certain time, and you never eat past a certain time. Maybe it's a snack throughout the day that is very on a rigid schedule, and if you eat that meal or snack earlier than your designated time, you might feel like you failed yourself.
For some reason, you have stuck in your head that if you eat outside of these timeframes, when you eat, you're going to gain weight, or you're going to beat yourself up about it. Now in a healthy relationship with food, you're going to be flexible with when you eat without any sort of hesitation. If you're hungry, you are hungry and you eat, you don't force yourself to wait an extra 30 or 60 minutes. You realize that eating when you're hungry and not forcing yourself to eat at a certain time, really has no correlation with weight gain at all.
Number three, you feel anxious when you eat out at restaurants. I know for me when I had the most unhealthy relationship with food, I simply wouldn't eat out at restaurants because of the anxiety that it would give me. I would ask, "What would I eat?" Or, "What if I overate?" Or, "What if the only options were unhealthy?" "Oh my goodness, it's going to make me so fat." These were the types of thoughts that I would have.
I would rather not go out and enjoy myself for the mere fact of how much anxiety it would give me, and I would defend that at all costs. I remember giving excuse after excuse. If it was a family event, I would almost lie, and I think there were sometimes I actually did lie and said, I'm working and I wasn't actually working. And then with friends, I remember I would maybe go to a restaurant, but when I went there, I would say I already ate, and so I would just kind of sit at the table and I would lie about that just because I was so anxious.
Now in a healthy relationship with food, you should be able to go out to eat and enjoy yourself. You don't focus on what you or shouldn't eat. Instead, you focus on ordering the food that sounds good and eating the amount that your body needs without feeling the need to overindulge. You realize that one quote less than perfect meal isn't going to ruin all of your results or make you fat. You enjoy your food, you do the best that you can to nourish your body, but if you don't, you get back on track the next meal.
Number four, you feel the need to work off food that you eat immediately. Now I'm not talking about taking a lap around the block, just to digest your food after dinner. I'm talking about feeling the need to burn off every single calorie that you eat and feeling guilty when you do or can't. In my past, if I ate a 500 calorie meal, I felt like I needed to go to the gym to burn off 500 calories. Because of this compulsive behavior, there were some times you guys that I would stay on the elliptical, no joke just to reach 2,000 calories or just to reach 2,100 calories, and it was so, such an unhealthy relationship that I had with food and exercise because I was using exercise as a punishment.
I was not using it as how I use it now and what I preach now which is movement is medicine. Movement is an opportunity to celebrate our bodies and our bodies are designed to move, but our bodies are not designed to move when it comes to moving because of punishment. Now in a healthy relationship with food, you realize that your body burns calories on its own just to function. Literally just sitting on the couch, watching Netflix, your body burns calories.
There is absolutely no need to "burn off all of those calories that you just ate." In fact, the goal of your workouts should never be to burn off the calories that you ate. Instead, the goal should be to work out to feel good in your body regardless of what you did or didn't eat. On the flip side of this, you may not think you deserve food until you work out. You have to burn X amount of calories in order to eat X amount of calories. This is a total sign that you have an unhealthy relationship with food.
In a healthy relationship with food. You realize that you're always deserving of food. If your body feels hungry, it's likely because your body is hungry. You realize that you are not smarter than your body, and if your body is telling you need food, it's because it needs food. You don't have to deserve it first. Your body needs food whether you worked out or you didn't work out. The amount of food that you eat is not directly correlated to how many calories you burned that day, nor should it be.
Number six, you're not okay with eating more than you originally had in mind. So let's say for example, you finish a meal, you feel like you need more food and you actually go and eat more food. Then you feel like a failure and you're not okay with it. You feel like you let yourself down. You feel like you're going to gain so much more weight from eating what you originally had in mind, and then you begin to hyper focus on the extra food that you ate and how much fat you're going to gain from that, that is not healthy.
In a healthy relationship with food, when you eat more than you originally had planned, you realize it's because your body needed more food than what you originally planned. You realize that giving your body what it needs is a lot more sustainable than trying to ignore what your body is trying to tell you. Number seven, you think you need to eat perfectly 24/7. This is likely why you're getting anxious when you go to restaurants because it's so much harder to "eat perfectly" and when you don't eat perfectly, you're going to instantly gain a bunch of weight. This is what you're thinking in your mind. And the constant anxiety is looming over you and it takes control over you and your thoughts.
Thus, you're not even able to focus on spending time with friends and family like the people that you're originally there with. In a healthy relationship with food, you're okay with being imperfect. You realize that consistently nourishing your body even if it's done imperfectly is so much more sustainable than trying to eat perfect 100% of the time. You're realistic about your eating behaviors and you know that you won't be able to eat perfect all the time for the rest of your life.
So you're okay with eating less nutrient dense foods when you're craving them, or when that's the only thing that's available because you know that this approach is most sustainable long-term. Number eight, you beat yourself up for what you just ate or for hours or even days afterwards. Have you ever gone on out to eat with a friend and instead of engaging in conversation with them, you're spending the whole time beating yourself up mentally because you're going to town on the bread basket, or do you eat more than planned at a meal and then spend the next few hours simply focusing on how much you ate? Just beating yourself up, over and over again?
Or did you eat something less than healthy and spend the next few days reminding yourself of what you ate and forcing yourself to make up for it? In a healthy relationship with food, you simply eat and you move on. It happened, we move on. That's it, it's as simple as that. Number nine, you overindulge on food frequently. So maybe you find yourself trying to not eat all day like you're trying to tell yourself, I'm going to skip breakfast, I'm going to skip lunch or lying to yourself and saying that you're too busy for food, that was me. I remember saying that.
I remember lying to myself and telling myself, "I'm too busy for food." When in reality could have taken a lunch break if I wanted to. And so I'd get to the end of my day, you guys, and I would go ham. I would eat everything in sight. And I would at first try to just eat clean foods. I would try to eat like almonds and grapes and fruits, and then I would still feel so hungry that then I would go into other random foods, and then I would get to the end of that session of overindulgence, and I would feel so guilty and I would feel so frustrated with myself.
But the thing was, I felt like I was never fully satisfied and that wasn't healthy. It wasn't like I felt like I could never get full. And that's a toxic way of living your life in a healthy relationship with food, I now eat three balanced meals a day. I have one to two snacks depending, and I eat when I'm hungry so that I never reach the point of uncontrollable hunger because I know that that's not going to serve me, it's only going to make me feel worse. It's going to be such an healthy pattern of eating that is just not going to serve me or my goals long-term.
So there you have it, those are the nine signs that you have an unhealthy relationship with food. There are so many more, but these I think are the most prominent. And these are ones that I personally struggled with. And I know just working with thousands of women over the years, these are ones that many women can relate to. So I'm going to read them back to you. So if you're a list person, you can write these down. Number one, you think about food all day long. Number two, you are strict about when you can eat. Number three, you feel anxious when you eat out at restaurants.
Number four, you feel the need to work off food you eat immediately after. Number five, you don't think that you always deserve food. Number six, you're okay with eating more than you originally had in mind. Number seven, you think you need to eat perfectly 24/7. Number eight, you beat yourself up for what you just ate or for hours or even days afterwards. And number nine, you overindulge on food frequently. Now I want to ask you, how many of these unhealthy behaviors do you struggle with?
If you're realizing that you do in fact have an unhealthy relationship with food, I want to just share my story of how I entered into a healthy relationship with food. And one of the tools that single handedly changed my life in terms of just being, and feeling empowered around food was the tool of macro counting, learning how to properly fuel my body. Once I learned how much my body actually needed and that it was okay to eat less than "healthy foods", as long as I'm eating them in the proper amounts based on where I'm at and what my goals are, my relationship with food, you guys completely changed.
I no longer thought about food all the time simply because I was so empowered around food because I finally knew how to properly feel my body after years and years of not knowing. And I think that that confusion and disempowerment around food led me to so many of these behaviors simply because I didn't know what I was doing. And I was letting food control me simply because I wasn't empowered or educated about it. So if that's you, if you want to feel more educated about food, and you've been maybe interested in learning how to properly fuel your body this year, I want to personally invite you to join the Macro Counting Made Simple Online Academy Community.
You don't have to be a slave to the gym. You don't have to eat boring food anymore. The Macro Counting Made Simple Online Academy is one that will teach you how to fuel your body with macros so that you can finally achieve the body that you want all without the restrictions. It's going to empower you around food. You're going to learn how to calculate and customize your macros, how to create a plan that fits your goals and overcome those fear foods with confidence. Plus, you'll get access to the private Facebook group where you can ask questions, get support, and share your successes.
If you're interested in this, you can go to www.macrocountingmadesimple.com. Again, that's www.macrocountingmadesimple.com at the time of this recording which is at the end of February of 2022. We actually only have a few weeks left before we launch our newly updated Macro Counting Made Simple course that we've been working so hard on behind the scenes, and I'm so excited for you guys to see it. But if you want to get in now at the low price that it is, the price will be increasing simply because the value of this program is going to blow your mind.
But if you get into the Macro Counting Made Simple Online Academy now, when the new revamped course is launched, you will automatically get in there without having to pay a dime more. So if this is something that you're interested in, I encourage you to go to macrocountingmadesimple.com. I will put that in the show notes that you can easily go click there, or you can always send me a direct message on Instagram. I'm always here to help you.
I want you to feel empowered around food. I want you to feel educated around food, and I truly believe that this course is going to help you get there. Our goal for the newly updated course that we'll be launching in a few weeks, that you'll get access to if you purchase and get in now. Our goal and our heart behind it is that this will be the last nutrition course that you'll ever have to buy. You will learn everything that you need from the tool of macro counting, to dining out, to learning how to properly feel your body and doing it yourself, learning the calculations, but also learning how to transition into a more mindful way of eating and more self-regulated way of eating if that's your goal long-term.
For some, they learn the tool of macro counting, and then they continue to go on to macro count for the rest of their life, and they love it. But for others, you might want to learn the tool of macro counting. You want to feel empowered and educated around food, and then you want to slowly transition into eating more mindfully, having learned all of those tools and those tools in your tool belt. And so in this newly updated course, we're actually going to be going into that pretty deeply so that you can feel empowered to go whatever way you want.
Some people use macro counting like I said, for the rest of their life. Other people use it for seasons and other people use it very intently for a season of their life. It could be six months, a year, two years, and then they go more into eating mindfully and intuitively for the rest of their life simply because they have the tools that they need to successfully transition into eating mindfully and intuitively. So again, macrocountingmadesimple.com, you can go and click that link in the show notes and check it out for or yourself.
I look forward to partnering alongside of you. There are so many amazing women in this online community, and it's just an incredible community of women who are all choosing to show up and prioritize properly, fueling their body and sharing their victories and sharing their struggles all in the Facebook group. Do this alongside each other in community because we always know that community is such a powerful thing especially when it comes to finding other like-minded people who are on the same journey as you.
I hope that this episode served you. If you have a girlfriend or someone in your life that you feel like would really benefit from this episode, I just ask that you share it out with them. You can copy the link and send it to them in a text message. You can also screenshot this and post it up on your story if you feel like people within your community or circle of influence would benefit from tuning in to this specific episode. Thank you so much for tuning in, and I'll talk to you in the next episode.
All right sister, that's all I got for you today, but I have two things that I need you to do. First thing, if you are not already following me on the gram, be sure to do so, @juliealedbetter. Yes, it's with an A in the middle for that daily post-workout real talk, healthy tips and tricks and honest accountability to keep your mind and heart in check. The second thing, be sure to subscribe to apple podcast, to never miss an episode.
Thank you so much for joining me. It means the absolute world, and I'm going to leave you with one last thought. The most beautiful women that I have met in my life are the ones who are completely confident and secure in being authentically themselves. Remember that beauty goes so much deeper than the surface. So go out there and Embrace Your Real because you're worth it.