Assessing your current relationship with food

It's getting closer to that time of the year. New Year diet fads. 

The start of the year (after the holiday season) is typically the time when people begin to "finally" get serious about the diet, in hopes of improving health, changing body composition, losing weight or getting rid of unhealthy lifestyle habits. While there's nothing wrong with a New Year Resolution, there's the tendency to take the wrong approach to changing your eating habits. Your old diet gets demolished instead of making a small renovation.

You may be wondering why I am bringing up this topic right now in early November. Well, relationships with food are complex, especially for athletes. Whether the focus is on health, appearance or performance (or a combination of all three), focusing too much on your diet and/or body image can become harmful to your health. There's never a wrong time to talk about your current relationship with food and the body.

I love my diet. It's easy, sustainable and it works for me and my health, performance and lifestyle. I'm comfortable with my style of eating, I feel comfortable eating around others and I can take my typical style of eating anywhere in the world. While I have standards as to what I want to put in my body most of the time (which makes up my "typical" diet), I never find my diet complicated or unappetizing. 

While you may feel the same way, many athletes feel the exact opposite. 

Eating is stressful. There's great fear, guilt, worry, confusion and anxiousness when it comes to food. There's inconsistency and uncertainty.  Although some athletes and fitness enthusiasts have yet to master a style of eating that is sustainable, healthy and performance enhancing, there's a large group of active individuals (from all fitness levels) who have a very unhealthy relationship with food and the body. Food is the enemy.

With a complicated relationship with food, there's the tendency to become obsessed with one style of eating that brings great concerns, guilt or fears when it comes to food. There's often something "extreme" with how these individuals choose to eat, constantly thinking about food as good or bad, right or wrong.  Interestingly, many athletes see food as the problem that needs fixing when in reality, the relationship with food and the body are the problems.

Your diet should provide adequate nutrients and calories to support consistent training, optimal health and recovery and should also help to reduce your risk for disease and illness. To achieve this style of eating, you should not have to spend an excessive amount of your time or energy thinking, stressing and planning your diet. Going to great extremes to follow a rigid style of eating may increase the risk for physical and mental health issues, disordered eating or an eating disorder.

I find that the individuals who fall victim to New Year diet fads tend to have a very poor relationship with food and the body. These individuals gravitate toward diet fads in order to feel control and gain a sense of power through an ultra-focused, extremely rigid style of eating.  In a culture that brings a bombardment of messages about how your athletic body should look and the many different extreme styles of eating that are marketed toward athletes, it's important to remind yourself that you don't need to make an extreme change in your eating habits to fix or resolve yourself to be healthier, happier or better athlete. 

Your inability to stick to a New Years diet has nothing to do with your level of self control. Diets don't work. More so, any program or style of eating that is extreme or rigid, comes with risks to your physical and mental health.

Although dieting and diet fads will always be part of our culture, this is one trend that you shouldn't be part of. Before the holiday season, take some self-care time to assess your current relationship with food and your body. Realize the impact that your past, current and future eating patterns have on your mental, emotional and physical health. Chronic restricted eating, habitual dieting, eliminating food groups or certain foods, ignoring physical hunger, compulsive/binge eating and food obsessions demonstrate a complicated relationship with food. 

Let go of the need to be, look and to eat perfect. Stop comparing yourself to a past version of yourself or to someone else. Don't make eating difficult. To love and care for your body, you need to fuel, nourish, thank and honor it for a lifetime. Now is a great time to start.