Five Powerful Ways to Start Healing Your Relationship with Food
Have you ever finished a meal and instantly felt guilt? Or spent your day obsessing over what you should or shouldn’t eat? Maybe you have lived by food rules for so long you don’t even question them anymore. If that resonates, this post can help you.
As a health coach, I’ve lived through this. I spent years trying to outsmart my hunger, chasing smaller and smaller versions of myself, believing it was healthy. But that pursuit left me exhausted and disconnected from my body. With Ozempic now marketed as a quick fix and social media constantly pushing thinness as the ultimate goal, it is more important than ever to redefine what health really means.
Let’s explore five ways to start healing your relationship with food. Not through more rules, but by coming back to your body’s wisdom and building trust where it was once lost.
1. Get Curious, Not Critical
One of the hardest truths I had to face was that I did not trust my body. I followed meal plans, tracked every calorie, and labelled foods as good or bad. Underneath it all was fear. Fear of gaining weight, fear of losing control, and a belief that if I did not stay on top of it, I would spiral.
The first step in healing is awareness. Start noticing your thoughts and behaviours around food. When do you restrict? When do you overeat? What emotions come up before, during or after eating?
The science bit made simple: When you are stressed about food, your brain switches into fight or flight mode. This can slow digestion, raise cortisol, and disrupt hormones. By noticing patterns without judgement, you begin to regulate your nervous system and give your body the safety it needs to digest, rest, and heal.
Use a food and mood journal to track how meals make you feel. This is not about counting or restricting. It is about reconnecting with your own internal cues, something diet culture tried to take away.
2. Relearn How to See Food as Fuel and Nourishment
I used to look at food through the lens of control. What would make me lose weight? What was low calorie enough? I was constantly thinking about food, yet never felt satisfied. It took a long time to shift into seeing food as support rather than something to micromanage.
Seeing food as fuel and nourishment means asking your body what it needs, not what a plan or influencer told you to eat. It means understanding that food gives you energy, supports hormone production, feeds your gut bacteria, and stabilises your mood.
Gut and hormone link: When you restrict food or avoid fats, your body can struggle to produce essential hormones like oestrogen and progesterone. Your gut also misses out on prebiotics and nutrients it needs to function well.
Start to build meals around whole foods that actually satisfy you. Think protein, healthy fats, slow-release carbs, and colourful veggies. Food is not just fuel, it is feedback. It is part of how your body thrives.
3. Heal from the Past
Our relationship with food is rarely just about food. It is shaped by memories, culture, media, and how our bodies have been spoken about over time.
Maybe you were complimented when you lost weight. Maybe someone made a comment about your lunchbox when you were ten. Maybe dieting was something all the women in your family did, so you never saw anything else. All of these experiences can create deep beliefs about what your body should look like and what foods are allowed.
Social media has only amplified this. From the thigh gap messaging (now legging legs?), to endless before-and-afters, it can be hard to tell what is real. Today’s culture of “clean eating” and wellness influencers can often disguise the same old obsession with thinness, just rebranded.
Healing from the past means acknowledging these influences without letting them define your future. You get to choose a new narrative. One that values how you feel over how you look. One that prioritises peace, not perfection.
4. Support Your Body with Consistent Nourishment
When you don’t eat enough, your body ramps up hunger hormones like ghrelin. You get cravings, you feel foggy, and your stress levels rise. Then when food becomes available, your body wants to make up for the deficit. This is not weakness. It is biology.
What your gut and hormones need: Balanced meals with protein, fat, and fibre every 3 to 4 hours can regulate blood sugar and reduce cortisol spikes. This helps stabilise your mood, reduce food obsession, and keep your digestion happy.
Some of my favourite blood sugar friendly, gut-supportive meals:
Eggs with spinach and bread (GF for me but sourdough for you)
Roast veg salad with chicken, quinoa and tahini dressing
Stir-fry with salmon and brown rice
Smoothie with banana, chia seeds, protein powder (macro mike), and almond butter
Don’t skip meals. Don’t wait until you are starving. Nourishing your body consistently builds safety and reduces the mental noise around food.
5. Redefine What Health Means to You
There was a time I believed health meant always being in control. Meal prepping. Weighing myself. Sticking to plans. But what I learned over time is that true health feels flexible. It feels kind. It does not come from punishment. It comes from nourishment.
Start asking yourself:
Do I feel energised and stable?
Am I sleeping well?
Do I enjoy food?
Do I feel at home in my body?
Health is not just a number on a scale. It is your energy, your mood, your cycle, your digestion, your relationship with food. When I let go of chasing a number and started listening to my body, I felt better in every way. I still have moments where old thoughts come back. But now I have tools to respond with kindness, not control.
You get to decide what health means for you now. It might look different than it did five years ago. And that is okay.
It Is Time to Rebuild Trust with Food
Healing your relationship with food takes time. It is not a 30-day challenge or a new diet. It is deep work. Sometimes emotional, sometimes uncomfortable, but always worth it. You can let go of the noise. You can reconnect with your body’s wisdom. You can feel free again.
Start with one step from this post. Get curious about how food makes you feel. Eat enough. Honour your cravings. Ask where your beliefs came from. Choose nourishment over rigidity.
The most powerful thing you can do for your health is to trust yourself again.
With love and balance, my Friends x
