Food: Your Friend or Your Enemy?
Quick: Think of the important relationships in your life.
You probably came up with something like the following list:
- my spouse/partner or boyfriend/girlfriend
- my child(ren)
- my immediate family
- other relatives
- my close friends
- the barista at Starbucks
- the clever people at Precision Nutrition (ha ha! just kidding… kind of)
You probably didn’t think of:
- the after-work beer
- the slice of cake waiting for me in the fridge
- mom’s macaroni and cheese
- pizza with friends
- that food I hate — yuck!
- Ryan Andrews’ and Jason Bonn’s delicious creations
But ask yourself: how much time and energy do you spend thinking about certain foods? Do you avoid them or seek them out? Do they inspire particular emotions and feelings in you? Do you sometimes feel obsessed with them? (Women and PMS chocolate, you know what I’m talking about.)
In fact, you might spend more time thinking about food than your friends and family.
Erin Byron (BA, MA Counselling Psychology) is the Director of Welkin Wellness Centre in Brantford, Ontario, Canada. She is a trauma psychotherapist and also runs Yoga Teacher and Meditation Teacher Training programs.
She has spent more than a decade working with clients who have many types of issues. As part of this therapeutic work, she sees clients who either come to her for help with disordered eating or find that their eating is affected by other problems in their lives.
Here, I sit down with Erin to discuss the interesting connections we make with food. According to Erin, many of us view eating and food as we view other relationships in our life. And whether you’re an elite athlete or a working mom, one important key to healthy eating is figuring out just what kind of relationship you have with your food.
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Here’s a list of the questions I asked Erin:
Q. Most of us just think about food as something we get at the grocery store and put in our mouth. Or maybe something that has nutrients in it that we need. You talk about our interactions with food as a set of relationships. Can you define first of all what it means to have a relationship with food?
Q. What’s the emotional component of those relationships? What kinds of emotions are involved? (1:25)
Q. What’s the advantage of thinking about food as a set of relationships? (3:10)
Q. Can we talk about multiple relationships? (4:26)
Q. How do we know that these relationships might be a problem? (6:15)
Q. Relationships are complicated, just like people relationships. People often describe disordered eating as having an angel or devil on their shoulder — some kind of logical judgement that says “Don’t do this”, but in fact they’re thinking that thought while they do the undesirable action. Can you talk about some of the paradoxes and complexity of the relationships? (7:45)
Q. What types of negative food relationships do you see in your own practice? Obviously everyone’s journey is unique, but are there patterns? (12:00)
Q. Can you talk about trauma, and some examples of the ways in which trauma can shape our relationships with food? (15:40)
Q. Why is food so fundamental? (19:20)
Q. Are food issues “body issues”, or “eating issues”, or both? (20:34)
Q. We talk a lot about gender differences in eating and body image, but what about age and life stage differences? (23:06)
Q. What do positive relationships with food look like, and can you give me some examples? (25:50)
Q. How does one progress along the road to more positive food relationships? (29:05)
Q. How do we know when we’re ready to change our food relationships? (31:30)
Q. How can we enable and accelerate change and growth? (33:02)
Q. Do you have to be a certain kind of person in order to make positive changes with our eating? (35:30)
Q. Let’s talk about so-called “experts” — physique athletes, bodybuilders, etc. People may assume that these people are models of health, and do everything “perfectly”. What are some of the challenges for these “experts”? (37:10)
Q. What’s the importance of intrinsic motivation — having a deeper purpose for changing our eating behaviours? (39:35)
Q. What are some simple strategies that you’re using with your clients? (41:07)
Q. If someone wants to change their relationship with food, what’s a good place to start? (45:00)
Erin welcomes inquiries; she can be reached at 519-802-9125 or at therapy@welkin.ca
Books Erin recommends:
Living with Ed
The Secret Language of Eating Disorders
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