Do You LOVE What You Eat?

Well, do you?

I don’t mean like. I mean LOVE. Like, longing glances and sighs of satisfaction kind of love.

Do you think that’s possible? With food?

Call me a romantic, but I know this is the kind of relationship we can create. But, just like any lasting love story, it doesn’t just happen. You have to put in some work. And not any work, but the right kind of work!

Sadly, I feel like, as a culture, we’re not only over-complicating things, but we more often than not establish our relationship with food on a shaky, if not downright unhealthy basis.

And I’m not just talking about junk food when I say unhealthy.

Sometimes, it’s precisely what we’re doing in the name of health that creates the most toxic food relationships!

GUILT, OBSESSION & CHEATING

If you’re obsessed with a food, yet feel guilty every time you eat it, is it a healthy relationship?

But Fabi, I don’t know what else to do!

What if this was a personal relationship, would you say the same?

Don’t mistake me: I get it! I used to obsess about food. Every single decision I would make was carefully weighted—pun intended—but that was simply too much!

I would end up going back and forth between being either super-restrictive and feeling self-righteous but wholly unsatisfied, or going overboard because my willpower was completely depleted and I was suffering from too much food FOMO.

How is that sustainable?

And yet I know from my conversations with dozens of women each week that this is far from being an isolated case. But let me ask you this:

Why would we willingly put ourselves in a situation where cheating is inevitable? If we don’t do this with love, why do this with food? 

THE WEIGHT OF WORDS

If there’s an expression that I can’t stand, it’s clean eating. (There’s even a part of my that shudders a little while I write it.) Listen, I’m just as big a proponent as anyone of the importance of eating primarily whole foods. I could even argue that I’m more into it than many.

But how does that equate to eating clean? And, more importantly, what exactly is “eating dirty”?

Anytime the vocabulary you use to talk about what you eat pushes you back into a logic of good vs bad, then it’s not actually love.

Love isn’t about compliance; it’s not about perfection. It certainly isn’t about judgement.

Love is about creating space for ease and nurture. Love is about moving confidently in a relationship because we know it’s build on a foundation of trust.

So let me ask you again: Do you LOVE what you eat?