If you know you have a bad relationship with food and or have a habit of over-eating and binge eating here are my best 5 tips to build a strong relationship with food and yourself.

 

1.Mindful Eating: The first step in build a relationship with food is focusing on your body’s signs and signals. It involves recognizing when you’re hungry and when you are full and eating in accordance with these feelings. This will also develop into a sense for what your body requires in food, whether it’s carbs or more protein, the body will always tell you what it wants, you just need to listen.
This may be hard at the start, that’s okay! Aim to just focus on trying to feel these and it will become easier over time.

2.Regular Eating: A great strategy to employ is regular eating to combat binge eating episodes. If you are full it is very hard to continue eating compared to when you are limiting and hungry. So, the equal first step (step 1 and 2 should be done at the same time) is to eat with less than 4 hours between meals or snack.s The best method is to have 3 meals and 3 snacks a day spread out whilst being busy between and not eating outside of the meals and snacks.

3.Full Range of Food: This step is only for people who have a list of banned food which is unhealthy and considered bad. No food on its own is unhealthy, some better than others but a wide variety of food is healthier than a limited variety. It is also important to note that this does not include people who have a list of food that can’t eat due to allergies or intolerances.
Start by building a list of banned foods and ordering them from most okay to absolutely forbidden. Then aim to slowly reintroduce them starting at the top of the list and working down, this can be done at any pace you feel comfortable with and is determined by how you feel about each food, it might be one new food a fortnight or once a month it doesn’t matter.

4. Stop checking your weight:
Your weight does not stay the same over time, by drinking 1L of water you will in turn gain 1 kg of weight. People who consistently check weight can be caught riding a roller coaster of emotions.

Instead weigh yourself once a fortnight and the same time of day and the plot it on a graph (our Inbody machine does this for us) and track it over a longer period, doing this will show you real results, where you will see a constant gradual decline.

5.Mindset:
This step is the hardest to develop and as such is the last step, however, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try this with step 1. Whenever you feel the need to binge or find you are losing control of what you are eating (in a single meal) take a walk to the bathroom. Here try closing your eyes and counting backward from 20, take a deep breath and say out loud “I am finished” or “I am not going to binge” walk back refreshed and full of confidence!

Coach
Zac