eating should be easy.

“eating should be easy”

when i say that in session i am met with looks of disbelief and sometimes anger. like ‘you got to be kidding me jenni, figuring out what to eat, when to eat, how to eat is so, SO confusing.’ i am quick to reassure and validate that yes, making food decisions and feeding yourself and others in our current culture-climate today is hard. but in theory, it should be easy. and i think remembering that, can help you to tune into your body’s inner wisdom and trust

i arrive at this declaration by the fact that food is a basic need.

we need food and nourishment to not only thrive, but just to survive. when we think about our other basic needs - going to the bathroom, getting a drink of water, putting on a coat to stay warm in the minnesotan winter - choosing to meet them is relatively easy, generally speaking. i need to acknowledge the assumption that we have access to the things necessary to meet our needs and some basic education around our needs, if not, then that is a whole other ballgame and a topic for another post. but if a bathroom is nearby and we have to go, we excuse ourselves and go. if we have a water bottle and we’re thirsty, we take a sip. we grab our coat before running out to get the mail on a sub-zero day. there is not a lot of mental energy used to make these decisions. we don’t, look at the water bottle and ‘hem and haw"‘ about whether or not we should take a drink now, or about how much we should drink or about how long it’s been since we last took a sip. in most cases, we notice our thirst and drink until we feel satisfied.

the same goes for food. in theory, if we're hungry, we should eat. we shouldn’t need to consider a gamut of rules or check an app or measure precisely.

we should be able to trust in our body’s cues while also applying basic nutrition principles in a gentle, caring way.

looping back to the beginning though…for many people - likely even people who haven’t realized or acknowledged it, yet - eating is hard. it is confusing and frustrating. a source of guilt and shame. and there are likely a lot of things that contribute to that.

diet culture.

social media.

misinformation around nutrition principles.

lack of knowledge and understanding of nutritional needs.

past, lived-experiences.

history of trauma.

anxiety, depression and other mental health disorders.

the list could go on.

so it makes complete sense when individuals tell me eating is hard. it is. but it doesn’t have to be forever. we can unlearn unhelpful thoughts, patterns and beliefs and replace them with facts (facts! imagine that!) and wise-mind thoughts that help make food choices and eating more intuitive and natural. after all, our bodies wouldn’t make something we so desperately need for survival harder than it needs to be. diet culture, big business and marketing techniques definitely will, but our bodies and minds are innately smarter than that if we can just allow ourselves to listen to them.

*this piece assumes no underlying health issues, disease states, access to food challenges, etc. as nutritional needs and approaches to nutrition will vary.with these. remember, nutrition is so very nuanced.