How often do you feel stress in relation to food? You’re not alone! Our culture sends us very mixed messages about nutrition and health, not to mention body image!
As a nutritional therapist, one of my tasks is guiding you toward balance. This means nourishing your body with delicious food that’s right for you while at the same time acknowledging potential sources of stress. The first thing I tell my clients who worry about nutrition is that there are only four basic ingredients that everyone should eliminate: fear, worry, guilt and shame. Of course, this doesn’t mean repressing your stress! Rather, it requires acknowledging it and working through it.
Common Fears
When clients come to me for nutritional therapy, they often come in with strong feelings about what it might be like to work on their nutrition with a professional. Here are some of them:
“She’s going to make me give up the foods I love.”
“She’s going to judge me for the foods I eat.”
“It will be harder for me to eat with my family or in social settings.”
Many people come in with negative feelings about specific foods:
“Gluten/sugar/salt/fat [insert any other food or food category here] is bad.”
“Animal products are inhumane/unhealthy/toxic [insert any other negative adjective here].”
And with negative feelings about their bodies, often relating to weight, skin, hair, nails, aging, or specific body parts. A verb they commonly use to describe their feelings is “hate.”
Many clients with worries about nutritional therapy and negative feelings about certain foods and/or their bodies use specific foods, often not particularly healthy ones, to soothe and comfort themselves. Then they feel guilty.
The Cabinet of Shame
I did a home visit a few years ago for a family that I was supporting. When I arrived, the mom ushered me into her beautiful kitchen and showed me around. Then she announced, opening one of the cabinets containing snacks for her children: “And this is the cabinet of shame.”
Wow, I thought. We do live in a complicated world!
So what can we do to make our relationship with food and our bodies a bit less complicated?
Let’s back up to a moment to the cabinet of shame. I knew that the snacks themselves – unhealthy as they admittedly were – were less of a problem than the way that the mother felt about what she was feeding her children. The first thing we talked about was how to introduce nourishing whole foods to support her children’s health needs while also leaving some space for their favorite snacks during the family’s transition to a real-food diet. At the center of all this, I told the mother, was her ability to turn down the volume on that little voice that told her to be ashamed of what she fed her children.
Moving Beyond Shame
We came up with a family nutrition plan that took into account, among other things, the following factors:
- One of the children’s dairy allergy
- The nutrients the various family members needed
- The foods they liked and disliked
- The emotional components surrounding food and eating
The family then embarked on a leisurely journey towards an increasingly wholesome diet. In the meantime, by addressing the problem of shame – the biggest gremlin this family faced – they made some huge shifts early on in their nutritional therapy work with me. The shift was most obvious in terms of the mom’s reported improvement in her outlook, focus and energy. With more emotional assets, the mom was increasingly able to take steps towards feeding her children delicious foods that also provided them with the nutrients they needed. Some of their favorites were:
- Fresh seasonal fruit and vegetables from the farmer’s markets – the kids especially enjoyed cherries and blueberries
- Homemade granola made from sprouted nuts and grains
- Nourishing soups made from bone broth from grass-fed and organically raised animals
- Organic eggs from pasture-raised chicken – the kids loved soft-boiled pasture-raised eggs as a snack, and mom’s homemade mayonnaise was a big hit with the kids, who bragged to me the next time I saw them: “It goes well with everything, except with dessert!”
In the meantime, the “cabinet of shame” containing packaged snacks became less important in the family’s life. The kids occasionally still choose a snack from it from time to time, but as the mom deactivated the shame it once carried, the cabinet – and the snacks inside – became less powerful, less interesting, even as the real foods the family increasingly shopped for, prepared, and joyfully shared acquired a powerful and positive role in the family’s life.
How to Decrease Stress
There are many different approaches to cutting down on overall stress and especially on stress around food. The higher your stress level is, the less able you are to enjoy your meals, digest your food and absorb the nutrients you need to stay healthy and happy.
So make sure you do something every day to help you feel deeply happy. Love and be loved. Seek out support if you need it. Some of us need regular therapy just like cars need regular maintenance, and our teeth need regular care and cleaning. Get fresh air and sunshine when you can, and walk or bike to work if practically possible. Eat what you love and love what you eat. Sit down to eat every meal, and avoid eating while working, driving, using the computer or phone, or performing other tasks. Make the space where you eat welcoming, and set up the table fully so you’re not constantly getting up and down during your meal.
I have a two-part blog post series on women and stress. Check those out:
https://sararussellntp.com/why-do-i-feel-this-way-female-stress-symptoms-part-1/
https://sararussellntp.com/ladies-how-to-deal-with-the-stress-of-daily-life/
What Else Can I Do?
A lot of digestive discomforts and physical symptoms are caused by stress, but the reverse is also true: toxins, processed foods and even foods that are incompatible with our unique metabolism cause massive stress in the body. This can take the form of inflammation, chronic illness, fatigue, immune problems and poor nutrient absorption. On an emotional level, this stress can manifest as impatience, depression, anger, and lack of resilience.
If you’re eating a diet comprised of properly prepared, high-quality whole foods that are rich in nutrients and still don’t feel well, you’ll need to find out what underlying nutritional deficiencies, food intolerance, toxic exposures, digestive, immune or hormonal imbalance, or other issues are causing your discomfort.
As a functionally trained nutritional therapy practitioner, my job is to take a complete history and act as an investigator, looking at each clue and connecting the dots by making connections and digging deeper. I love helping clients answer questions such as “Why do I feel this way?” and “What can I do to get better?” Once we zero in on the root cause of dysfunction, we move forward with clarity and ease.
Let’s Work Together!
I’d love to talk with you about your health goals and any stress you’re experiencing around them! Set up a free 15-minute discovery call here.
If you’re a holistic healthcare practitioner wanting to deepen your clinical skills, check out my case study group!