Why Healing Your Relationship With Food Requires More Than Listening To Your Body
And here's what I as a therapist want you to think about instead:
· Tiia · 4 min read
One of the most common pieces of advice in the eating disorder and intuitive eating world is:
"Just listen to your body."
And while I understand why people say it, I think it misses something important. Because what happens when you literally.. don't know how?
What happens when you've spent years ignoring hunger, overriding fullness, disconnecting from emotions, and surviving in whatever ways you could?
What happens when food has become one of the only reliable ways to feel comfort, relief, pleasure, numbness, control, grounding, or simply a break from yourself?
At that point, "just listen to your body" can feel a little bit like being handed a map in a language you don't speak.
You don't need more discipline.
You don't need to try harder.
You may need to rebuild a relationship, not just with food but with yourself.
Food Is Rarely Just About Food
Most people come to this work believing that food is the problem.
They think if they could just stop binge eating, stop emotional eating, stop obsessing about food, stop thinking about their body all the time, everything would finally fall into place.
I understand why because when food feels loud, it takes up an enormous amount of space in our brains. Interestingly though, over the years, both personally and professionally, I've noticed something interesting.
When food becomes quieter, something else often appears.
Sometimes it is perfectionism.
Sometimes it is body image.
Sometimes it is anxiety.
Sometimes it is the constant urge to stay busy.
Sometimes it is the feeling that you always need to be fixing yourself.
The struggle changes shape, but the underlying discomfort remains.
Food wasn't the whole problem, it was just one of the ways you were managing the problem.
We Don't Lose Connection Overnight
Most people didn't wake up one morning completely disconnected from themselves.
It tends to happen gradually when you learn to ignore hunger because you're dieting or when you learn to ignore exhaustion because there are things to do.
You learn to push down sadness because there isn't space for it and override anxiety because you need to keep functioning.
You learn to dismiss your needs because other people's needs seem more important and eventually, the gap between you and yourself becomes so normal that you barely notice it.
Then one day someone tells you: "Just listen to your body."
And you think: "What body?"
The one I've spent years ignoring? The one I've spent years trying to change? The one I only pay attention to when I hate it?
The Goal Is Not Perfect Body Awareness
This is another place where I think we sometimes get stuck.
People start trying to become experts at hunger and fullness cues and they start to analyse every craving. They wonder whether they're hungry enough to eat or too full to continue and become hyper-focused on getting it right.
Healing isn't about becoming perfectly attuned to every sensation in your body, but instead healing is about building enough trust that you can stay in relationship with yourself even when things feel messy.
Some days you will feel connected to yourself and some days you won't.
Some days you'll know exactly what you need and some days you'll have no idea.
The goal isn't perfection but instead moving to a place where the goal is not abandoning yourself when uncertainty shows up.
Food Is Often Solving A Problem
One of the most compassionate questions we can ask is: "What is this behaviour trying to do for me?"
Not: "Why am I doing this again?"
Not: "What's wrong with me?"
But: "What is this helping me avoid, feel, express, manage, or survive?"
Because food behaviours are often intelligent adaptations and attempts to regulate overwhelming emotions, create comfort, certainty or bring relief.
The problem is not that these strategies don't work, because often they do. The problem is that they often become the ONLY strategy available, and no one wants food to be the only way they can cope in life.
Healing isn't the absence of struggle. It's the growing ability to remain connected to yourself within it.
For me, healing has become less about controlling food and more about expanding my capacity to stay connected to myself.
Can I stay with discomfort a little longer?
Can I notice an urge without immediately acting on it?
Can I feel sadness without needing to eat it away?
Can I experience anxiety without immediately trying to fix it?
Can I remain connected to myself when I don't know exactly what I need?
Because that is where trust begins, never in perfect settings or brilliant body awareness every single day but in the growing belief that whatever arises, I can stay with myself through it.
And perhaps that is what healing your relationship with food is really about, not necessarily becoming better at listening to your body but slowly rebuilding a relationship with the person who lives inside it.
If this resonated, you might like working together more deeply.