As a young child, we are fed by our parents with meals to nourish and comfort us. Food is often used to show our love to one another. As we grow older, we experience the joys of eating comforting, home-cooked meals from our family and friends. We experience sitting down and enjoying the food before us while engaging in new conversations and spending time with loved ones. We get to experience trying new foods and going out to new restaurants. All these experiences add to our life, they connect us with others, and they nourish our bodies and souls.
As we get older we start to make our own choices about foods; we choose what we want to eat, when we want to eat, or whether we want to eat at home or go to a restaurant. We get to choose our own meals based on what will make us feel our best in that moment, what will nourish our body, our soul, and our minds. Getting to choose our foods and allowing ourselves to indulge in whatever foods we want is an opportunity to give ourselves love and self-compassion.
Have you ever had the experience of feeling shame or guilt after eating a given food? Our culture has a skewed perspective on food that puts the food into good or bad categories which we often internalize. Food itself isn’t good or bad, it is all just food, but the topic of food morality is a post for another day.
For now, we can choose to practice self compassion rather than beating ourselves up. This allows us to stay in a place of being able to listen to our body’s needs. What I’ve noticed with clients I have worked with is that staying in a place of shame makes taking care of the body’s needs more difficult and choices tend to be negative and this can cause a spiral of negative thoughts and actions. It’s much better for your health in the long-run to practice self-compassion.
It is so important we have compassion with ourselves as we embark on healing our relationship with food and with our bodies. Practicing self love in this way can be one of the most powerful sources of coping and resilience. Practicing self-compassion can be as simple as eating the meal you have been craving, allowing yourself to indulge and find comfort in that meal, and filling your mind with thoughts of how happy and whole the meal is allowing you to feel. We can practice self-compassion daily by honoring our body for everything it does for us, by moving and loving it for the way it is made, and not trying to change it to fit whatever standard our mind has made us believe it must fit into.
Gentle Nutrition as a way to show self-love
Food is an amazing way to practice self-love, and through eating the foods that make us feel our best we can practice gentle nutrition. We can show our bodies and minds we love ourselves by eating foods that make us feel good, energized, and happy. Implementing gentle nutrition means we are honoring our cravings and nourishing our bodies at the same time. We are taking how we will feel and what we want into consideration when picking our foods. This may look like having fruit with a little side of candy, rather than just the candy, after realizing filling up on just candy made us feel sick and tired.
As we move through life, experience new things, and take on new challenges, our bodies will need different amounts or types of foods. Although this change may seem scary, it is also an amazing way to practice trust in yourself, and to show yourself love through every stage. Change is scary, change is hard, but change will help us grow. The best way to get through change is by constantly reminding yourself of your worth, reminding yourself to show your mind and body how much you love it, and through it all, practicing self-compassion. Remembering to give ourselves the same care, love, and understanding we would give a close friend or family member.