Relationships: Food and Exercise

Food. It’s simple, right?  The role of food is to nourish our bodies to sustain life, provide energy and promote growth and renewal. The process of moving the body to boost energy, improve muscle strength and endurance and to maintain and improve health and longevity.

So, all we need to do is eat healthily and exercise regularly to ensure we maintain strong and healthy minds and bodies. But we all know it’s not that simple. So what makes it so complicated?

Relationships with Food

We all have our own relationship with food and exercise, and those relationships will be based on our relationships with ourselves – our self- esteem, our self-value, self-worth, our self-confidence, our self-motivation and self-discipline. Who knew visiting the fridge was such an emotionally charged process? Well, me, for one, and many others, too. That’s why we have a trillion-pound industry based on keeping people fit and healthy.

There are two things to consider here. Firstly, keeping a realistic and properly holistic healthy body and mind. There are unrealistic media fed expectations of what the perfect body is and that has changed over time. Think Marilyn Monroe, Twiggy, Pamela Anderson, Kate Moss, and the Kardashians, and for men, think Mr T, Arnold Schwarzenegger, David Beckham and Cristiano Ronaldo. They are all force-fed to us to shame us into buying products.

But we don’t have to eat the latest fad diet or buy the latest craze of home gym equipment to get to that ideal.

What we do need to invest in is exploring and becoming curious about our relationship with food and exercise and why we eat the food we choose and why we find excuses not to exercise. Then we can start to heal those negative thought processes, emotional connections and self-sabotaging habits.

People get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable

• We use food to fill a void – are you really in search of a hug, some reassurance or to vent your frustrations. Would talking through the emotion be better than eating through it?
• Self-sabotage. Are you in a pattern of self-sabotaging?
• Have you set your ‘good enough’ too low, so don’t bother trying to improve your health?
• Have you set your ‘good enough’ too high, so it becomes overwhelming and unachievable, so you just don’t even bother trying?
• Are you holding back and dimming your light to please others?
• Do you feel you’re not able to prioritise yourself? It’s ok to put yourself and your needs first, you know, because if you don’t, no one else will!
• Have you been set bad examples by family and you don’t know any different?
• Is it easier to find excuses as to why you should ditch the healthy eating and exercise than it is to find the reasons to eat well, exercise and value yourself and your mental and physical health?
• Do you use junk food and skipping exercise as a form of treat or reward for yourself, but don’t realise how the short term fix is having a long term detrimental impact on your long-term wellbeing, self-esteem, self-confidence and happiness?
• Use ‘holidays’ as a time for ditching the healthy eating and exercise routine?
• Are you a social eater and use food as a means to feel connected to others?
• Short term fix of feeling good in place of a long term high
• Filling a void?

What is your Relationship with Food?

So, what is your relationship with food like?  What can you do to improve this relationship?

• Become aware of your eating and exercise habits, what’s really going on for you? What conversation are you having with yourself? Which emotion are you eating? What emotion are you hiding from by not exercising?
• Identify your triggers for eating badly or lacking the motivation and will power to exercise.
• If you’re in a pattern of self-sabotage, what do you need to change to come out of the pattern? It might be a thought process, a feeling or a habit change.
• What support do you need to get things on the right track? What support can you find for yourself?  Where can you get support to do the internal mental work? Everyone Active are offering all sorts of support with nutrition advice, mental wellbeing support and obviously all of the amazing fitness classes you can do online!  They’re there for you!
• Try new things – make it fun: Healthy food doesn’t mean boring food, and exercise doesn’t need to be a chore. Try out new things, from a walk and Yoga to full on HIIT and Bodycombat and all sorts in between.
• Be realistic with yourself – don’t aim too high or too low.
• Carve out the time for you to plan your healthy eating menu and when and how you’ll exercise.
• Set motivational challenges: make some SMART goals Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound.
• Hold yourself accountable, and if you can’t trust yourself to hold yourself accountable, then find someone who will.
• Remember motivation. Find my article on motivation and give it a read.

Remember, as adults, we are the only one’s responsible for ourselves, for our decisions and for our experiences, so if you need to do the mental work so you can make the physical changes, invest that time and effort in yourself. You won’t regret doing it, but you will regret not doing it.