Self-care is about doing what feels right for your health. It encompasses the entire spectrum, ranging from mental to physical. Essentially, practicing self-care involves tuning into the signals your body and mind are giving you.
Learning how to listen to those cues can be half the battle, considering all the conflicting—and sometimes bad—advice.
But reframing your relationship with nutritious food is one way to practice good self-care principles. Concepts like intuitive eating are becoming part of the next wellness movement.
In contrast to traditional dieting methods, intuitive eating strays from the idea of calorie-counting and viewing certain foods as off-limits. While the practice emphasizes healthy eating, it also focuses on nourishing your body with what it needs.
Food-as-self-care can extend beyond intuitive eating practices, but it’s about developing a positive relationship with your food and body.
What you put on your plate can have an impact on your moods, energy levels, sleep patterns, and systemic inflammation.
Food-as-self-care is emerging as a way to support everything from appreciating your body to disease prevention. As more people embrace this idea, it’s set to transform how society approaches wellness as a whole.
Focuses on Food as Nourishment
Do you get mental whiplash reading all the advice about dieting and nutrition? One expert says to go low carb, while another says a balance between fats, carbs, and protein is key.
Another article emphasizes restricting sugar, and the next year, artificial sweeteners, not natural sugars, are the culprit behind weight gain. It’s a never-ending blame game in placing various foods into “acceptable” and “unacceptable” categories.
Food-as-self-care takes a divergent, but not necessarily radical, approach. It shifts the mindset from labeling different foods as “good” or “bad.” Instead, the practice says eating nutritious food is a chance to nourish your body.
Eating shouldn’t be viewed as a set of rules and restrictions. It’s about treating yourself with kindness and viewing food for the positive things it can do.
Now, this doesn’t mean you should eat a bag of potato chips and a carton of ice cream at every meal. You do need to be mindful of making choices that will positively fuel your body and mind.
These choices can include healthy food delivery, a piece of dark chocolate for dessert, or switching to whole-grain pasta. Making choices you can sustain is better than following rules that are challenging to stick to long-term.
Treats Food as an Experience
Did you know 95% of diets fail? The majority of people who try them end up gaining the weight back, usually within a year. No matter what diet it is — Keto or The Zone —you’re not allowed to eat certain things.
Dieting is typically focused on forbidding the consumption of specific foods or restricting their intake. The result is that eating is seen as a chore, a negative experience, and something to feel guilty about.
As a result, people overcompensate. The temptation to cheat, even a little, is always in the back of your mind. And once you’ve achieved a weight loss goal, it’s natural to return to the way you ate before. Meals become tied to the idea of punishment versus reward rather than mindful eating.
Food-as-self-care recognizes your body needs different types of nourishment at various times. Maybe you need to eat a second helping of spaghetti today because you’ve put in extra miles at the gym.
Tomorrow, you might want a baked potato with sour cream because these foods contain nutrients your body is low on. By focusing on nutritious food, you come to view nutrition as an experience to savor and give your body what it craves. You’re feeding what your body is telling you it needs in the moment.
Builds Lifetime Habits
You’ll risk malnutrition if your diet consists only of chips and candy bars. You’ll probably risk the same if all you consume are protein shakes. Eventually, your mental and physical health will suffer.
Your brain needs carbs and fats just as it needs sleep. And there’s research-backed proof that foods like berries and fatty fish can boost cognitive function.
Intuitive eating says nutrition should support your overall wellness through daily habits you can maintain. It’s not realistic to think you can sustain a 1,000 to 1,200-calorie diet in the long run.
You’ll notice more fatigue, physical and mental. It’ll be difficult to concentrate, whether you’re prepping for a big presentation or studying for your next final. Without balanced nutrition, your immune system could decline, making you more susceptible to illness.
Even your mood can be affected. You might find yourself becoming more irritable and anxious. But with food-as-self-care, the desired outcome isn’t what the scale says every morning. It’s how your body and mind feel. If you feel like eating less one day, do it.
The next day, your gut might steer you toward avocado toast for breakfast and eggplant lasagna for dinner. Being able to gauge your energy levels, hunger signals, and what foods sound good each day is sustainable. Yo-yo dieting gimmicks aren’t.
Nutritious Food Supports Wellness
Wellness involves achieving optimal performance, physically and mentally. However, your emotions and mindset also influence your sense of well-being.
A negative relationship with food can cause you to make choices that don’t support overall, long-term wellness. Food-as-self-care seeks to shift people to a positive mindset, reframing meals as an intuitive experience.
Foods, particularly unprocessed or minimally processed versions, can have balanced benefits for physical and mental well-being. Learning to give your body and mind the fuel it needs takes practice. But, most importantly, it involves listening to what’s right for your body from day to day.
