Food Fears, Restrictive Diets, Disordered Eating, and Your Relationship with Food

Whether you're dealing with anxiety around eating because of frequent GI symptoms, an eating disorder like anorexia nervosa or avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID), or you've just been on a restrictive diet for a long time... we need to talk. 

Your relationship with food and with your body are both central to your health.

If you're eating a super-restrictive diet, you're stressed every time you go to a restaurant or to the grocery store, you avoid social eating, or you wish you didn't have to eat at all... these are signs of a problematic relationship with food. As I often tell my patients, many of us are on the "spectrum" of disordered eating, even without a diagnosable eating disorder.

If you feel like your body is constantly working against you, you're constantly frustrated with your gut because of all the pain, discomfort, and stress it's causing you, or you find it hard not to fixate on what you wish you could change about your body... these are signs of a problematic relationship with your body.

In our body-image focused world, and our world where silent illnesses (like many GI and mental health conditions) are often ignored or minimized, these two things (an unhealthy relationship with food and a damaged relationship with your body) often go together.

Part of my role as an IBS & mental health dietitian is to help you heal these relationships.

Check out the articles below for more on eating for whole health... including mental health, brain health, rest-of-the-body health, and a healthy relationship with food.