As you pursue recovery from your eating disorder, you may wonder what a healthy relationship with food looks like. Aside from meeting your body’s physiological needs and adequately nourishing your body, our relationship with food can also be highly emotional. How we interact with food is incredibly complicated.

Outside sources like friends, family, and diet culture can also influence how we view food. But what is a healthy relationship with food? Keep reading for some defining factors of a harmonious relationship with what you eat.

Food Does Not Dictate Your Mood

Recovery from an eating disorder can teach you to take a more neutral approach to food. Developing a healthy relationship with food means that food does not have power over your mood. If you notice that certain foods make your mood shift dramatically, even to the point of avoiding them altogether, it might be worth examining your relationship with that food. If food generally alters your mood for the worse, consider talking to your treatment team or support system about how you can learn to look at food neutrally. 

Food Does Not Alter Your Plans

A healthy relationship with food means you can go about your daily life without overthinking the foods available. If you are able to attend the events you want to attend and make spontaneous plans without food anxiety getting in the way, your relationship with food is likely healthy. However, if you notice that thoughts of food make it difficult to participate in social events or gatherings, it might be worth exploring this aspect of your relationship with food further.

Food Does Not Determine Your Self-Worth

What you eat does not determine what kind of person you are, how deserving you are of connection with others, or what you deserve to eat later in the day. Developing a healthy relationship with food means that what you eat does not alter your view of yourself. Diet culture may try to conflate what you eat with your worth as a person by assigning false morality to foods, using words like “clean,” “sinful,” and “guilt-free.” Still, these are simply marketing tactics to sell a particular product or lifestyle. In recovery from an eating disorder, it can be hard to separate who you are from what you eat, but the two are different. Your worth is independent of what you eat. 

Food Is More Than Just Fuel

Sure, food fuels your body by giving it the nutrients it needs to survive and thrive. However, food is much more than a form of fuel. Food is a way to connect with others, celebrate, grieve, and dive into your own culture and different ways of life. By learning how food can add joy to your life beyond just nourishment, you can grow and explore your relationship to food through recovery and beyond.

How Do I Develop a Healthy Relationship with Food?

It may sound daunting and even overwhelming to begin to explore your relationship with food and make it more peaceful and healthy. However, it is possible to have a more neutral and healthy relationship with food with support. One of the first steps to developing a healthy relationship with food is to notice how food makes you feel.