Advice from The Bike Guy, “Food shouldn’t be complicated. Show up. Think about it. Give a sh*t.” He doesn’t know it, but this is the best definition of gentle nutrition for women over 40 ever!
But, if you’re like 95% of the women I work with, you trip over this advice.
You don’t know how to “think about it” unless it’s a list of food rules created by diet culture.
Eat this, don’t eat that. Eat at these times, but not between these times.
What happens when you’re tired of following the rules?
Or when you’re overwhelmed by all the health “shoulds?”
I should eat more vegetables and protein. I shouldn’t eat processed food. I shouldn’t eat sugar. I should cook more from scratch.
Shoulding on yourself makes you feel defeated and confused.
This isn’t your fault and you’re not broken.
Diet culture’s entire business model is built on your not knowing how to “think about it.”
Let’s ditch the overwhelm, and make The Bike Guy’s advice work for you.
What gentle nutrition is and what it isn’t
- It’s based on your unique nutrition needs, lifestyle, and health goals during perimenopause and menopause.
- Not another set of food rules to follow for specific health or weight loss results
- Gentle nutrition helps you create personal guidelines with built-in flexibility to avoid all-or-nothing thinking.
- The sweet spot at the intersection of what you want to eat and your body needs.
Intuitive eating often gets falsely interpreted as eat-all-foods-all-the-time
Opponents say what if you have diabetes or high cholesterol? What if heart disease runs in your family? Won’t eating processed food give you cancer?
My #spicyathlete side would respond, “Is micromanaging your food choices with food rules better for your health?”
Sassiness aside, it’s a challenge to shift your mindset from the belief that food will either kill or cure you to food can be joyful, nourishing, and health-promoting at the same time.
This is the essence of gentle nutrition. Here’s how you do it.
1. Gentle nutrition asks you to reject food rules and beliefs that create an unhealthy relationship with food
Food rules such as:
- Don’t eat fruits like bananas because they’re too high in sugar
- Eating packaged or processed foods will cause cancer and premature aging
- Stop eating before X time
- Don’t eat before X time
- Only eat X foods combined with Y foods
- Eat ½ your plate as vegetables at every meal
- Avoid all added sugar
- Only eat X amount of calories if you’ve burned at least that many calories through exercise
- Limit your carb intake to less than X grams per day
You’ve followed at least a few of these, right? So have many of the women I work with – usually in the name of health.
This works until you want an evening snack while watching a movie with your teen who randomly decided you’re cool to hang out with.
Or until your digestion is a bloated mess from eating so many vegetables with every meal, but you’re still constipated because you’re limiting your grain-based carbs.
Now you don’t feel great in your body and you no longer see the weight loss effects you saw when you started following the rules. What’s the point?
Frustrated, you think, “To hell with it all.” You ditch the rules, start eating whatever you want when you want, and end up eating beyond comfortable fullness frequently. You start to see your weight creep up the scale, and your recent lab values indicate you’re prediabetic. Now what?
Should you go back to the food rules?
Here’s what happens when you let go of food rules with gentle nutrition
It’s like taking a deep gasp of air after holding your breath for a while trying to get rid of hiccups. You let go of the rules and suddenly want to eat all the previous off-limits foods all the time. Now you have two choices.
You can either “get back on track” by following food rules again.
Or you can learn to honor your health with gentle nutrition based on your health concerns, lifestyle, and food preferences.
I recommend option 2. You’re tired of the rules, right?
2. Practice gentle nutrition to find the middle ground between what you want to eat and what your body needs
WARNING! The process of letting go of food rules is messy!
Give yourself time and A LOT of self-compassion to figure this out. It starts with reflecting on why you want to honor your health with gentle nutrition.
Grab a journal, note app, or scrap paper and jot down reflections to the following questions. This will help you flush out your ‘whys’ next week.
- Worried about your health now that you’re over 40? Blood sugar issues, heart health, bone health, perimenopause symptoms, risk of cancer, etc.
- How do you want to feel in your body? Have more energy, better sleep, more mental clarity and focus, more stable moods, feel stronger with more endurance, etc.
- What foods does your body need to help you address these health concerns (think add-in approach, more on this later)?
- If you don’t follow food rules, what foods do you find satisfying? What foods do you want to eat?
In another post, we’ll get into more specifics of how to feed yourself based on your ‘whys’ of gentle nutrition.
If you don’t know how to think about food without food rules, check out the online Midlife Feast Community for resources and group coaching!
