For many dancers, unfortunate body ideals build a pressure that creates a constant dialogue of comparison and self-critique. Regarding food, meals become calculated with each calorie scrutinized as the desire to achieve an ideal overshadows the joy of eating. This obsession can lead to a cycle of restriction and guilt, where the focus on nutrition shifts from nourishment to control.
What Is Food Obsession?
There’s a fine line between promoting healthy habits and teetering with restrictive ones. This is especially true since diet culture masks disordered eating with “wellness.”
Since food is both a necessity and a tool for optimizing a dancer’s performance, it can be easy for harmless habits to turn into obsessive behaviors. Add a dancer’s perfectionistic mindset and, eating, as a biologically “normal” process, becomes a cabaret of consuming thoughts. This preoccupation with food and body steers us further from what is “normal.”
Signs of Food Obsession
Thinking about food and obsessing about food are two very different things. Deciphering between the two is important when assessing whether or not your relationship with food is “healthy” and, well, “normal.” A few signs of food obsession include:
- Inability to concentrate on tasks unrelated to food.
- Overwhelming stress over when and what your next meal will be.
- Anxiety if a meal or snack doesn’t go according to plan.
- Lack of mindful enjoyment while eating.
- An “all-or-nothing” mindset around food.
- Needing to avoid social situations and experiences when access to “allowed” foods is limited.
Why Am I Obsessed With Food?
A preoccupation with food can start as early as childhood, especially when parental control around mealtimes is high. Any limitation, restriction, or condition placed upon food will ignite this preoccupation. Social media feeds, such as Instagram, have even been shown to increase one’s chances of developing disordered eating habits like orthorexia. (Quick note: orthorexia describes the obsession with healthy eating).
Food restrictions can be intentional, such as with dieting, or unintentional, such as with a busy schedule. Either way, under-fueling leads to over-thinking. This is also seen when we moralize food into categories like “good” and “bad.” A desire for perceived “bad” foods (which are often more indulgent, high-carb, and high-fat choices) builds from the mere idea that we “shouldn’t” be eating them.
Extreme preoccupation with food can also manifest into diagnosable eating disorders, such as Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia, Binge Eating Disorder, Other Specified Feeding or Eating Disorder, and Avoidance/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder. To learn more about each, visit the National Eating Disorder Association’s website.
The bottom line: it’s human nature to want what we *think* we cannot have. Dieting imposes restrictions and impedes our ability to fuel intuitively (or, arguably, normally). Since our culture normalizes dieting, one can assume that much of the dance population lies on the spectrum of disordered/restrictive eating.
Steps To Overcome Food Obsession
Despite what diet culture wants you to believe, the problem isn’t you. It’s the guilt, shame, and burden of feeling limited around your food choices. With so many dancers struggling with disordered eating, it’s important to repair your relationship with food in order to stop the obsessive thoughts around them. The goal is to build body trust, end feelings of deprivation, and begin to feel liberated at mealtimes. Here’s how to start:
Step 1: Eat Enough Food Throughout The Day
Eating too few calories throughout the day will negatively impact your body’s metabolism and throw your hunger cues out of balance. First, you’ll want to know the signs of undereating in order to get a better sense of where you’re at with your calorie needs. This doesn’t mean I want you counting calories. Rather, I want you to learn how to regain your sense of intuitive energy balance. To do this, refer to the following articles:
Step 2: Practice Food Neutrality
Different foods hold different nutritional values. If comparing a brownie to a stalk of broccoli, the broccoli will be more nutritionally dense than the brownie. Broccoli contains a higher percentage of various vitamins and minerals.
But this doesn’t mean we are “bad” for choosing the brownie or “good” for choosing the broccoli. Food neutrality involves removing the judgment from food and removing the judgment around oneself for eating that food. Also, food holds MORE value than just nutrition. Taste, flavor, experience, and nostalgic memories also play a role in one’s food choices. To learn more about food neutrality, check out these articles:
Step 3: Eat With Unconditional Permission
This is a direct principle from Intuitive Eating. Eating with unconditional permission removes restrictive food rules from one’s life. When we break food rules, we create abundance with food, both physically and mentally. We adjust the rhetoric around our food choices (removing the “good” and “bad” talk) and begin to learn about our feelings of fullness and satisfaction. Slowly but surely, we step away from the diet mentality and loosen the reigns of diet culture.
Having access to food and giving oneself permission to eat said foods allows us to practice food habituation. From a general perspective, habituation is the adaptation to a repeated experience. When repeatedly exposed to a specific food, the desire to eat it diminishes. The food becomes less novel and even less satisfying over time. Let’s talk about cookies, as an example. Removing the “no way!” attitude around cookies doesn’t mean we’re opening the floodgates and encouraging you to eat all of them in one sitting. Rather, while eating cookies, build a mindful and positive experience that leaves you feeling good, not sick. Technically, you’re more than welcome to eat loads of cookies in one sitting, but your tummy is likely going to hurt afterward… that’s not a positive experience!
Food habituation is also not meant to take happiness away from a specific food. It’s just meant to reduce the heightened reward around any one type of food. And with that said, studies on food habituation show that it doesn’t work as well alongside distractions. Therefore, when reintroducing those “no way!” foods, try to do so using a mindful eating experience. I talk more about this process here.
Step 4: Build Body Confidence
While body acceptance might sound far-fetched, learning how to appreciate your body for its many capacities is sometimes enough. Refer to the following articles to dive into this work.
Step 5: Journal the Journey
Reflection breeds retention. Jot down your wins and your challenges. Take some time from your day (even if just 2 minutes!) to reflect upon any (or all!) of the steps mentioned in this article. Remember, you’re not alone.
