3 Powerful Strategies to Decrease Food-Related Stress

Food is meant to be enjoyed, but for many of us, it often becomes a source of stress. It’s not just the act of eating that causes anxiety, shopping for groceries, preparing meals, and even the thought of dining out can all contribute to this stress.

Do you find yourself feeling this way?

Does the process of deciding what to cook, going to the grocery store, and preparing meals lead to unwanted stress? For many chronic dieters, this is a common experience. They become so accustomed to rigid eating rules that breaking free can be stressful, even though moving away from dieting should feel liberating.

If you’ve struggled with your relationship with food for a while, you’re likely familiar with these feelings.

But here’s the good news: it is possible to change this. You can develop a healthy, positive relationship with food that reduces stress around meal planning, shopping, and eating.

Let’s explore how you can make food a non-issue and enjoy a more relaxed approach to eating.

Here are 3 Powerful Strategies to Decrease Food Related Stress:

Strategy #1: Set up your environment for success.

While I’m all about teaching you how to be intuitive in your eating, I am also very practical. It is important to be mindful of your eating and one way to do that is to reduce your external eating cues. That means put all food away after you’ve eaten and don’t leave food on the counters or table. If food is left out, it can very easily lead to mindless munching which then leads to feelings of guilt and frustration for eating when you aren’t hungry.

Strategy #2: Seek assistance from your family members.

Food shopping and meal prep doesn’t have to just be your responsibility. Get everyone involved in the menu planning. Even better, assign everyone a night to prepare the dinner. This way the whole family is involved, the kids will more likely eat what they help to prepare, and you get quality family time too. This will lead to less stress on you to feel like you must do everything.

Strategy #3: Start to use meditation and visualization.

Meditation can be a powerful tool to help keep your mind clear and stress-free. You can use meditation as a way to visualize yourself being stress-free around food and, by visualizing that, you can start to believe it will happen too.