3 Tips to Manage Stress Around Food in Your Life

The winter can be a challenging time for many, the days are shorter, which can make it impossible to get even the simplest task done. From work to cooking to getting daily movement in, it can all seem overwhelming.

A common habit when feeling stressed is turning to food.

Food has become a way for so many women in my community to distract from pain, procrastinate from work, and deal with the stress they experience in their lives. The problem is that food does not fix any of these things!!

Food is supposed to be enjoyed. Yet, when speaking with so many clients, and potential clients, they tell me that food is stressful. All aspects of food, whether it’s deciding what to eat, shopping and preparing food for meals, or even the thought of going out to eat food.

And certainly, the guilt they feel after they eat what they think they “shouldn’t eat’!

Stress, stress, stress!

So today I wanted to share some strategies with you to help you manage food-related stress, without turning to food to cope!

If you have had a difficult relationship with food for some time now, then you can probably relate.

I know you probably want food to be a non-issue in your life. And you know what? It can be.

Let’s first start with 3 strategies that you can put into place immediately to help you minimize the stress around food:

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 weren’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.

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.

These strategies are a good place to get started and you can use them as a way to figure out what works best for you. If you are looking for more guidance, join my Intuitive Eating for a Diet Free Life Facebook Community.