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Does Your Wellness Practitioner Truly Have a Healthy Relationship With Food/Their Body? 4 Questions You Must Ask Before You Begin Working With One.

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I wish this wasn’t the truth…

But the reality is that there are many nutritionists, health coaches, and wellness professionals who struggle with a disordered/unhealthy relationship to food, exercise, and to their bodies, carefully hiding it under the guise of wellness, detoxing, and restrictive food plans and joyless workouts.

Many are not giving up or limiting certain foods because of their body’s biofeedback (i.e “My body hurts when I eat X, so I choose to avoid it.”). Instead, they are often giving them up because they still have an extremely fearful, restrictive, and painful relationship with food. The more restrictive they get with food, the more safety they feel…but it also feels lonely, pleasureless, and can lead to a binge-purge cycle with food.

And this mentality more often than not transposes itself onto how they approach working out, with exercise being a punishment for the body they have or the food they ate,  instead of it being a way to celebrate, enjoy, and move the body because of self-love and a desire for greater health and self-care.

This painful relationship with body and food does not just effect the practitioner; inevitably, it effects their clients and how their clients see and relate to their own bodies and to food.

It’s a sad and toxic reality that unfortunately doesn’t get talked about nearly enough. That’s why I was so pleased to see a recent article from Bustle (written by Margaret Wheeler Johnson) called, “Why Wouldn’t Your Nutritionist Have An Eating Disorder?” In this article, Johnson laid out the complex reasons why many wellness professionals struggle around their own relationship with food, how the industry/programs of nutrition studies can foster the cycle, and the ways in which it can have a dangerous trickle down effect on the clients they work with. You can check it HERE.

Now, I’m not saying that all detox, exercise, or wellness programs (or the practitioners who promote them)  are toxic. In fact, I have been brought on by several very well-known doctors to lend my expertise to their clients as to how to have a healthy relationship to body and food while following their protocol. And many years ago, I used to run my own seasonal group cleanses for clients, with a heavy focus on helping them revamp their relationship to body and food. I no longer run them because I found, despite my best efforts to avoid this, many of the participants did treat the cleanse like another diet. I then wrestled with the thought that I could be making their relationship with food more problematic, and I felt out of integrity continuing to run them in a group format. Overall, it just started to feel out of alignment with what I wanted to focus on in my client work.

The bottom line here is that it’s vital that the practitioner understands the emotional and psychological factors connected to any eating/exercise program and must be focused on the client and their body’s bio-individuality/needs instead of just “food rules”/ end results. Any program/practitioner who does not address this in their work is, in my opinion, waving a big red flag.

This is why working with a professional who has both nutrition and Eating Psychology training is a beautiful (and important)  blend of both worlds; you as the client not only gain nutritional knowledge, but more importantly you shift how you eat, how you connect to food and your body, and heal the root issues that have created a challenging relationship with food and body.

End result? Living a life with greater freedom, pleasure, and peace with food and body.

Before my own studies in Eating Psychology, I too struggled with a fractured relationship with my body and food. Though I had trained and studied nutrition prior to my certification programs in Eating Psychology, the last frontier in my healing journey was understanding why I had such a challenging relationship with my body and with food in the first place; this set me on a path to true healing, which is still unfolding and growing in its beauty and depth. And much like the Bustle article described, in many ways, studying nutrition ironically worsened many of tendencies to overthink and over focus on the food on my plate. That’s why Eating Psychology was my saving grace- it was the missing link that no amount of nutritional knowledge could provide.

My training forever changed the way I worked with clients, how I coached, what I focused on in my client work, and how I approached any sort of reset, food elimination, or detox protocol with them. Yes, sometimes eliminating certain foods can have huge health benefits. However, the work ALWAYS must be client centered and must take into account where the client is on their journey with body image and food. The goal should be individual body wisdom, not tight protocols that enslave a client into being fearful of every bite they take.

I’m so glad I had a mentor who taught me this wisdom. It changed my life in ways I cannot fully describe.

I want that for you too, and no matter if you work with me or another wellness professional, I want you to be empowered to ask the right questions to make sure that the person you are choosing to work with won’t transpose a negative relationship to food and body onto you via your work together.

Today I am giving you 4 essential questions to ask before you enter into a coaching//therapeutic relationship with a wellness professional, as well as what to pay attention to in their responses.

Check out today’s video, where I break down the 4 essential questions to ask… and the responses you want to stay aware of. Then, keep this in your back pocket before you hire a wellness coach or practitioner. You deserve to know how they approach body and food relationship challenges before you sign on the dotted line and start working together.

Again, the four questions are:

  1. Tell me about your relationship with body and food.
  2. Have you ever struggled with your relationship with body and food? If so, how did you navigate healing it?
  3. Have you ever helped any other clients who struggled around their relationship with food and their body image?
  4. What is your food philosophy?

Remember, just because someone has a certification or a bunch of letters behind their name doesn’t necessarily mean they are in a healthy place with body and food, nor does it mean they have tools and counseling skills to help you with yours. And it’s ok if they are still working on improving their connection to their body and food; the danger comes from working with a practitioner who is in denial about their disorder and then transposes their toxic lens onto their clients. Looks (and letters) can be deceiving, so be sure to dig a little deeper.

Now, I’d love to hear from you. Have you ever worked with a practitioner whose methodologies created a negative relationship to food and body for you? Were there programs you tried that promoted “health” but made your body image and food challenges only intensify?

Let me know in the comments below, and share with a friend who might need to hear this message.

And if you are interested in working together, I’d love to support you in creating a happy, healthy, pleasurable relationship to your body and food.  I’m still running my special on a 60 minute coaching session (25% off until September 5th). Simply click here to book and don’t forget to use the code PLEASURE at checkout.

Sending you all my love,

Anita

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