http://anourishingword.com/ -- Blog, Book, and Practice information Nourish: How to Heal Your Relationship with Food, Body, and Self https://amzn.to/2CRegpr   Relationship with Food http://learntruehealth.com/relationship-with-food Our relationship with food goes hand in hand with our physical and emotional self. Some may say it is hard to get our diet choices on the right track. But honestly, our eating disorders or food cravings sometimes aren’t because we are hungry.  To explain how to heal our relationship with food, I have Dietician and Book Author Heidi Schauster in this episode. Eating Disorder Heidi Schauster didn’t have the best relationship with food when she was younger. She struggled with eating disorders during adolescence. And went through a recovery process that included some study of nutrition. Heidi Schauster decided to study nutrition in college because she was obsessed with food. However, she was also a strong science geek and was interested in physiology and anatomy. She thought she would go on to medical school, but Heidi Schauster didn’t like the lifestyle. So, she chose to pursue studying nutrition instead. Studying nutrition was helpful in Heidi Schauster’s recovery. “I was a ballet dancer, and I thought dieting was the norm. And that I needed to eat more food than I thought. Studying nutrition helped me relax a little bit more to understand how food was needed in my body and muscles. And I allowed myself to eat more,” said Heidi Schauster. Getting Inspired Heidi Schauster has been helping people deal with their relationship with food for 23 years now. It was a far cry from her teenage years when her relationship with food was so chaotic. Heidi Schauster almost had to relearn that sense of pleasure and enjoyment from food. As a culmination of her recovery work, it helped that she had experience watching kids enjoy food again when she worked at a children’s hospital in Boston. That inspired her to help people. Nourish: How to Heal Your Relationship with Food, Body, and Self Heidi Schauster wrote Nourish: How to Heal Your Relationship with Food, Body, and Self because she wanted to create a nutrition book that was not going to be triggering for someone who is recovering from an eating disorder. She wanted it to be something that was also accessible to people who don’t have an eating disorder but feel like their relationship with food was funky. “I don’t know how anyone can not have a funky relationship with food sometimes in this culture. There are so many things pointing us in the direction of using food to better ourselves,” Heidi Schauster said.  Heidi Schauster believes that when anyone today struggles with their relationship with food, there is fear involved.  For some, it’s bigger fears than others. Hence, reintroducing food is a very slow program wherein a trusting relationship must be developed first. “We’ve gotten so mind-driven over our food choices. And we think about what we should eat so much. As a result, we don’t drop into our bodies and ask what would be right for you right now and listen to that response,” explains Heidi Schauster.  She adds, “If someone is very out of touch with their body, and not used to inhabiting their body or making decisions on what to eat, it can feel foreign to trust again.”   Steps To A Well-Balanced Diet First of all, Heidi Schauster advises to let go of the diet mentality and sense of trying to fix the body through food. We must accept that our body is ideal. When you come from that place of body acceptance, then you tend to make different choices around eating. Your choices will tend to be healthier. Another way to get your diet on track is thorough diffusion. It is a behavioral technique where you listen to your thoughts and approach it as an observer. Then you decide how to behave. “It just gives you a little space to take care of yourself and your body. And doesn’t necessarily mean you must go on a diet,” Heidi Schauster said. Negative Thoughts According t