Is your relationship with food helping or hindering your clients?

“Those who don’t believe in magic, will never find it” — Roald Dahl.

In 2014, when Quest bars were a novelty and flexible dieting was a covert code name for ‘pop tart’, most fitness professionals were dieting themselves into oblivion to prove they could ‘walk the walk’ for their clients. If we couldn’t have abs (for at least 24 hours), then how could we support others to get them?

I even donned the sparkle bikini and mud-water tan to compete in bodybuilding for 4 years under this guise of ‘practicing what I preach’ before finally realising that I didn’t want to encourage anyone to be unhealthily lean and emaciated. ‘Practicing what I preach’ was just a comfortable little lie I was telling myself to support my unhealthy life choices (on reflection there are many a lie I’ve told myself to support my unhealthy life choices but thankfully I have a PhD so don’t have to talk about my love life).

Thankfully, the industry has progressed from this narrative in the last few years and, combined with the push towards authentic social media accounts and outspoken fitness influencers, we’re finally embracing more diverse bodies (I say this knowing that diverse in the fitness sense is still nowhere close to reality).

We’re coming to accept that ‘practicing what you preach’ as a coach or personal trainer no longer means having a 6 pack. It means resting as well as training, developing our emotional awareness, making healthful choices and being mindful of nutrient intake, not sacrificing our health for super low body fat levels, having social balance and connection. It looks like working your hardest work, being your healthiest self, whilst living your best life. It looks like having a ‘good relationship with food’.

But herein lies the problem. If we are now to consider ourselves as walking talking advocates of a good relationship with food, what if we don’t actually know what that looks like?

My worry is this.

We don’t have to be lean to support someone to be lean. We can guide someone to diet to levels leaner than our own because we know that exists. We know what low body fat levels look like. It’s an objective outcome.

‘Relationship with food’ is not objective. In fact, it’s highly subjective. It’s a feeling. One behaviour on two people can look identical on the outside, but to one person is a natural healthful way of eating, to another is extremely disordered. It’s much more about how we think and feel about food and exercise as opposed to our actions (although of course, they play a role).

Many people get into the fitness industry because of their own challenges with their relationship with food and their bodies. Ask any personal trainer or coach and 90% (not peer reviewed data) of us will tell you that we used to have disordered eating or exercise habits, were in a smaller or larger body, struggled with food scarcity or abundance, or experienced trauma that infiltrated the way we chose to eat and exercise.

With work and time, we then find a relationship with food that we deem healthy, that feels right for us and that is a vast improvement to our former selves. We’ve found our own healthy relationship with food.

But here’s the thing. That is now our benchmark.

What if that’s not the most optimal? What if we’ve sold ourselves short? What if there’s a whole new relationship with food world beyond that magic carpet ride? What if, what we think is a good relationship with food, is merely a ‘better’ relationship with food, and we’ve replaced that final shredded abs shot with a benchmark for our clients that’s actually the equivalent of about 6 weeks away from photoshoot ready?

Most coaches will now say they support your relationship with food in some way. It’s been a buzz phrase for the past 5 years (I remember being mocked for talking about mindful eating and meditation for disordered eating in 2014 because at that time we didn’t even know we were supposed to have a relationship with food, let alone a good one — oh how times have changed, thankfully).

But how can we support someone to a true ‘optimal’ relationship with food, if we don’t actually know that it exists? If we haven’t experienced it for ourselves, and it’s a subjective outcome. How do we know that what we’re aiming for with our clients is the true ‘end-goal’? What if the advice we give out is based on our own benchmark and actually wrong because of our own cloudy lenses?

How can we compassionately push our clients beyond their own scope of what they think is possible with their relationship with food, if we don’t believe it is possible because we haven’t reached it ourselves? Are we holding people back?

It’s very hard to believe in things that we’ve never seen. Unless we’re 5 years old and said thing wears a cosy red suit, loves a mince pie and brings us a new piece of Barbie’s Dream House every year.

We’ve grown up around parents struggling with their own food relationships, normalising disordered habits, around friendship circles who discuss food and bodies as we’ve been taught since we bought our first airbrushed magazines, thrust into diet culture and still currently live in a world where bodies are complimented and scrutinised. This is the norm.

If we now experience our best relationship with food as no longer binge eating yet solely eating all the foods we used to deem as ‘bad’ without guilt, without eating nutrient-rich ‘whole’ foods, it’s likely that we’ll hold the belief that everyone’s healthiest relationship with food will always look like including these foods.

Many people have a healthy relationship with food without ever including these foods, not due to restriction but in fact, simply preference.

If we now experience our best relationship with food as always requiring daily control and restriction of some sort, it’s likely that we’ll have the belief that everyone’s healthiest relationship with food will always require control and restriction.

Many people have a healthy relationship with food without requiring control or restriction and maintain their health with unconditional permission to eat and values-directed action.

We see the same on the other side of the chocolate coin. The anti-diet advocates have their own limits of belief and experience. A person can diet and maintain a decent relationship with food. But many of those in the anti-diet space have never been able to do that for themselves, so they’re unable to believe it can be true.

We end up with two distinct groups. At the extremes, we have some fitness professionals claiming that a good relationship with food looks like lingering disordered habits, because that’s where they find their healthiest selves (so far), and anti-diet advocates claiming that diets are always disordered because that’s where they find their unhealthiest selves.

It’s the person we work with who suffers in either situation.

I’m not here to tell you that if you have struggles with your own relationship with food, that you can’t support others. In fact many times, it can help us show more empathy and compassion. If you know me, you know that I’ve had my own struggles in the past and I’m the first to say that when life kicks me in the a-hole, I’ve been known to struggle a bit again (albeit on a far less severe scale). Self-development is never ending. I think we are always working on our relationships with ourselves, food and our bodies in some way.

If you are a coach, it’s your responsibility to always be working on these things.

The answer is in being person- centred and remaining open. Allowing a client to continue to progress and seeing their flourishing health as evidence of what can be. Believing them when they experience something beyond our own lived experience. Be willing to think again and change our beliefs about what is possible. When we focus on being client-led, then I don’t see it holding us back from achieving the magic with people.

I work with people to improve their relationships with food and bodies and educate other coaches to do the same. I also have what I deem, an excellent relationship with food now. Sometimes, when I’m having a moment, my clients’ relationships with food exceed my own. But collectively, we’ve seen the magic. We know it exists.

If you ever want to chat, my Instagram messages and emails are always open.