Very rarely (hardly ever!) are there clear, black-and-white answers as to what, when, and how much you *should* eat.

Yes, there are general nutrition principles that apply to most people, and this can help bring some clarity and structure to our eating. *My Type A / obsessive personality breathes a sigh of relief at some amount of clearcut guidance.* We’re talking eating 101s like eating regularly throughout the day, eating balanced meals, and eating mostly less processed foods.

But should you have a salad for lunch or a sandwich? Chips and guac for a snack or a protein bar? This amount for dinner or that?

Who the heck knows?? Not me! And I paid hefty money for my nutrition degree!

If you are wrestling with disordered eating, maybe you can relate to feeling pressure from yourself to figure out the “one right choice” with every food decision you face, from what you eat to when to how much.

(Note: obviously there are some food choices that would likely be more black and white, such as choosing to eat more if you are working on weight restoration. The focus of this blog post is on the more typical everyday food choices that are generally less clear, particularly from an outsider’s perspective).

Unfortunately no dietitian, social media influencer, parent, or nutrition book is going to provide you with the “perfect” guidance. The best person to potentially help you decide the whats, whens, and how much of your eating is YOU.

My goal as a dietitian is to support you / clients in helping YOU regain this confidence in YOUR OWN eating. My eating probably looks much different from yours or the next person’s, and that is perfectly a-okay! You probably don’t want me telling you exactly how to eat!

As you work through and eventually past any disordered eating that might be interfering in your food confidence and clarity, you want to be developing your own internal food intuition… what works for you, what supports you in feeling calm and centered around food, and what it looks like for you to be making food decisions rooted in satisfaction and enjoyment.

To support you in your own journey towards making food decisions with peace and confidence, I have 3 ideas to consider when making food choices.

3 Ideas to Consider When Making Food Choices:

Motivations:

Idea number one is all about your motivations for your food decisions. Why you chose what you chose. The goal here is to make food choices from a healthy, non-disordered eating place.

The same exact food decision could be healthy (non-disordered eating) OR unhealthy (disordered eating) depending on the reason why the person made the choice that they did. If my friend ordered a salad for lunch, unless I am a mindreader (which I am not), I can’t know for sure whether this was a “healthy” choice for her or not — the same goes for if she had ordered a burger.

Example of how motivation can impact the healthfulness of food choices:

• I could decide to have a smaller dinner today because I already had several snacks this afternoon, a bigger lunch, and am really not very hungry. I know I need to eat some sort of dinner, so I’ll go with something on the lighter side. I’m at a good place with my weight and everything so I can more easily trust these ebbs and flows in my appetite. This is generally a healthy, non-disordered eating food choice.
• On the other hand, I could decide to have a smaller dinner today because I am overly anxious about the additional snack that I had after lunch, even though I was extra hungry today for whatever reason. I’m still hungry for dinner as usual, but the snack was “more than I usually have,” so I “should” eat less for dinner. This is an example of a less healthy, disordered eating food choice.

Whether my eating more or less at any given moment, and choosing this food or that food, is truly healthy for my nutrition and my relationship with food has a lot to do with motivation.

So, the question to ask yourself when you are making a food decision is –> WHY am I choosing what I am choosing?

Am I more concerned with caring for myself nutritionally and mentally/emotionally, OR am I obsessing over a certain body size and letting that dominate all my food choices, regardless of my actual needs?

Values: 

The second idea I encourage you to consider as you go about the many food decisions you will continue to face is related to your values.

An exercise I sometimes have clients do involves identifying your top 5 values. (You can see an example of a list of values here).

We then work to discern whether the values chosen were coming from your Disordered Eating Part or your Healthy (Core) Self. If needed, we adjust the chosen values so that they aren’t influenced by your Disordered Eating (or Exercise) Part. We want to hear from the real you!

The goal with considering our values is that we want to (most of the time, no one is perfect!) be making food decisions that are in alignment with our values — what matters most to us as a person.

Maybe your 5 core values are integrity, family, spirituality, health, and commitment. How are your typical food decisions impacting each of these values? Negatively and/or positively?

If you are wrestling with any degree of disordered eating, I gently invite you to consider how your current relationship with food is preventing you from living a life that more fully aligns with your values. How is it getting in the way of you living the life you want to look back on 10, 20, 30 years from now?

Trade-Offs:

The third and final idea to consider when making food decisions is all about trade-offs.

We are ALWAYS making trade-offs in our food decisions, and the sooner one accepts that, the smother and more peaceful their relationship with food will be!

A question I like to consider or ask clients is essentially, “What are you leaning into with this food decision?”

There are many “categories” we could lean into more or less heavily with any given food decision.

BUT, we cannot perfectly satisfy every category at one time, and there are usually negative consequences when we lean too heavily into any one category.

Maybe I’m extra tired and worn out tonight so am going to have a frozen meal — leaning into things like convenience and supporting my mental/emotional health, and away from having the most nutrient-dense meal I could possibly make.

Maybe I’m feeling motivated to cook a nutrient-dense dinner, and also am having some physical health challenges I’m navigating — leaning into things like nutrition and physical health, and away from absolute convenience.

While I use these categories to help think about what we might want to “lean into” in any given food decision (or in a season of life — such as leaning into nutrition during pregnancy, or convenience during a busy college semester), it’s important to remember that they are ALL connected!

We are at our healthiest when we honor all aspects of our health and well-being, and when we take into consideration the reality that these aspects of health are bidirectional — our mental/emotional health impacts our physical health, and vice versa.

How might these ideas of motivations, values, and trade-offs impact how you go about a food decision today?