What is Healthy Eating?

Healthy eating is the ability to eat anything, at anytime...as long as it is with moderation. Healthy eating consists of three nutritionally dense meals a day, including foods that are varied and that represent all the food groups. Healthy eating is pleasurable eating; it is eating without fear or a connection to one’s emotional well-being.

UNhealthy eating is eating that takes on an excessive, immoderate character. It is compulsive and choiceless eating. Restricting specific foods or food groups, skipping meals, or dieting is as unhealthy and counterproductive as overeating; as an example, it is as unhealthy never to let an Oreo pass your lips as it is to eat a bag of Oreos at a sitting. In addition, dieting damages the body’s metabolism, making it increasingly difficult to metabolize fats and therefore to become and remain thin. It has been shown that children who diet are more likely to become overweight adults.

TIP: In becoming a healthy eater, learn which foods are healthy for you. Discover foods that you like, and eat plenty of them. Try new foods that you may not yet have tasted.

TIP: You need not be overly concerned about overeating or undereating when you are eating nutritionally dense foods, particularly if you are aware and respectful of when your body is hungry and when it is full. If you are hungry, there is nothing wrong with eating more. You can hardly eat too much when it comes to chicken or tuna, to soup or salad, to vegetables or fruit. If you begin to lose track of your ability to recognize and differentiate hunger and satiety, you may be seeing an early warning sign of disordered eating or eating disorders and you might do well to consider working with a nutritionist and/or a psychotherapist.

If excess and imbalance have become a part of your eating lifestyle and you are without an accurate gauge for discerning when to eat and when to stop eating, you may also find yourself feeling out of control in other life spheres as well. Eating dysfunction may represent the behavioral tip of an emotional iceberg, indicating underlying emotional problems and psychological issues that may be driving a variety of dysfunctional thinking and behaving. By attending to and resolving these underlying issues, you reinforce your capacity not only to rectify dysfunctional eating behaviors, but to sustain these constructive changes, to feel more in control of your life in general, and at peace.

When your eating gauges are off, you may also find yourself with a limited capacity to regulate:

how much to study versus how much to recreate,
how long to talk on the phone when homework is waiting,
how often to give in to others’ demands versus when to stand your ground,
how much to sleep or when to turn off the television.
how much to buy and when to stop shopping

In the space below, fill in other areas of your life where you tend to be somewhat extreme or imbalanced in your behaviors.
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The following exercise offers an opportunity to help you recognize and acknowledge your own personal views about what healthy eating is.

Answer each question TRUE or FALSE:

Healthy eating is fat-free or light eating.
Healthy eating is eating as little as you can in order to feel satisfied.
It’s okay to skip meals when you are not hungry.
It is natural to feel guilty when you eat fatty foods.
Diets are the best and most effective way to lose weight.
You become fat when you eat fat.

If most of your answers were TRUE, it may be that you have been taken in by the many misconceptions and myths surrounding healthy eating.
If extremes describe your lifestyle, you might feel happier and more secure if you were to acquire some assistance in putting more structure and control into your life.

Psychotherapist Abigail H. Natenshon has specialized in the treatment of eating disorders with individuals, families, and groups for the past 34 years. She is the author of When Your Child Has An Eating Disorder, A Step-by-Step Workbook For Parents And Other Caregivers, Jossey-Bass, 1999. Based on hundreds of successful outcomes, this book shepherds concerned parents step-by-step through the processes of eating disorder recognition, confronting the child, finding the most effective treatment for patient and family, and evaluating and insuring a timely recovery. A guide to eating disorder prevention, this book is useful to parents, health professionals and school personnel alike in countering the pervasive epidemic of unhealthy eating and body image concerns, and destructive media and peer influences. Her work can be reviewed further at www.empoweredparents.com and www.empoweredkidZ.com, www.treatingeatingdisorders.com.