If you came of age in the 1980s and 1990s, you will no doubt remember the crazy diet culture of that era. The Beverly Hills Diet, first published in 1981, advocated eating only grapes on Tuesdays, while the Cabbage Soup Diet, well, you can probably guess.
Meanwhile, we were also encouraged to over-exercise and incredibly skinny body types remained the ultimate goal, all I had to do was ‘feel the burn!’ Unfortunately the only thing this shrank was our self-esteem.
It’s no wonder that, in this context, a whole generation of women, and to a lesser extent men, developed a seriously disordered mindset when it came to food. Weight loss meant strict regimens involving severe deprivation. The phrase âa moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hipsâ was the mantra.
And so food became the enemy, standing between us and our unrealistic ideals; embodied, literally, by the supermodels of the moment. Happiness depended on the verdict of the bathroom scale. Speaking personally, it has taken me a long time to get rid of dysfunctional eating habits that I built up over time: depressing meal replacement shakes, eating cereal twice a day, or otherwise surviving on measly salads.
Weight control is important to health at any stage of life, but never more so than in our middle age. A UK observational study based on NHS records of 2.8 million people found that those defined as obese in midlife had twice the risk of high blood pressure and almost twice the risk of heart failure as those who they were not overweight. This is just one of a series of studies linking obesity to poor long-term health outcomes.
It’s never too late to rethink your relationship with food, and not just to put your old jeans back on. By making friends with food again, we can maximize the number of fit and active years ahead of us.
Here’s How You Can Reset Your Middle-Aged Food Mindset
Focus on weight control, not weight loss.
Trying to lose weight can seem like the dietary equivalent of climbing Mount Everest, a one-time mammoth effort so you can finally set your flag on that mythical spot known as your “target weight.”
But studies have shown that when it comes to losing weight and, more importantly, keeping it off, consistency can be more effective than taking extreme measures. In a study published in the journal Obesity, which looked at the weight loss success of 183 obese adults, it was found that those who had gradually and steadily lost weight were more likely to keep the pounds off 12 months later.
Making permanent adjustments to your eating habits will facilitate slow and sustainable weight loss. So think of weight loss as the side effect of eating right, rather than the main goal.
Food is not ‘good’ or ‘bad’
In his new book, Lose Weight Without Losing Your Mind, nutrition coach Graeme Tomlinson has a clear message, and it’s crucial if you want to change your relationship with food.
“Food is made of ingredients, not feelings or opinions, so it is impossible for food to have a moral value,” he says.
âWhile you may beat yourself up for eating so-called ‘bad foods,’ make sure you know that all foods are just nutritionally different. Each food will have different ratios of macronutrients or different amounts of vitamins and minerals. It’s your overall diet over time that matters, not individual feeding episodes. Understanding this can free you from the futility of food guilt.â
To get a more positive food mindset, we need to move away from the denigration of certain foods. No food is “good” or “bad”, it just exists on a scale from more to less nutritious, and we know, of course, to eat the most nutritious foods regularly and limit the less nutritious.
Having more self-compassion around food is the key to guiding us towards healthier food choices. The other thing to keep in mind is that if you eat a balanced diet, you shouldn’t feel hungry and therefore less likely to feel deprived.
Incorporate more nutrient-rich foods
Numerous studies have shown that the stomach produces less acid as a result of aging, a condition known as hypochlorhydria. Low stomach acid can affect the absorption of key nutrients and has been linked to a variety of chronic conditions, including osteoporosis, autoimmune disorders, allergies, and skin problems.
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