The Food Foundation
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>> Hello there, nice to see you again.
Let's start this lecture off with a scenario.
Imagine that you're an architect
and your client wants to build a house on a sandy beach.
Where would you begin?
Would you just start building?
What might you do first?
Grab your journal, pause the video,
and write down some ideas.
What did you come up with?
You might have written down
a wide range of possible considerations.
However, I'm willing to bet that you probably included
building some sort of a foundation.
Let me bring in a story to illustrate.
Have you heard the story of the three little pigs?
They all build houses, but not all of those houses last.
The first pig chooses the quickest route,
the quick fix approach if you will,
and build his house out of straw.
The second pig spends a little more time
and gives it a little more thought.
He builds his house out of sticks.
However, neither house can withstand
the huffing and puffing and blowing down by the wolf.
The third pig takes time to ensure a strong foundation.
He builds his house out of bricks,
and you know what, his house lasts.
Yes, many children stories
remain helpful anecdotes for adulthood.
This module is all about learning the language of food.
Today, we're focusing on where you might start
when helping clients navigate unhelpful mindsets
and habits around eating.
When understanding the language of food,
it helps to start with self-awareness of both routes
and current food relationships.
In short, it helps to build the food foundation.
Why?
Well, as we've discussed,
it's not your job as a Health Coach
to psychoanalyze your clients.
However, habits like using food as a coping mechanism
run deep.
If it were as easy as sticking on a band-aid,
you probably wouldn't have many clients
in need of your support.
The food foundation helps you meet your clients
where they're at.
Remember that one aspect of limiting beliefs
is that they carry the past into the present,
even if it's irrelevant,
and that can keep us stuck in unhelpful habits and cycles.
So where do you begin?
We're going to cover five steps.
Brainstorm the bio-individual eating story.
Earlier in the course, we introduced the idea
of the eating story or personal food narrative.
The eating story is a tool
that can help you answer important questions,
such as what purpose has food served for this client?
How has this client used food as a coping mechanism?
What are some of the driving factors
of this client's eating habits?
When does this client eat due to emotional
versus physical hunger?
These are all aspects of learning the language of food.
Like the Health History
that you might include in a first session,
the eating story provides valuable information.
First of all, it sheds light on some roots
of current mindsets and behaviors.
As a review, it includes three broad components,
bio-individuality, including experiences
and associations with food coping mechanisms,
ability to regulate emotions,
physical circumstances, and Health History,
social influences, including family dynamics,
and peer influences, and cultural influences,
including cultural norms, ancestral roots,
and environmental factors.
As a Health Coach, it takes time to dive deeper
and make sense of the puzzle as a cohesive whole.
There are so many pieces.
Take culture for example.
Compared to the United States, many countries, like Italy,
add very little sugar to food.
Desserts aren't as sweet
and they aren't included after every meal
as they often are in the US.
How do you think this might affect
a person's relationship with sweet foods
both on a psychological and biological level?
We included a handout called Eating Story Exploration
with a comprehensive list of potential questions to ask.
Different clients communicate in different ways.
Some clients might prefer
the eating story brainstorm exercise
from earlier in the course,
while others might prefer guidance
through more specific questions.
As always, it's important to adapt your approach
to your client's needs and interests.
Okay, here's the next step.
Create a more cohesive eating story.
When I do a puzzle, I start with the outside frame.
Seeing this helps me make sense of the puzzle as a whole.
I see general areas of color, and from there,
I can connect the dots
using the image on the puzzle box as a guide.
The eating story is kind of like the puzzle border.
It provides a framework or a foundation
for understanding a client's relationship with food.
But how do you take all of that information
and make sense of it using a wide angle lens?
Well, again, it depends on your client.
Some clients might prefer to write
as they would in a journal
and compose a food narrative that way.
Other clients might prefer something like a WordWeb.
For a more visual learner,
drawing a story tree might help.
We included an Eating Story Exploration handout
with several ideas to help you guide clients
through personal eating stories
based on bio-individual thinking styles.
Okay, so the eating story explores
the roots of current eating mindsets and habits.
Obviously, you also want to explore the present,
what, and how are your clients eating now.
One great question goes something like this.
What's one thing you'd like to change about your diet
that you haven't been able to change?
Most clients know the answer to this
but they still feel stuck.
Sometimes, they know what's going on
and why they're stuck, and sometimes, they don't.
All they know is that they can't seem to move forward.
When it comes to understanding the big picture why
behind what and how clients eat,
here are the next three steps.
Identify external triggers and stressors
that drive emotional eating.
Triggers and stressors can be both chronic and acute.
Eating habits and patterns can be influenced
by factors ranging from deep-rooted food associations
to cravings based on something
we just saw on television a few minutes before.
Here are some factors to consider.
How does location influence eating habits?
Do you eat differently based on where you're eating?
Do you eat differently when you multitask eat,
for example, when you're on the phone
or watching television?
How does time influence eating habits?
Do you eat on a schedule?
Do you ever eat preventively?
For example, do you ever eat when you're not hungry
because you know you won't have time to eat later on?
When do you eat the most and least throughout the day?
How does sleep influence your eating habits?
How do other people influence your eating habits?
Do you ever eat out of obligation, for example,
because a family member makes something
you don't want to eat?
How do other people's comments around food,
weight, and body appearance affect your food choices?
How do cultural messages influence eating habits?
Do you ever eat based on what you "should" eat?
Does trying to fit in with a cultural ideal
influence how you eat?
When and how do preceding events influence eating habits?
For example, do you make food choices
based on media ads you recently saw?
And, of course,
how do emotions influence eating habits?
We included all of these questions
and more on a handout so you can have them as a resource.
Recognize general eating approaches.
Identifying triggers is an important piece
of the food foundation.
You can use the eating story, plus those current triggers
to understand general patterns and approaches.
In the first part of the course,
we explored eating in the matrix,
including four common
one-size-fits-all approaches to eating,
extreme, quick fix, objective, and dogmatic.
These approaches derive from both external
and internal triggers.
As a Health Coach, you can use the lenses of mindset,
mindlessness, and disconnection
to help clients identify overall eating patterns.
Mindset includes self-talk, self-judgment,
for example, self-shoulding,
and the idea that the relationship with self
is mirrored in the language we use with ourselves
AKA those internal voices
that can make us our own worst enemies.
A few questions you might ask might be
how do your eating behaviors relate
to your relationship with yourself?
Are your emotions and beliefs serving you?
Is emotional eating helpful?
Remember, it can be.
Sometimes, familiar food can ground us
when we feel anxious.
As always, look at the big picture,
whether you use food consistently
and how it impacts quality of life.
Mindlessness includes all of those
coping strategies and habits
that we automatically fall into because they're easy,
because we've been doing them for so long,
and because we want to escape discomfort.
Something to consider.
What's the pattern across different areas of life?
Disconnection includes coping strategies and habits,
like emotional eating
that lead us away from self-connection
and connection with others,
more specifically, disconnection from the body,
intuition, personal values,
personal power, and primary food.
Remember that primary food includes exercise, career,
spirituality, and relationships.
For example, more empathetic individuals
might have a hard time focusing on eating
when they're trying to connect with people face to face.
It also includes things like sexuality.
In fact, food and sexuality can be intricately linked.
We might use food because we don't want
to connect with our sexuality.
Hormones can play a role in food choices,
sexuality ebbs and flows.
These are just a few possible connections.
As a Health Coach, you can help clients
recognize disconnects in primary food.
Understand the cycle.
Earlier in the course, we discussed the stress cycle
and the emotional eating cycle
both of which follow the same general pattern.
We have a negative emotion or thought
that we don't want to accept or deal with.
So we choose a behavior, like emotional eating
that helps us escape that emotion or thought
and end up distressed due to the behavior we chose.
In short, we end up stuck in a cycle of distress.
Emotional eating habits can affect mood, energy,
sleep, relationships,
and really most, if not all, areas of life.
As a Health Coach, you can help clients
step outside of themselves and understand the cycle
that leaves them feeling stuck.
You can use the eating story, triggers and stressors,
and overall eating approaches
viewed through the lenses of mindset,
mindlessness, and disconnection.
You can also use high-mileage questions,
including those we discussed today to dig a little deeper.
One helpful tool is the triple-why.
If you've spent some time with young children,
you likely know the question why very well.
Children often continually ask why
until you find yourself either explaining something
in scientific or philosophical detail,
or just making something up
in the hope that they stop asking.
The why question is a delicate balance.
Asking why several times can help get to the root
and three is generally all the whys it takes.
We included this in your Skill Building Activities
so you can try it for yourself.
Regardless of the method you use,
remember what we've discussed so far in this course.
And as a Health Coach, pay attention
to things like the language and symbolism your client uses,
for example, analogy and metaphor.
Biases and limiting beliefs, both your own and your clients.
And the matrix, how food habits mirror other life habits
and how a client's relationship with food
relates to that client's relationship with life in general
and with themselves.
For example, pervasive themes might include boredom,
guilt, extreme approaches,
fear of pleasure, or avoidance of conflict.
The bottom line, food is a metaphor.
As Dr. Anita Johnston put it in her book,
"Eating in the Light of the Moon,"
the problems with food are reflections
of the real issues we struggle with.
Let's recap.
As a Health Coach,
trying to understand a client's food language,
it's helpful to start with the food foundation
or self-awareness of roots
of current eating mindsets and habits
using a bio-individual approach to the eating story
as a framework.
You also want to consider triggers and stressors
that contribute to current eating habits.
From there, you can help clients understand
their general approaches to food
and emotional eating cycles.
How are you feeling about all of this?
Does this make sense
based on what we've covered so far in the course?
We've included several Skill Building Activities
to help you apply and practice this material on your own.
So look for those in the Learning Center.
I will see you back here soon.