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Food and the business of eating: curious stuffs. When you think about it, eating is one of the hardest things to force on someone. Consequently, eating holds secret keys. And these keys point to relationships beyond food.

You’ve probably heard someone say, “He’s more in love with his work than me,” or, “She’d rather spend time with the bottle than hang out with me.” These comments suggest we can develop relationships with something other than people. Food is one of those, “somethings.”

Ever settle down in front of a fire with a hot bowl of chili? How often is food the last thing you touch before you fall asleep? Just like any relationship, how we relate to food can be life-giving or life-taking. For example, in a healthy personal relationship, we think of the person we love. It feels great. But we don’t think of the person we love so much that it interferes with the rest of our lives. Well, OK, sometimes thoughts of our lover do interfere. But when we’re healthy in relationship, we aren’t totally owned by thoughts of the one we love.

Same with food. When our relationship with food is healthy, we may occasionally think of food, especially if we’re hungry. But thoughts about food don’t own us.

If thoughts of food do own us, we may have an unhealthy relationship with food. An unhealthy relationship with food is truly a complex matter, and improving that relationship may require professional help.

And even though food and how we relate to it is complicated, some key points about food relationships have surfaced during my 35 years of practicing psychotherapy:

• Many people with an unhealthy relationship to food seem to have had at least one overbearing or self-involved adult figure in their early lives.
• Like any relationship, one’s relationship with food will not change overnight.
• Like any relationship, if you demand change in your relationship with food, you will likely resist the demand, and that leads to stuckness.
• Because eating food is one of the few things we can’t force on someone, a child with an overbearing or self-involved adult figure nearby might begin to exercise some sense of control through how much, how little, when and what kind of food he or she eats.
• This childhood use of food for personal power sets the stage for an internal power struggle with relationship to food in the adult.
• In childhood, a relationship with food may have been the only relationship that felt safe or predictable for some who have unhealthy relationships with food as adults.

Here are a few thoughts that seem helpful for improving one’s relationship with food:

• It seems all of us were born to live balanced lives, and that at our core, each of us is balanced, including how we relate to food.
• It seems helpful to believe we are a balanced person at our core.
• It seems helpful to keep the belief that we are a balanced person clearly in mind as we make choices about how much, how little, when and what kind of food to eat.
• It seems helpful to be gentle and loving with  ourselves when we forget we are a balanced person, and, instead, make choices about food that reflect that forgetfulness.
• Many choose too much or too little food as a way to feel better: more comfort, less boredom, more alive, more pleasure, less fear or pain.
• As we’re about to eat, or not, to feel better, it seems helpful to consider finding another way to feel better.