Food Life Balance

Balance has always been a key concept for me.

As a yoga instructor, I include plenty of balance poses in my classes, but I also consistently encourage my students to find a balance between effort and ease as they practice.

In my personal life, I’m constantly trying to find balance. Between work and rest. Between challenging myself and simply enjoying myself. I don’t always get it right, but it’s something I keep coming back to.

As a Dietitian, I talk about balance all the time. A meal is considered “balanced” when it includes a variety of food groups in appropriate proportions.

But lately, I’ve been thinking about a different kind of balance.

Not whether your plate is balanced, but whether food itself has a balanced place in your life.

Because food is important…. but food is not everything.

(Even as a Dietitian, I must admit it.)

What does balance actually mean?

Cute baby taking first steps in a cozy, carpeted living room setting.

It does have slightly varying definitions, but I think they are all connected. Going back to the simple act of finding balance, say, on one foot like you might try to do in a yoga pose.

The truth is, even balancing on two feet requires practice – think of babies first learning to stand. We’ve gotten so used to standing that we don’t have to think about it anymore, but when we shift onto one foot, we start to notice how hard it is to stabilize; we tilt, we lean, we wobble, sometimes we fall.

We come to balance not by holding perfectly still right at the center, but by getting comfortable with making tiny adjustments. We lean a little too far one way, so we shift back. Then we overcorrect, so we shift again. Sometimes we flail a bit, other times the changes are subtle, but if we get too stiff or rigid, we topple over.

And I think our relationship with food works much the same way.

Where I think we get into trouble

I talk to a lot of people who have an all-or-nothing view of food.

They’re either “doing it right” or they’re completely off track.

They’re either meal planning, tracking, exercising, eating perfectly and thinking about nutrition constantly…

…or they’ve abandoned everything and feel like they’re failing.

Neither extreme is particularly sustainable, and we put way too much pressure on ourselves to get it right.

But the thing about balance is that it’s never about getting perfectly centered and staying there. It’s about continually recalibrating.

When we apply this view of balance to food and eating:

sometimes we eat more and sometimes we eat less
sometimes we execute a structured plan, and sometimes we go with the flow.
sometimes we focus on health and sometimes we focus on fun.

When it comes to balancing our lives, sometimes we don’t focus on food very much at all because other things happen to be more important at the moment.

Mind you, we still eat. We just may let go of some of our regular habits when life is irregular.

That’s balance.

We continue the practice of re-aiming for the middle while allowing for the reality that we will never hit it precisely.

Over time we find ourselves more and more aligned despite forces that will consistently keep us from being “perfect”.

What balance might look like

There isn’t one “right” version of balance – it’s going to look different for everyone.

For some people, it might mean learning to put a little more energy into meals and nutrition. For others, it might mean learning to stop thinking about food quite so much.
Some people thrive with structure. Others need more flexibility.
Some people love cooking. Others need to rely on grab-and-go or Door-Dash most of the time.
Some people require variety from day to day to prevent boredom. Others would happily eat the same three meals forever if it meant one less thing to think about.

But if food has become imbalanced in your life (i.e. fixating on it constantly or neglecting it completely), it might be worth asking yourself:

Do I need to lean in the other direction for a while?

That’s actually one of the things I help people work through in nutrition counseling… and if you live in Illinois and think you could use some help finding that middle ground, I’m currently accepting new clients.

If you’re figuring this relationship with food thing out on your own, here’s the thought I’d like to leave you with:

We don’t need to swing all the way to the opposite extreme every time we get knocked off-center. It’s a pretty miserable way to live.

We just need to notice where we are and make the next small adjustment. Yes, this requires much more internal calibration, but you’ll know you’re getting closer to ‘balance’ when the adjustments become smaller and smaller (and far less dramatic).