Why Healthy Eating Is So Hard: Overcoming Barriers with Mind-Body Eating Coaching

Why Healthy Eating Is Hard (And It’s Not Your Fault!)

A new study came out last month forecasting that two in three adults in the US will have obesity by 2050. And while this statistic is shocking and scary, it also highlights something important and I think quite liberating: IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT! 

If so many people in the US, and around the world, are struggling with weight, then something is clearly wrong with the system. 

Unfortunately, that’s not the message we usually get when grappling with weight concerns. More likely we’re made to feel like we’re at fault. Everyone seems to have a simple strategy to share that sounds so doable. Then when that strategy fails, we feel like a failure. 

But here’s the thing: you haven’t failed, you’ve been failed. 

We live in a system that makes it hard to be healthy. Today, I’m breaking down a few reasons why. 

But the reason I’m doing this is not to give us all an excuse to throw up our hands and give in on healthy eating. Healthy eating is key to allowing us to feel good and live well. We deserve that. But we also deserve to know what we’re up against as we pursue the healthy eating and living path. We deserve to understand why it often feels so much harder than we give it credit for. 

Systemic Barriers to Healthy Choices

My hope is that shedding some light on the systemic barriers to healthy eating will give you greater perspective on just how rebellious (in a good way!) your healthy choices are and greater compassion for yourself when those healthy choices slip. Let’s take a look at what we’re really up against:

Government Policies

Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but the US government has really not had our backs on the healthy eating front. There are a lot of examples of this. I’d recommend the book The Obesity Code to learn more. For now, let’s focus on these two:

• Subsidies for High Fructose Corn Syrup: High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) is an ultra-processed sweetener made from corn. It has been shown to increase obesity more than regular sugar and also highly linked to diabetes, inflammation, and non-fatty liver disease (more info here).

  
  

  It’s also in everything. That’s because the US government highly subsidizes corn production, incentivizing farms to produce more corn and flooding the market. This in turn makes high fructose corn syrup super cheap for the food industry to buy and put in all their foods to make them highly palatable. But although these HFCS-laden products may taste good and cost little, they are completely devoid of nutrition and high in calories. This encourages overeating and traps us in a vicious cycle leading to poor health.

  
  

• Inaccurate Nutrition Guidelines: Does anyone remember when the base of the US food pyramid was grains?? Yeah, that was a mistake. At least health wise it was a mistake, but for the wheat and corn lobby it was a big win.

  
  

  Anyways, from the 1960s until the early 2000s the US government inaccurately attributed dietary fat to increases in obesity and heart disease. We now know that poor-quality (highly processed) carbs and sugars are the real culprit. But much damage has been done. We actually need dietary fat to feel satiated and facilitate crucial body functions. But the fear of fat is real in this country, because that’s what so many of us were taught. It’s a fascinating though frustrating tale. I’d recommend starting here to learn more.

The Food Industry

The food industry does not care about our health, it cares about profit. Case in point: 75% of the food in grocery stores is ultra processed. That means 75% of the food available to us is debatably not even food, and definitely not healthy. But because that “food” is cheap to make, easy to ship and store, and incredibly profitable for food companies, it’s what’s most commonly available. The nutritional value and impact on our health does not factor into the equation.  

Even worse, the food industry’s negative impact on our health only gets more severe from there. Let’s take a look at two other nefarious practices the food industry favors in an effort to stay on the gravy train of selling us poor quality but highly profitable processed foods:

• Science for Hire: The food industry does not want us thinking that they or their food are the problem. So, it’s quite common for the food industry to fund nutrition research. And the research they fund more often than not favors industry interests. This often misleading research muddles the information available to consumers, policy makers, and medical professionals leading to confusion and poor decision making at many levels. If you’ve ever been offered conflicting advice about what’s healthy and what’s not, this is why. 

• Personal Responsibility: Another favorite food industry tactic is to skirt their responsibility in poor health outcomes and instead blame someone else: you. For example, Coca-Cola spent years on a campaign that shifted the blame on obesity away from diet and onto exercise. In reality, diet accounts for about 95% of weight loss. But if you didn’t know that, remember that it’s because a well funded corporate initiative wanted it that way.

  
  

  The same is true for things like 100 calorie snack packs. The snacks inside are designed to be addicting. Lots of money and research goes into making sure the taste and texture are just right to light up all the reward centers of your brain and bypass your satiety breaks. The company makes it chemically near impossible to eat just a little. But that doesn’t stop them from packaging and marketing the snacks as a small, reasonable treat. So, if you’ve ever been unable to stop at just one snack pack, know that that was the plan all along. 

Diet Culture

As if we haven’t suffered enough injustice by now, next up is our society’s diet culture. This is an absolutely enormous topic encompassing impossible standards for “beauty,” inaccurate definitions of healthy (look into the Health at Every Size movement for more on this), and a jumbo serving of shame, fear, and disgust. I won’t go into it all because my guess is that you’ve experienced it enough first hand. 

Instead what I’ll do is highlight two things to be particularly wary of:

• Silver Bullet Solutions: Nearly everywhere you look in the world of diet, wellness, and health you will find someone promoting a do-it-all solution. Some people have gone paleo and cured all their ailments while others know the true source of health is a vegan diet. How is this possible? Because all bodies (and personalities and circumstances) are different and bodies need different things at different times. There are absolutely themes and universal truths, but what works for one person won’t necessarily work for you. And, what worked for you at 25 might not still be working at 35 or 45. It’s important to couple information on nutritional best practices with your body’s own feedback. This is a main focus of mind body eating coaching. 

• Body Hate: Diet culture absolutely runs on body hate. It’s only when you hate your body that you want to shell out major bucks for a new diet program or pill. But here’s the thing: you cannot hate yourself into a body you love. This would be like trying to bully someone into being your friend. It’s only when we can learn to respect, trust, like, and maybe one day love our bodies that we can know how to nourish ourselves intuitively and joyfully. This is the deep, transformative work of mind body eating coaching. It's what gives us the power to once and for all rise above this frustrating, broken system and claim our right to true health.

As you can see, there are A LOT of barriers to healthy eating. And even though it isn’t our fault that healthy eating is hard or that we may not always make the best choices, it is our responsibility to continue to practice making healthy choices. Because, no matter what barriers are in our way, the benefits of healthy eating are ours for the taking. It’s a challenging landscape, but you can navigate it.

Ready to make healthy eating feel doable and joyful? Let’s work together to navigate the barriers holding you back: schedule a session today.