Elise Museles - Food Story: Rewrite the Way You Eat, Think, and Live

To Steven, Noah, and Daniel for helping me rewrite my food story

O nce upon a time, when you were a baby or toddler, you ate when you felt hungry and stopped when you felt satisfied. There was no anxiety, no calorie counting, no self-criticism, no drama. Eating was simple and natural, and it happened without effort or complication, just like breathing.

Somewhere along the way, everything changed. No longer simple and natural, eating became confusing, exhausting, and frustrating. Suddenly, there were never-ending food rules about what you should and shouldnt eat, along with messages about body weight and how to achieve the perfect shape. Food became a source of anxiety and stress: What should I eat for breakfast? Why do I have so much trouble sticking to a plan? What is the right plan? Will this meal make me bloated? How come everyone else seems so at ease and I just cant get this food thing right?

If any of this sounds familiar to you, youre not alone, and youre in the right place. No matter how stressed, tired, and overwhelmed you feel right now and no matter how many diets and detoxes youve tried before, you can find peace and pleasure in food. You can eat in a way that feels good. You can feel comfortable and confident in your relationship to food. You can reconnect to your body and its inner wisdom so that you are healthy and happy. No guilt. No second-guessing.

It starts with understanding your food story, your personal narrative about food. How you feel about food and your body goes way deeper than calories or metabolism. Finding peace with food isnt just about eating more kale, drinking more water, or doing more yoga. Its about unlocking the power of your food story and rewriting the parts that no longer nourish you.

Because life is too short to waste time with food drama. You simply dont have hours (or weeks, or years) to agonize about food. Youve got precious kids to snuggle, exciting careers to pursue, vacations to plan, dreams to follow, memories to make. When you have a distraught relationship with food, it steals your time, energy, and joy and takes you away from freely living your life.

I speak from experience. At one point, my food story was intensely negativeit was all about deprivation, rigidity, and controland it almost cost me my marriage. The man whos now my husband got so tired of watching me obsess over every carb and stalk of steamed broccoli (no salt, no butter), he eventually declared, I just cant do this anymore, and for a while, we broke up.

Thats just one example of how a negative food story can damage your life. Food issues can harm your marriage, your career, and your friendships. Food issues can sabotage your mental and physical health. Food issues can make you a less-than-ideal role model for your kidsbecause your kids are always watching how you eat, how you talk about food, how you behave around food. They are soaking it all in, modeling themselves after you. (Even when it doesnt seem like theyre paying attention, they are!)

Bottom line: when youve got a tense, negative, or just wonky relationship with food, it bleeds into every area of your life, often without you even realizing it. Its like a ten-thousand-pound weight thats bogging you down. Thats the bad news. The good news is that when you view that relationship as a food story, you discover its not set in stone. It can be changed. You can turn a new page. You can write a new story. You can start living differently and start feeling so much better.

WHY FOOD STORY?

I started my career as an attorney specializing in immigration law. As a lawyer, I learned about the power of storytelling. Tell a story one way, and you might lose the case. Present the story in a different way, with a fresh perspective, and you might inspire someone to change their mind, change a policy, or even change a law. A new story changes everything!

After practicing law for many years, I made a career pivot to follow my biggest passion: empowering people to lead healthier, happier lives. Even when I worked as a lawyer, friends and family often came to me seeking advice on all kinds of wellness topics, and eventually I realized, This might be my calling. I became certified in holistic nutrition and eating psychology and launched a coaching practice to help people transform how they eat, how they think, and how they live.

When a new client came to me, Id always start by asking, Can you tell me about your relationship with food? I hoped to spark a conversation, but instead I got a lot of blank stares, slumped shoulders, or clipped responses.

Its too complicated!

I dont know.

Oh, dont get me started!

It was a dead end. Clearly, I had to rethink my approach. Recalling my training as a lawyer, I started reframing my question: Whats your food story? Aha!

Thinking about their relationship with food as a story with major themes, plot twists, minor characters, and villains made my clients conversations about their food-related thoughts and feelings much more dynamic, interesting, and energized. It gave them a new way to tell me about the foods they liked and didnt like; the self-talk running through their heads before every bite; their childhood experiences and memory-laden meals; the messages they heard about their bodies. With that prompt, my clients felt so much more open discussing their challenges and desires around food. With a food story, it was easier for them to see how their relationship with food wasnt only about them. Other people and outside factors play a role in it, too.

I began doing workshops about food story, asking friends and colleagues about their food stories, and you could see the light bulbs go off, with many people remarking, I never thought about my food story. They started to understand why they had certain beliefs and behaviors, and they started to release some of the shame they felt. When they looked through the lens of a food story, they could see that, just like the ebb and flow of life, their food story was continuously evolving and changing. They werent stuck on one page; rather, they were a part of an always-unfolding narrative.

I saw breakthroughs with my clients and healing on a whole new level. Once they realized that they could rewrite the narrative to support who they are now, they began to shift their mindsets around food. They were empowered to release patterns that no longer served them. They stopped worrying about every morsel on their plates. Food became a delicious source of nourishment instead of an ordeal. They treated themselves with more kindness. For most of my clients, discovering their food story eventually helped everything fall into place.

It can do the same for you.

WHATS IN YOUR MIND IS AS IMPORTANT AS WHATS ON YOUR PLATE

While spreading my message and supporting others, I was simultaneously unraveling more parts of my own food story. I had already come a long way and no longer felt preoccupied with the number on the scale. I was less fixated on being skinny, and I had turned my focus to being healthy. I knew how to feed my body the nutrients it needs to thrive. I was eating clean, eschewing refined sugar, and filling my plate with the rainbow and the latest super-foods. I thought I was healed because I stopped obsessing about how I looked and paid more attention to how I felt.