229 – When Food Is Friendship

Elizabeth: [00:00:00] So have you ever decided to quote unquote be good at dinner and then somehow ended up eating fried chicken, two biscuits and half your friend’s fries? Not because you were starving even, not even because you wanted it, but because everyone else was doing it and it just felt easier to go along. Yeah, if that resonates, you are not the only one.

And here’s the thing. This isn’t about willpower. The truth is that food is more than just food. It’s connection, comfort, identity. And when your friendships, your marriage or your family traditions are built around shared eating habits, changing how you eat can feel like. You’re breaking the rules. So today’s episode is about the hidden cost of trying to get healthy when food has [00:01:00] always been the glue, holding your relationships together.

We’re gonna talk about why that feels so confusing, why it’s not your fault, and. What you can do about it so that you can feel good in your body without blowing up your social life. So stick around. This one is going to make a lot of things click. Hey everyone.

Welcome to the Total Health and Midlife Podcast. I am your host, Elizabeth Sherman, and I am so super excited that you are here now. Today’s topic, food and relationships is extremely layered and it’s so much so that I actually decided to split this topic into two different episodes. So today we are gonna focus on what happens when food is the friendship.

Like that’s what you do with your friends, is you go out and you eat. Like [00:02:00] when the thing that you and your people always do. Is eat together. And what that means when you decide that you want to change, then in two weeks I will be back with part two. And so in that episode we’re gonna talk about the pressure we feel to eat a certain way around other people and why that can totally derail your plan even when you had the best of intentions.

Solet’s Get into this all too common problem that women who really wanna change their health face. So here it is. Let’s say that you’ve decided to change how you eat, not in a new year, new you kind of way, but in a real grounded way. You wanna feel better in your body. Maybe you wanna have fewer hot flashes, fewer nights where you roll into bed, feeling like.

Ugh, A blo bloated balloon. But you’re trying [00:03:00] not to win this bikini contest. You just wanna feel like yourself again. But then you go to dinner with your friends, or your sister comes over for movie night with snacks, or your partner says, Hey, let’s grab some burgers. And suddenly you feel like the weirdo or this sense of, ugh.

Because you don’t want to spoil the diet. You don’t want even the thing that they’re suggesting anymore, and it can be so incredibly confusing. You thought the hard part would be giving up the chips, right? But it turns out the hard part is actually being the one who’s changing when everyone around you is still doing.

What they’re used to doing and what you are used to doing with them. So [00:04:00] today we are gonna talk about that, the social side of food, the part that no one warns you about when you start quote unquote eating healthy and why it feels so isolating sometimes. And. Why it’s not your fault and what you can do about it.

So let’s talk about the thing that no one talks about when it comes to food and friendships. It’s not just that changing your eating habits is hard. It’s that the way that you used to eat the foods, the restaurants, the second round of drinks, the late night snacks and stretchy pants, those weren’t just habits.

They were shared rituals. And now that you’re trying to change. You start to notice something that’s a little unsettling, that maybe it wasn’t just about the queso itself, it was about what the queso represented. I. So [00:05:00] let me tell you about my client Claire. She was doing amazing, feeling more confident in her food choices, not perfect, but really tuning into what her body needed, and then came dinner with her coworkers.

She already knew what she was gonna order. She had walked into that restaurant already looking at the menu, and she was. She wasn’t even nervous about it, but when she got to the table, when they started ordering, everyone started ordering fried chicken. They didn’t really pressure her overtly, but they were like, oh, you have to do it.

This is, this place has the best chicken ever. And so she caved. Now, here’s the thing. Claire doesn’t even like fried chicken. But she ordered it anyway. She ate it anyway and she felt awful afterwards, both [00:06:00] physically and emotionally. And then the next day she was just like, why did I do that?

Because on some level, saying no to fried chicken felt like saying no to belonging to the group, to the history that she had with them. There’s this unspoken contract that we all sign in certain relationships, right? This is what we do together. We all go out and we split the nachos. We always get dessert.

We always pour one more glass. When you change the terms of that contract, it feels like a betrayal, like you are leaving the group, even if no one says it out loud. And let’s be honest, sometimes they do say it out loud, you’ve changed, or they roll their eyes or they act weird when you order the thing that you [00:07:00] actually want instead of what you’re supposed to get.

Right? So you end up feeling this conflicted feeling, do I get what’s right for me, or do I stay connected with them? When the two feel like they’re in conflict, that’s when the shame creeps in. Not because you ate the fried chicken, but because you betrayed yourself again. So if this is you, I want you to know that there is nothing wrong with you.

This is so incredibly common. You’re not weak and you’re not bad at this. You’re just a human, and humans are wired for connection. So if you’ve ever eaten something that you didn’t even want, just to feel like you belonged or even to avoid an awkward conversation because saying no felt way too [00:08:00] much of a risk, I promise you are not alone.

I went through something similar when I started reevaluating my relationship with alcohol. I wasn’t doing a whole 30. I wasn’t in recovery. I just didn’t like how I felt after a couple glasses of wine anymore. I didn’t sleep well. I woke up groggy. I had so much anxiety that I didn’t realize was connected to the alcohol.

But the first few times I went out to dinner with friends and said, I’m not drinking tonight. You would’ve thought that I’d announced that I joined a cult. People asked if I was sick, if I was pregnant, even though I’m 56. Right? If I was mad at them, some people got a little bit like, oh. Hoity. Right. And I get it because when I wasn’t drinking, it changed the whole dynamic.

I wasn’t [00:09:00] matching their energy. I wasn’t saying yes to the vibe that we’d always shared. And that’s the thing, whether it’s food or alcohol, saying no isn’t neutral. It changes the vibe. It changes the group dynamic. And that feels unsafe, not just for them, but for you too. Because food like alcohol carries meaning we celebrate with it.

We bond over it, we grieve, we unwind, flirt, vent, and decompress with it. So when you start changing your habits, it can feel like you’re changing who you are. Like if I don’t do this thing that we always do together. Like, what are we connected by? Do we belong together? And sometimes the answer is yes, but sometimes the answer is complicated, which is why this [00:10:00] isn’t about willpower or following the rules or finding the perfect diet that will keep you in control forever.

This is about identity. About safety, about what it means to belong to a group and to belong to yourself. And once you start to see it that way, you can stop beating yourself up for not having enough discipline, because discipline has never been the issue. What you’ve really been navigating is a shift in your sense of self, and that deserves compassion, not criticism.

So here’s the part that most diets never, ever prepare you for, and that’s social eating. They tell you what to eat, when to eat it, how much of it to eat right, but they don’t tell you what to do. When your partner looks disappointed that you didn’t wanna share a slice of cake, or when [00:11:00] your best friend says, wait.

You’re not having any, or when your partner groans and asks, do we have to have vegetables again, diets hand you a list of rules, but they don’t teach you how to navigate people. And that’s the real trap because when you change how you eat, you are not just changing your meals, you are untangling a web of habits, roles and rituals that have been built over years, maybe even decades.

Like every Friday, you and your partner get pizza and watch Netflix. It’s not about the pizza. It’s your thing. It’s what you do together. Or brunch with your girlfriends or baking cookies with your grandkids. These aren’t just routines. They’re how you express love, connection, and joy. So when you decide to eat differently, [00:12:00] it’s not just a food change, it’s a system disruption.

systems resist change. Even the ones that love you, your family might not say it out loud, but the vibe shifts. Dinner feels different. People get grumpy or they make jokes, or they roll their eyes when you pass on the bread and you start to feel like you are the problem.

Like, why can’t I just eat the damn casserole like everyone else? This is where most women quit, not because they don’t wanna feel better, not because they can’t do hard things, but because it’s exhausting to. Always be the one swimming upstream, and this is where diets fail us because they act like it’s just a matter of willpower or prep as if the hardest part of eating healthy is whether you packed your lunch.

It’s not. It’s [00:13:00] navigating the emotional fallout of doing something different in a system that wants sameness. But here’s the good news. Health doesn’t have to be isolating. You don’t have to choose between connection and change, but you do have to stop relying on food rules and start building real life skills.

Here’s what I want you to know. You can change how you eat without losing your relationships, but. It requires a different toolkit than the one the diet industry has handed you. Instead of rules and restriction. The new approach is about building two core beliefs. The first is awareness, and the second is flexibility.

So let’s start with awareness. Awareness is about slowing down enough to notice what’s actually going on in your body, in your brain, and it’s asking, am I hungry [00:14:00] right now? How does my body feel after that meal? Did I eat because I wanted to or because I felt like I should? Now, it’s not about overanalyzing or obsessing, it’s just about noticing because so often we eat on autopilot, especially in social gatherings where the energy is high, the food is flowing, and your focus is everywhere except on your own body.

The next skill is flexibility. Now, flexibility means knowing that you are allowed to eat differently than the people around you without it being weird or dramatic. It means learning how to order something that works for you, even if it’s not what everyone else is getting or saying yes to the margarita because you actually want it, not because you’re afraid of being left out.

[00:15:00] That’s the difference. It also means that sometimes you’re going to eat the thing even if you didn’t plan to, and instead of spiraling into guilt, you’ll just notice how it felt and then move on. This is where habit number seven and my eight basic habits framework comes in. It’s called Eat Just Enough, not too much.

It’s simple, but it changes everything because even if you can’t control what you eat. Because even if you can’t control what food is being served like at a party or a holiday or a friend’s house, you can control how much of it you eat. You can check in with your body and ask at my satisfied instead of eating past the point of comfort because everyone else is doing it.

That one habit gives you so much of your power back. It [00:16:00] lets you participate in the moment without disconnecting from yourself. It lets you be with your people without abandoning your needs. and here’s the big myth that I want to gently challenge. You don’t have to go all in or all out.

Food doesn’t have to be perfect to be meaningful. You can split the nachos and still honor your body. You can skip dessert and still belong at the table. You can toast with sparkling water and still be fun. The connection you crave isn’t in the calories, it’s in the presence. And when you trust yourself enough to show up fully, the food becomes just one piece of the experience, not the whole point.

If you’ve been blaming yourself for not having enough willpower, this is your [00:17:00] permission slip to stop. You’re not failing. You’re just facing something that most women were never taught how to navigate. Because changing how you eat in a vacuum is one thing, but doing it while staying connected to the people you love, that is next level.

And you want energy, confidence, fewer cravings and better sleep, and you also want to go out with your friends, eat with your family, and not feel like a weirdo when you pass on dessert. You want both and you can have both. The key isn’t following food rules.

It’s understanding your patterns, the situations, people and feelings that make eating feel loaded. And if that’s something that you wanna explore more, I’ve got a resource that can help. It’s called the 82 Reasons You [00:18:00] Overeat That have nothing to do with food. It’s free, it’s simple. And it’ll help you to start noticing what’s really going on beneath the plate, because this work, it’s not just about what’s on your plate,

it’s about everything that’s going on around it. Now if today’s episode resonated, don’t forget there’s a companion episode that goes hand in hand with this one. You can find it in two weeks if you’re listening live and together, they will give you a fuller picture of why food feels so emotional and what to do when it gets complicated around other people.

That’s all I have for you today. Have an amazing week, and I will talk to you next week. Bye-bye.