Episode 61: How to Build a Healthy Relationship with Food (Without Deprivation) | 7 Mindset Shifts to Help You Eat Better
When most people decide to “eat healthier,” their first thought is usually, What do I need to cut out? That mindset can lead straight into a cycle of restriction, guilt, and burnout. But what if eating better didn’t have to mean giving up the foods you love?
In my Healthy Diet Makeover coaching, I help people shift their focus from deprivation to nourishment. One of the first tools I teach is the Healthy Plate Model—filling half your plate with veggies, a quarter with protein, and the remaining quarter with carbs or healthy fats. But beyond the plate itself, there’s a deeper layer to long-term success: your mindset.
Let’s explore some powerful mindset shifts that can help you create a healthy, lasting relationship with food—without ever feeling deprived.
1. From Restriction to Addition
Instead of thinking, What do I need to remove?, start asking, What can I add in?
This small shift in perspective helps you feel empowered rather than restricted. Rather than cutting carbs or your favorite snacks, start by adding more vegetables or an extra serving of protein. The more you nourish your body, the fewer cravings you experience—and the less you feel the need to “cheat.”
2. See Food as Fuel, Not a Reward or Punishment
It’s easy to label food as “good” or “bad,” but those moral labels usually create guilt or shame. The truth? All foods have a place. Some give your body nutrients and energy; others offer connection, comfort, or celebration.
Healthy eating isn’t about avoiding cake at a birthday party. It’s about making choices that support your energy and mood—most of the time—without turning food into a moral battleground.
3. Progress Over Perfection
Real talk: You’re going to have days where you eat takeout, forget to meal prep, or snack late at night. That’s not failure—that’s life. The goal isn’t to eat perfectly every day; it’s to build consistency over time.
One less-than-ideal meal doesn’t undo your progress. Let go of the “I blew it, so I’ll start over Monday” mindset. Just get back to your healthy habits at the next opportunity.
4. Tune Into Hunger and Fullness Cues
Diet culture often teaches us to ignore our body’s signals, but tuning back in is key. Ask yourself: Am I actually hungry? Am I satisfied yet?
Learning to trust your body’s natural cues can help you stop overeating, stop under-eating, and stop relying on external rules that don’t serve you.
5. Make Meals Enjoyable and Satisfying
Healthy food should taste good. If your meals feel like punishment, you’re going to crave the “fun” stuff even more.
Use herbs, spices, sauces, and textures to make meals something you actually look forward to. Satisfaction is a key part of fullness—and part of what keeps your healthy habits sustainable.
6. Ditch the “All or Nothing” Mentality
Health isn’t about being perfect. It’s about making small, supportive choices again and again.
Instead of thinking “I ruined everything with that cookie,” try “That was one choice. I can still make a nourishing dinner tonight.” Every meal is a chance to support your body—no need to wait until next week to get back on track.
7. Be Curious, Not Critical
If you find yourself slipping into old habits, avoid self-judgment. Instead, get curious: What was going on? Was I tired, stressed, rushed?
Approaching your habits like a detective (not a critic) helps you learn and grow rather than spiral into shame. I often recommend my clients keep a food and mood journal—not to track calories, but to uncover patterns and build awareness.
Final Thoughts
A healthy mindset toward food is just as important as the food itself. When you let go of rigid rules and shift into a mindset of nourishment, flexibility, and compassion, eating better becomes something you want to do—not something you have to do.
Want help making that mindset shift for yourself? My Healthy Diet Makeover coaching is designed to help you eat better without deprivation. Let’s build a way of eating that works for your life.
Links:
Nutrition Coaching: Sign Up for My Healthy Diet Makeover Program
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Jayd (00:00):
If you have been trying to eat healthy and you've made a bunch of different attempts and nothing has stuck, it's likely that your relationship with food is the root of the problem. And until you fix your mindset and you fix your relationship with food, you're going to continue to struggle to eat healthy and to eat in a way that supports your fitness goals. So I have seven main tips that I want to give you that can help you to rethink your relationship with food and try to tackle this from another angle that might help you to be more successful.
(00:47)
Hey there. Welcome to the Coaching Corner podcast. I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. I've been a personal trainer for about 10 years, and I've created this podcast to share the wisdom that I share with my clients to help them to eat better, burn fat, and build muscle. In today's episode, we're talking about how to change your mindset towards your eating so that you can make sustainable changes in your diet. It's one thing to know what you should be doing in order to reach your fitness goals, but it's a completely different challenge to put that knowledge into action, which is where most of my clients struggle initially when they come to work with me. So in today's episode, I'm going to share seven mindset shifts that can help you to make meaningful change in your approach towards food. If you feel like you have a poor relationship with food or you have been trying to make changes to your diet unsuccessfully for a while, this podcast episode could be very helpful for you.
(01:45)
Now, before we get into the episode, make sure to like this video if you're watching on YouTube, and make sure to also subscribe to the channel so you always get the latest episodes and other videos that I drop throughout the week. If you're listening to this podcast, make sure that you follow the show so you always get the latest episodes delivered right to your device. And don't forget that if you do need additional help and guidance in changing up your eating patterns, you can subscribe to my coaching program Healthy Diet Makeover, and you can find information for that on my website, Jaydigains.com. I am accepting clients right now. So head over to the links in the show notes or in the video description to sign up for that. You can also get my Healthy Diet Makeover handbook, which has the content of the program as well as worksheets, a seven day meal plan and some recipes to help you step-by-step, change up how you're eating and form a healthier relationship with food. You can find links for all of that in the show notes and the video description. And without further ado, let's get into the episode.
(02:51)
I found that many people know what they're supposed to be doing. Many people know how to eat healthy. When I try to educate them on how to eat healthy, what I find is a lot of times they already know what they should be doing and teaching them what they should be doing doesn't necessarily mean that there will be a change in their behavior. When I was a younger trainer, I used to get really frustrated. I used to get really worked up like I'm telling them what they need to do. Why don't they just do it? And maybe you've thought that to yourself, I know what I'm supposed to do, why can't I just do it? And it's very frustrating. And so I've spent the better part of the last 10 years trying to figure out how do I help people to eat the way that they know that they should eat?
(03:36)
It's more than just telling them how to eat, but also how do we get you to the point where you're able to consistently eat the way that you need to eat? And what I found through my research is it's psychological in large part. So if you have been trying to eat healthy and you've made a bunch of different attempts and nothing has stuck, it's likely that your relationship with food is the root of the problem. And until you fix your mindset and you fix your relationship with food, you're going to continue to struggle to eat healthy and to eat in a way that supports your fitness goals, whether that's fat loss or muscle gains, or just generally eating better. If you aren't mindful of how you relate to food and your mindset towards food, then you're going to struggle to change your behavior towards food.
(04:33)
So today what I wanted to do was offer you a couple of tips that can help you to change your mindset and your relationship towards food so that you can start to make some meaningful gains towards eating better. So I have seven main tips that I want to give you that can help you to rethink your relationship with food and try to tackle this from another angle that might help you to be more successful. With that said, I do have to say, even with these seven tips, you still may struggle and it may be that you need help from a professional to guide you and coach you through the process. Our relationship with food often is wound up with our relationship with ourselves and our psychological wellbeing, our mental health, how we take care of ourselves in terms of exercise and how we eat is directly influenced by our relationship with ourself and our mental health.
(05:39)
So if you're struggling with mental health, well you know what? That makes sense given the time that we live in and what's going on in our society. I don't know anybody who isn't struggling with their mental health right now. That's very normal and it's okay to not be okay, but I do want to encourage you to seek out help working with a therapist, getting into group therapy, working with a dietician, a nutrition coach or a personal trainer can be really helpful. But with that said, here are seven things that can kind of get you started and rethinking your relationship with food. Number one, tune into your body's cues for hunger and fullness. I think a lot of people don't realize how dissociated they are from their bodies. Dissociated means that you're not really in touch with your body, like you're not listening to your body.
(06:34)
And we develop that practice of dissociating from our bodies. A lot of us from an early age, were taught to dissociate and not listen to our bodies. If you went to public school as a kid in the United States, you probably learned how to dissociate from your body because there were specific times in the day when you were allowed to go to the bathroom to go get a drink of water, to eat and add in there. If you also had any kind of childhood trauma, if you suffered a tragedy, if there was any kind of abuse, emotional, physical, whatever in your house or that you experienced. Our brains have this built in ability to dissociate, to remove you from your body so that you're not feeling what you're feeling to protect you psychologically. And it can be a helpful adaptation in really hard settings and really difficult settings.
(07:32)
However, it can have the negative effect later in life in situations where you need to be listening to your body. And if you don't have the habit of being in tune with your body, then you're going to struggle to feed yourself adequately, and you'll probably struggle to take care of yourself in other ways too. You might miss other cues from your body like, I need to sleep, I need water, I need to go to the bathroom. These are all just a couple of examples. Or if you're not used to listening to your body because you're more often dissociated or your mind is really occupied by stress, then it's going to be really hard for you to listen to your hunger and your fullness cues. And so when that happens, you might often find yourself mindlessly eating and eating way more than what you actually need.
(08:24)
You might miss your body's cues that it says, Hey, I'm full now we should stop eating because you're not actually feeling the feelings in your body until it's too late and your stomach hurts. And so you may have a habit of overeating because you miss those fullness cues because you're not actually in touch with your body. On the other side, you may have a habit of not feeding yourself adequately because you don't listen to your body's hunger cues, and that also can as well, and that can have really negative effects on your health. You can find yourself malnourished. You can find yourself even with an eating disorder. So either way, whether you miss your body's hunger cues or your fullness cues, that's not necessarily a healthy state of being. And so if that's something that you know about yourself or maybe you're thinking, yeah, I often do overeat or I often don't eat, I'll go all day without eating.
(09:27)
It may be because you're not tuned into your body's cues. And so what you want to do is develop a habit of listening to your body. Great ways to learn how to listen to your body is to practice what's called mindfulness. Mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness and mindfulness meditation are all about getting in touch with your present experiences and learning how to rewire your brain to pay attention to the sensations that your body feels in the present moment. And if you have a habit of dissociation, if you have a lot of trauma that's unprocessed, then this is going to be a struggle for you. And I would encourage you to seek out a therapist who does mindfulness or a group setting, a group therapy setting that's all about mindfulness. Pick up a book. There's lots of books and handbooks and workbooks on mindfulness, and there's even apps that will take you through guided meditations.
(10:24)
Certain types of exercise like yoga often incorporate mindfulness and mindfulness meditation into the training sessions. Many yoga practitioners will end their training sessions with a mindfulness meditation, a body scan where you go through your body from the top of your head all the way through to your shoulders, your arms, your torso, your hips, your legs, all the way to your toes where you notice the sensations of your body. That's called a body scan meditation. And that is a great way to teach you how to pay attention to your body, and it might help you to kind of carry that over into paying attention to when your body is telling you, Hey, I'm hungry, or Hey, I'm full. So listening to your cues will help you to feed yourself adequately to stop eating when you need to stop eating and to make sure that you eat when you need to eat.
(11:19)
So that's number one is get into with your body. Number two, which is kind of a follow-up. When you start paying attention to your body, when you start paying attention to your habits, a really bad spiral that a lot of people fall into, once they start paying attention to the behaviors, they start to become very critical of themselves. Once you start noticing things about yourself, you want to make sure that you are coming from a perspective of being curious and you're paying attention to your patterns. You're paying attention to the sensations of your body without judging. And that's another piece of mindfulness, which is why mindfulness is such a great therapeutic practice to get into. You want to practice that habit of observing without passing judgment, because in order to change your behavior meaningfully, you're going to need to become more mindful and notice your behavior more.
(12:23)
But if you notice something that's an unhelpful behavior and your immediate response is to start beating yourself up about it, then you are going to attack. Your brain is going to experience that as a trauma. Your body's going to experience that as though someone is bullying you. And so that thing that you're noticing about yourself is going to now be marked as a potential danger, right? Because your brain is like, oh, that's painful to think about because you start to shame yourself. You're going to start bullying yourself. You're expecting to be bullied when you notice those things about yourself, and you cannot make meaningful change when you don't feel safe. So if you're bullying yourself about the things that you want to change, you're not making yourself feel safe. So instead, what you want to do is kind of think about approaching yourself the way that you would a child who is learning the things that you're trying to learn.
(13:23)
You can kind of role play within your own mind of thinking about how if I were a child, how would I want an adult to handle this? I mean, if you were guiding a child through the behavior changes that you are trying to get from yourself, you wouldn't verbally abuse that child, right? You wouldn't call that child stupid for not getting it right the first time, right? Instead, I mean, unless you're an asshole, but if you're not an asshole, you'd be like, that's okay. We just got to keep trying. So think about it in that way. And that's inner child work, which is another type of therapy that can be really, really helpful, is developing a better relationship with your inner child, learning how to self parent and be the grownup in your life so that when you talk to yourself, you try to develop a practice of talking to yourself like the adult, talking to a child and trying to guide a child towards a changed behavior.
(14:22)
So being curious to notice things about yourself without passing judgment, taking the perspective of I'm the adult in my life, I'm going to talk to myself like a child who needs guidance is a great shift in your mentality that can help you to make more meaningful change, and that goes with healthy eating, but also just like anything else in your life too. So that's number two. Be curious, not critical. Number three, you also want to notice if you have this pattern of food as a reward or punishment. So giving yourself a little treat if you were good, that's something that you can do from time to time, but you just want to be careful because if you have a habit of overeating and you use food as a treat, then it can be very easy for you to kind of be like, oh, well, I was good today.
(15:12)
I got through this really stressful thing, so now I'm going to treat myself with a little bit of ice cream. Oh, now I've eaten the entire pint. Oh no, I've eaten the entire gallon. You know what I mean? And likewise, you want to be careful about withholding food from yourself as punishment. So thinking about how you approach yourself when you notice behaviors that you like or you don't like that are desirable or undesirable, do you punish yourself or do you reward yourself? And you want to be careful about using food as a punishment. Instead, what I suggest you do is think of food as fuel for your body. It's not a reward. It's not something that you take away to punish for yourself. It's a tool that you use to give your body energy, to give your body the protein that it needs to grow muscle and the vitamins that your body needs to function and fight, infection, fight diseases, and keep you healthy.
(16:07)
It is a tool, it is fuel. That is a mindset shift that could really help you if you tend to withhold food as punishment or use food as a reward for yourself. Try to change that relationship so that it's like, oh, no, this is just a morally neutral tool that my body needs, and I need certain amount of it and certain types of it so that I can feel better. It's not good. It's not bad. It just, it's fuel, right? So that's number three. Number four, from restriction to addition. This kind of goes with using food to punish yourself by withholding that restriction mindset, I find is very, very tough for a lot of people to make progress with. If you have a deprivation mindset towards food, you need to withhold from yourself. Or if you're on a diet and you're like, I need to withhold, I need to stop.
(17:05)
If you're so focused on what you can't have and what you shouldn't have and what you shouldn't do, and it's all about restriction, that is not going to last for very long. It's very hard psychologically for humans to operate under a restrictive mindset. Eventually your brain and your body are going to rebel against you because it's just that restriction. It's like walls that close in and eventually either they crush you or you just fully like, fuck this. It's too much. It's a lot of stress and a lot of added pressure to your brain. So instead of thinking if you're trying to eat healthier, if you're eating a lot of junk food or packaged food, or you're ordering a lot, instead of thinking, oh, I need to stop doing that. I needed to take this out, I need to avoid that. That's all about restriction, right?
(17:55)
Instead, what I would encourage you to do is focus on addition. What am I going to add to my diet? I want to hit a certain amount of X, Y, Z and reframe it into a positive approach. So that might look like, oh, I need to make sure that I eat three servings of veggies today. I need to hit my three veggies serving three servings of vegetable quota, and so I'm focusing on what I'm adding to my diet instead of what I can't have. Likewise, focusing on making sure that you hit your protein goal can be a really helpful shift. If you are my size, then you need 95 grams to 115 grams of protein every day. Most people don't eat enough of their protein, and most people struggle to hit their protein goals. And so you have to focus and you have to plan in order to eat enough protein.
(18:51)
And so when you focus on that, you're not really focused on deprivation and what I can't have. Instead, you're like, how am I going to do this? And when you focus on, for example, getting enough vegetables or getting enough protein, you will by default eat better, and you will by default, probably lower your calorie intake because instead of just eating whatever you feel like or eating by your feelings and just eating a bunch of junk food, instead you're focused on, I need to make sure that I eat enough of this thing and that thing so you don't feel deprived, but at the same time, it's still serving the ultimate goal, which is helping you to eat better overall. That's number four, from restriction to addition, very important mindset shift number five, make meals enjoyable and satisfying if you're trying to eat healthy, and your approach to that is, okay, I'm just going to eat raw vegetables with no salt, pepper, oil, or seasoning, and I'm just going to call it that, right?
(19:53)
If you're not seasoning food and trying to eat healthy, if you hate what you're eating, you're not going to stick to it. You're not. And that's the mistake that a lot of people make is they think that, oh, I just need to eat a bunch of raw vegetables that they don't like, no seasoning, nothing. And they'll eat just grilled chicken, no seasoning, nothing, no salt, no pepper. And then they're like, I hate this. I don't want to eat like this. Well, yeah, I wouldn't either. You don't have to eat really bland food in order to eat healthy. In fact, there's a lot of really flavorful, delicious healthy food out there. The Mediterranean diet is a perfect example of a diet plan or a nutrition cuisine, a style of cuisine that is tasty, full of vegetables, full of healthy fats and protein. Also like Indian food.
(20:48)
Another great example of a cuisine that is full of flavor, lots of vegetables, right? Chinese food, not Americanized Chinese food. I mean like traditional Chinese food, lots of vegetables, protein, and healthy fats. So there are lots of options for healthy eating. That's tasty too. So don't feel like you have to just eat really bland food. And if you want examples of tasty, healthy, well-balanced foods, I have some meal plans and recipe collections on my website, so you can check those out at my website, Jaydigains.com, because I put together a bunch of different recipe collections and meal plans with really tasty recipes that fit the healthy plate model that will get you protein, get you vegetables, healthy fats, right? Enough fiber and vitamins that your body needs. So don't settle for a super bland diet if you're trying to eat healthy. Number six, you got to ditch that all or nothing mentality.
(21:55)
This is something that a lot of my clients struggle with, and it will fucking hold you back. It's the most pervasive mentality, I'd say from my American clients in particular. And I think that's because maybe American society has a lot of those puritanical roots that had the standard of perfection, but that all or nothing standard of perfection mentality is going to sabotage your progress. It is not about being perfect. Your body does not even need you to be perfect in order to make progress. I often teach my clients the 80 20 rule. If 80% of the time you're eating the way that you need to eat, you're following the healthy plate model, which by the way looks like this. If 80% of the time your plates look like this, half of your plate is veggies or veggies and fruit, you get at least a fourth of your plate, a good source of lean protein, and then you're not overdoing it on the grains and starches.
(23:02)
Your grains and starches are prioritizing whole grains and complex carbohydrates. If most of the time you eat like that, then you give yourself a little bit of wiggle room. 20% of the time you can treat yourself and not eat like that. And if you do that, you will make progress. You will make progress if you're doing that most of the time or if most of the time you're eating within your macros goals or within your calorie goals, okay? You do not have to be perfect in order to make progress. And number seven, which brings us to number seven, progress is more important than perfection. So even if you're not even doing 80% eating like that 80% of the time, if you were doing 0% of the time two weeks ago and now you're doing a little bit more, that's a win. And I want you to focus on celebrating your wins and making a big fucking deal about them, because every little step towards healthier habits is a win.
(24:02)
And the more that we celebrate those wins, it's just like with training a child or training a dog. When you are rewarding yourself by celebrating those wins, give yourself that dopamine hit, fuck yeah, I did it. Give yourself a pat on the back. Give yourself a sticker, right? Those little celebrations train your brain to do whatever it was that you just did again and again and again, which makes it easier for you to do without even thinking about it in the future. And it also makes it easier to add on other additional habits. So reward yourself for every little tiny step in the right direction, even if you're not yet doing all the things or 80% of the things, every single step matters. So those are my seven tips for changing your mindset around your approach, towards your diet and your fitness overall. And these seven tips are really applicable to anything when it comes to your personal growth.
(25:06)
But it is worth thinking about. Again, if you struggle with your mindset and your relationship towards food, number one, it's very common. I think a lot of us, especially if you were raised in the United States, a lot of us struggle with our relationships and our mindsets towards food. So you're not alone. It's not you. It's not that you're broken or anything. We just don't really live in a very healthy society. A lot of us, were not taught or modeled healthy relationships with food. So it is something that if we want to be better, we kind of have to put a lot of effort and energy towards that. But it can absolutely be done. I have tons of clients who will tell you that after working with me making these mindset shifts and also going through my Healthy Diet Makeover program, whether they work with me one-on-one coaching, or they just read the book and apply the books, principles, every single client that I've had go through this program tells me that it has completely changed their mindset towards food, to the point where they're like, they actually crave vegetables, which they used to hate vegetables.
(26:07)
They notice when they haven't eaten enough protein, so they more often eating enough protein. And those are really the most important things when it comes to changing your diet. A lot of it comes down to eating more vegetables and eating enough protein, but you're not alone. You definitely can change. So if you started to think to yourself, maybe I'm just meant to be like this. Maybe I just never going to eat healthy, it's not true. That's a limiting mindset, right? So remember, growth and progress over perfection. You can do this. I know you can do this, but if you want some help, if you want a little extra guidance, I am open and I'm taking clients right now for my Healthy Diet Makeover coaching program. I will put links to that in the show notes or the video description. If you're watching on YouTube, I'm happy to help.
(26:57)
Or you can just order my Healthy Diet Makeover handbook, and the book will walk you through the program on your own. You can work at it at your own pace. This has the five steps that I put my clients through to give their diets a healthy makeover, and it also includes some sample recipes and a sample seven day meal plan that you can use, rinse, repeat, modify for your own diet. So there's resources out there for you and you can do it, but all of it comes down to your mindset. So use these seven tips to think about your approach towards food and just know that you can do it. I believe in you. I do. I do.
(27:44)
Thank you so much for watching or listening to this episode of The Coaching Corner podcast. Again, I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. I hope that you found this discussion helpful. I would love to know what questions you have or thoughts that you might have after watching or listening to this episode. If you are on YouTube, leave those in the comments to this video. And again, make sure that you like the video if you found it helpful, and subscribe to my channel, and if you're listening to the podcast, follow the show. I will see you in the next episode. In the meantime, make sure that you eat your veggies, eat your protein, drink your water, and take care.
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