Rewriting Your Food Story: Why Your Past Doesn’t Define Your Plate

By Jennifer Youngren, NDTR

Most people carry a food story shaped not just by personal experiences but also by family dynamics, culture, and systemic diet messaging. In my work with adolescents and adults navigating eating disorder recovery, I often remind clients: you are not your food behaviors. What you eat or don’t eat has roots that deserve exploration, not shame.

Food Behaviors Are Adaptive Responses

Disordered eating isn’t rooted in vanity or lack of discipline; it’s rooted in protection. According to a 2020 review in Nutrients, eating disorders often arise as coping mechanisms in response to trauma, anxiety, and emotional dysregulation (Monteleone & Cascino, 2020). Whether it’s restriction, bingeing, purging, or obsessing over ingredients, these patterns often begin as attempts to self-soothe or create a sense of control.

It’s important to understand that these behaviors often served a purpose. They helped a younger version of you survive in an environment that may not have felt emotionally safe or consistent. When clients reflect on these behaviors through a lens of compassion rather than judgment, they begin to see that the eating disorder was not the problem, it was the solution to an unmet need. Healing begins when we ask what that need was and how we can meet it now, as the adult version of ourselves.

Our bodies and minds adapt. That adaptation may have once helped us survive. But healing means assessing what still serves us and what no longer does.

Using a Food Timeline for Self-Reflection

One tool I use with clients in both PHP and outpatient settings is the "food timeline." It’s a structured reflection where clients track their relationship with food across developmental stages:

• Childhood (ages 5 to 10)

• Adolescence (11 to 14, 15 to 18)

• Young adulthood

• Now

For each phase, we explore:

• Core food memories

• Body image narratives Influences (family, media, peers)

• Emotional associations with eating

This isn’t about blame; it’s about understanding. Many clients find their earliest food associations stem from emotional voids, learned control, or survival strategies, especially in households where food was scarce, over-controlled, or moralized.

The timeline helps to identify turning points and inflection moments. Was there a time food became a reward? A punishment? A distraction? By naming these moments, we can begin to soften the grip they have on us. And when shared in a group setting, clients often realize: I’m not the only one who learned these messages. That realization itself can be healing.

Neuroplasticity and Narrative Repair

One of the most hopeful truths of recovery science is this: the brain can change. Our neural circuits for fear, shame, and restriction can be rewired. A 2021 study in Frontiers in Psychology affirms that therapeutic interventions, especially narrative therapy and intuitive eating frameworks, can help restructure core beliefs about food and the self (Tylka et al., 2021).

Clients often come to recovery feeling stuck or hopeless because their thoughts feel automatic and intrusive. What I love about narrative work is that it gives people a sense of agency. You may not have chosen the beginning of your food story, but you do get to choose how it evolves from here.

Rewriting your food story is a practice in neural flexibility. And like any muscle, it builds with repetition and compassion.

Steps to Begin Again

Here are three practical ways to start reframing your food story:

1. Name the Influences

Write down the rules or beliefs you inherited about food. Where did they come from? Do they align with your values today?

2. Separate Fact from Fear

Example: “Carbs make me gain weight” is fear-based, not fact-based. Review what current nutritional science says about balanced energy intake.

3. Write a Note to Your Younger Self

Even if it’s just one sentence. What would you want them to know? "You don’t need to earn your meals." "Food is not the enemy." "You were never too much."

Reclaiming the Narrative

You don’t need to erase your past. You need to meet it with honesty and care. You don’t need to wait for healing to feel perfect. Your future is already being shaped by what you choose to believe now. Step into the unknown—and trust that your new story is already in motion.

Your story doesn’t have to be tidy to be true. It just has to be yours.

You are allowed to evolve. Your story with food is still being written.

References:

Monteleone, A. M., & Cascino, G. (2020). The Etiology of Eating Disorders: A Narrative Review. Nutrients, 12(12), 3651.

Tylka, T. L., Calogero, R. M., & Piran, N. (2021). Intuitive Eating and Its Association With Indicators of Physical and Psychological Health. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 706223.