Do You Need to Feel Motivated in Order to Change Your Relationship with Food?
If you’re struggling with your relationship with food, it can be easy to think that before you reach out for professional help, you have to feel fully ready - completely sure and confident that you can make positive changes.
Changing a difficult relationship with food is genuinely hard, and eating disorder recovery especially so. And it's very understandable to believe you need to wait until you feel certain before you begin - but this is one of the beliefs that can keep people stuck for years.
In this blog, I explore what motivation really is, helping explain why you don't have to feel ready or or sure of yourself, and why you only have to be willing to take a small step while you figure the rest out.
Why waiting to feel motivated can be a trap
We tend to think of motivation as the feeling that powers the action - find the motivation first and the change follows.
But anyone who has tried to change a long-held pattern knows it rarely works that way. Motivation is not a reliable engine. It surges and fades, sometimes for no obvious reason. And if you wait until you feel motivated enough to begin, you may be waiting a very long time - and meanwhile the waiting itself becomes another way of staying stuck.
One of the approaches I draw on in my nutrition support, called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), makes a useful distinction. It separates motivation from willingness. Motivation is a feeling, and feelings can't be summoned on demand. Willingness, on the other hand, is simply being prepared to take a step in a direction that matters to you, even while the difficult feelings - the fear, the doubt, the ambivalence - are still present.
What this means is you don't have to wholeheartedly want to change in order to begin. You only have to be willing to begin.
EXPECT MOTIVATION TO COME AND GO
I’ve already mentioned that motivation will come and go (not might, will!), so something else worth understanding at the outset of making changes is that when it does fade, it doesn't mean you've failed, or that you were never really committed, or that it isn't going to work.
There are a few reasons this happens:
Progress is not linear.
Every model of behaviour change recognises that progress doesn’t happen in continuous upwards trajectory or straight line. It happens in fits and starts with plateaus and dips as well as the occasional step backwards. The dips aren't a sign the whole process has broken or doesn’t work - rather, they are a normal part of the process of change itself. So expecting a smooth upward climb could set you up to read a normal lull as a personal failing, when in fact it is simply part of the terrain.Motivation and progress have a bidirectional relationship.
When motivation dips, progress gets bumpier - and when progress gets bumpy, motivation takes a knock. It's a loop. One of the most common ways people get derailed is by treating a single difficult day or week as proof the whole thing has failed - which drains motivation further, and the loop tightens. Interestingly, knowing the loop exists is likely to help loosen its hold.You are human.
It is also worth remembering that your motivation isn't produced in a vacuum. It can naturally rise and fall with your energy, your sleep, your stress levels or what's happening at work or at home. When life throws different challenges your way, motivation for change in other areas can naturally thin out - not because you've stopped caring, but because you are human and your resources are being spent elsewhere.The pattern you are changing has been serving a purpose.
This one is more specific to a complex relationship with food and is perhaps the most important. A pattern of eating that has been with you for a long time is usually serving a purpose. It may be soothing difficult emotions, providing a sense of control, offering comfort or relief or a moment of escape. So it makes sense that part of you may genuinely not want to give that up - not because you lack commitment, but because the pattern has been doing something for you. This can also help explain why ambivalence - wanting things to change and feeling frightened/unsure of change at the same time - is so common and so normal.
However, don’t take it as a sign that you're not ready. If anything, it's information: a clue about what the pattern has been doing for you and what might need to be in place before it is ready to loosen. You don't need to resolve that tension before you begin - often exploring it is where the work starts.
HOW TO Nurture YOUR motivation
If you're looking to take steps forward - whether that’s in eating disorder recovery or more generally in changing your relationship with food - here are some ideas that may help you orientate:
Move towards what matters.
Change is far more sustainable when it is an expression of your own values, rather than when its driven by obligation. This is why it can help to ask what you actually value and what are qualities that are most important to you and aligned with who you really are as a person, for example, showing up with more energy for the people you love or more presence in your life. Our core values are usually pretty steady and consistent, so they can still act as a compass, even on the days motivation is lacking.Make the first step small enough that willingness is enough.
If an action feels so big that it requires an immense surge of motivation to attempt it, it is usually too big. The first move should be small enough that you can take it on willingness alone, even on a flat, unmotivated, ordinary day.Expect dips and plan for them.
Knowing in advance that motivation will fade at times takes away much of its power to derail you. A dip doesn’t mean evidence that you’ve failed and instead it simply becomes a part of the terrain you already knew was coming.
My conclusions
If you are feeling caught between wanting things to be different in your relationship with food and feeling frightened of change, please know this is not a sign that you're not ready. In fact, it's really normal and human to feel this way when you're contemplating starting something new, and moving beyond disordered eating is genuinely challenging.
In reality, you don't have to have things all worked out or feel certain and highly motivated. You only have to be willing to let someone walk alongside you while you figure it out - and to take the next small step, even on the days the motivation isn't there.
Behaviour change science tells us that motivation can grow through action. This means small, meaningful, manageable steps taken in a supportive and non-judgemental environment, sustained by goals that genuinely matter to you, and maintained through self-compassion rather than self-criticism - plus the knowledge that any dips you experience are just a reflection of one moment in time, and not of your capacity for change in the long-run.
Nutritional counselling is designed to support behaviour change around food, and even from an initial conversation with me, we will explore your readiness to change.
Also know that whilst nutritional counselling may not always be the right first step for everyone I speak to - for example, if the fear feels too overwhelming or your eating pattern has become deeply bound up with your sense of who you are - there is always someone who can help them take that first step. Sometimes with eating disorders, seeing a therapist first or alongside our work together, may be the most effective place to begin.
Take a nourishing step forward today
If this resonated with you, you don't have to navigate this alone. I offer nutritional therapy and behaviour change support for binge eating disorder, emotional eating, disordered eating and yo-yo dieting patterns, and I'd love to help you find your way back to more ease and trust with food.
Explore my support options or book a confidential, no-obligation enquiry call to see if working together feels right.
