As a young therapist I struggled to connect with both the experience of eating disorders and the treatments to support clients. It was always presented as a white, middle class, cisgender, fem experience in which the client is striving to obtain a level of thinness that is unhealthy. The remedy was to place clients in treatment centers that focus on fixing their behaviors by getting them accustomed to eating regularly and “healthy”. To me, the unintended but implied message was “you are doing this wrong, and here’s the right way to eat”. It wasn’t until I started understanding the role of white supremacy culture impacting beauty standards and dictating the definition of “healthy” foods (which many of my clients of color have been told their cultural foods are unhealthy) that I began to see eating disorders as a reflection of social and historical trauma (Alani-Verjee et al, 2017).
The focus of many eating disorder treatments is on controlling the diet by changing behavior. Control however is a value and concept that is rooted in colonialism. Settler Colonialism takes pride in having dominion over the natural world, which includes our bodies (Clark & Yellow Bird, 2021, Seawright, 2014, and Wolfe, 2006). This value is reflected in the extraction and exploitation of nature, the optimizing of food, and the quantitative tracking of food and weight. In fact, many people engage in unhealthy dynamics with food because of the distress they experience from a lack of control in their life and a desire to assert control through what they eat. Treatments that focus on controlling the diet feed this desire that is not always attainable.
Most experiences in life we don’t have total control over. In fact, clinging to control can be detrimental. White supremacy culture only provides us two options: control or no control. But rather than seeking control of our bodies, we can use our relationship with food as a vessel to understand ways to provide care without attaching to specific outcomes. I believe our relationship with food is a reflection of our social, historical, familial, and interpersonal experiences. It’s a reflection of what we hold sacred and what we are willing to sacrifice. Decolonial paradigms offer space to explore how our society, dominant culture, and traumas sever our relationship with our bodies (Plante, 2023).
This is why I created Reclaiming Nourishment. It’s a service that aims to deepen our understanding of the client’s relationship with food through a decolonial lens. While my journey started with folks struggling with eating disorders, I quickly noticed the same patterns present in similar ways for folks with chronic health conditions and anyone struggling under the unyielding demands of capitalism.
If you are ready to explore and heal your relationship with food, this might be the service for you.
References
Alani-Verjee, T., Braunberger, P., Bobinski, T., & Mushquash, C. (2017). First Nations Elders in Northwestern Ontario’s perspectives of health, body image and eating disorders. Journal of Indigenous Wellbeing: Te Mauri-Pimatisiwin, 2(1), 76-96.
Clarke, K., & Yellow Bird, M. (2021). Decolonizing pathways towards integrative healing in social work (p. 208). Taylor & Francis.
Plante, M. (2023). Stepping away from the campfire: Decolonizing the concept of eating disorders through an Indigenous focusing oriented therapy lens.
Seawright, G. (2014). Settler Traditions of Place: Making Explicit the Epistemological Legacy of White Supremacy and Settler Colonialism for Place-Based Education. Educational Studies, 50(6), 554–572. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131946.2014.965938
Wolfe, P. (2006). Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native. Journal of genocide research, 8(4), 387-409.
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