When I sit with clients and listen to their food stories, I hear a common thread: eating no longer feels joyful. Instead, it’s often tied up with guilt, anxiety, or shame as though enjoying food is the same as making a mistake. Somewhere along the way, the simple act of nourishing ourselves got tangled up in rules, fears, and self-criticism.

But food isn’t meant to be feared. It’s meant to sustain, delight, and connect us to our culture, to our families, and to our own sense of vitality. When we shift away from restriction and back toward nourishment, something changes. We stop fighting food and start partnering with it. That’s where the real transformation begins.

Why Restriction Backfires

When we chronically undereat or cut out entire food groups, our body senses a shortage and shifts into conservation mode. This means slowing metabolism, increasing cravings, and often storing more fat, not less. Long-term restriction can also lower muscle mass, disrupt hormones, and impair immunity (1,2).

In evolutionary terms, this makes sense. Your body doesn’t know if you’re skipping meals because you’re trying to “be good” or because there’s a famine it just wants to protect you. Unfortunately, that survival mode is the opposite of thriving.

Reclaiming the Joy in Eating

Food is meant to be enjoyed, to be experienced with all the senses. Variety and colour on your plate not only make meals more appealing, they also reflect a richer spread of nutrients. Deep greens bring magnesium and folate, vibrant reds offer antioxidants like lycopene, and sunny yellows carry immune-boosting vitamin C (3).

Lately, I’ve been guiding my clients towards what I call a “nourished” approach to eating a way of choosing, preparing, and enjoying food that’s less about rules and more about connection. One aspect of this approach is slowing down just enough to be present with your meal, so your body and mind can truly benefit from it.

Eating with intention doesn’t require a formal ritual just small shifts:

Make the setting matter: Sit down, use a plate, and limit distractions.
Pause before you begin: Notice the smell, colours, and textures.
Give digestion time: Allow your body the space to process food rather than rushing away from the table.

When we eat this way, food becomes more than fuel. It becomes a relationship, one that nourishes body, mind, and the quiet joy of being present in the moment.

The Mindset We Bring to Food

Some of what shapes our relationship with food isn’t just what we eat, but what we believe about the food. Do you see your meals as fuel, comfort, a reward, or even something to be feared? These beliefs can change not only our mood but also how our body physiologically responds.

In one study by Crum and colleagues, participants were given identical milkshakes. One group was told it was a “high calorie indulgence,” the other that it was a “low calorie, sensible choice.” Despite being the same shake, those who believed they had consumed the indulgent version reported feeling more satisfied and had larger decreases in the hunger hormone ghrelin (4).

What this shows is powerful: the mindset you bring to a meal can change your hormonal response, satiety, and even how your body utilises the calories. Approaching food with curiosity, kindness, and enjoyment supports your physiology as well as your psychology.

Nutrient Dense vs Calorie Dense: Its not always about the numbers

Your body doesn’t have a calculator inside it counting calories, it has sensors, scanning for quality. The difference between nutrient-dense and calorie-dense food is a bit like comparing a luxury spa retreat to a dodgy roadside motel. Both technically give you “a place to stay,” but one leaves you restored and glowing, the other… not so much.

Nutrient-dense foods are the VIP guests of your plate. They’re bursting with vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, fibre, and healthy fats all the things your cells need to build, repair, and keep you feeling energised. Think crisp, colourful vegetables, perfectly ripe fruit, fresh fish, nuts, seeds, legumes, and whole grains.

Calorie-dense foods give you energy, sure but often without much else. They’re like those party guests who turn up empty-handed. A lot of processed snacks, fast food, and sweet treats fall into this category: plenty of kilojoules, not much nourishment (5).

When you’re choosing what to eat, ask yourself:

What vitality does this food hold?
How fresh is it?
Does it look like it came from nature or a factory?
Is it visually enticing, full of colour, texture, and life?
Will I feel satisfied, or am I eating the bland salad now only to snack all afternoon?
Would I feed this to someone I love and want to truly nourish?

Fresh, vibrant foods often signal higher nutrient content. A just-picked tomato still warm from the sun will give you more vitamin C and antioxidants than one that’s been sitting in cold storage for weeks (6). Your body feels that difference, when your food is vibrant and fresh, it’s almost like it transfers some of that vitality straight to you.

Satiety, Satisfaction, and Why They Matter

Eating to nourish focuses on how your food makes you feel afterward the meal. Meals rich in protein, fibre, and healthy fats help stabilise blood glucose and trigger satiety hormones like leptin and peptide YY, which signal to your brain that you’re comfortably full (7,8). In contrast, heavily processed foods high in refined carbohydrates can cause rapid spikes and crashes in blood glucose, often leaving you hungrier sooner despite higher calorie intake (9).

Satisfaction is just as important. If you eat something “healthy” but it feels unsatisfying, you’re more likely to keep searching for that missing flavour or texture later. This is why a truly nourishing plate includes both nutrient balance and sensory enjoyment colour, crunch, aroma, and flavour all have their place in helping your body feel content with the meal.

The Gut-Brain Connection in Nourishment

Your gut and brain are in constant conversation, and the health of your gut microbiome can influence mood, appetite, digestion, and even how you respond to stress (10). Diets rich in diverse plant foods feed beneficial gut bacteria, which in turn produce short-chain fatty acids that support gut lining health and help regulate inflammation (11).

When you eat a variety of fresh, nutrient-dense foods, you’re not just feeding yourself, you’re feeding trillions of tiny allies that work to keep you healthy. This two-way partnership between gut and brain means that what nourishes your gut also supports clearer thinking, steadier mood, and better overall resilience.

Building a Partnership with Your Body

Eating to nourish and thrive is moving your attention away from willpower or discipline and into partnership, listening to what your body needs, providing it with high quality fuel, and trusting the feedback it gives you. Once you shift to this way of thinking, food stops being a source of stress and becomes part of your everyday self-care.

When you view nourishment as a relationship, you’re far more likely to give your body the variety, colour, and freshness it thrives on without feeling deprived or restricted. Over time, these choices ripple out into more energy, better digestion, improved mood, and a sense of vitality you can feel in every part of your life.

So, what’s your relationship with your food and your body right now?

Does it feel supportive, energising, and joyful or could it use a little nourishing?

Sometimes the smallest shifts in how we eat can have the biggest impact on how we feel, think, and thrive.

With warmth and wellness, Kylie.

Start your Journey to Nourishment Today

References

Dulloo AG, Jacquet J. Adaptive reduction in basal metabolic rate in response to food deprivation in humans: a role for feedback signals from fat stores. Am J Clin Nutr. 1998;68(3):599-606.
Redman LM, Ravussin E. Caloric restriction in humans: impact on physiological, psychological, and behavioral outcomes. Antioxid Redox Signal. 2011;14(2):275-287.
Slavin JL, Lloyd B. Health benefits of fruits and vegetables. Adv Nutr. 2012;3(4):506-516.
Crum AJ, Corbin WR, Brownell KD, Salovey P. Mind over milkshakes: mindsets, not just nutrients, determine ghrelin response. Health Psychol. 2011;30(4):424-429.
Drewnowski A. Concept of a nutritious food: toward a nutrient density score. Am J Clin Nutr. 2005;82(4):721-732.
Favell DJ. A comparison of the vitamin C content of fresh and frozen vegetables. Food Chem. 1998;62(1):59-64.
Batterham RL, Cowley MA, Small CJ, et al. Gut hormone PYY(3-36) physiologically inhibits food intake. Nature. 2002;418(6898):650-654.
Schwartz MW, Woods SC, Porte D Jr, et al. Central nervous system control of food intake. Nature. 2000;404(6778):661-671.
Ludwig DS. The glycemic index: physiological mechanisms relating to obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. JAMA. 2002;287(18):2414-2423.
Cryan JF, O’Riordan KJ, Cowan CS, et al. The microbiota-gut-brain axis. Physiol Rev. 2019;99(4):1877-2013.
Koh A, De Vadder F, Kovatcheva-Datchary P, Bäckhed F. From dietary fiber to host physiology: short-chain fatty acids as key bacterial metabolites. Cell. 2016;165(6):1332-1345.

Medical Disclaimer
This post is for general education only and is not medical advice. Please consult your healthcare professional. See our Medical Disclaimer.

Nourish to Flourish: Eating for Energy, Joy and Thriving Health!