Holistic Health & Disordered Eating

Thanks to a healthcare system that favors measurements like body mass index (BMI) and a diet- and fitness-focused culture, the number on the scale is far too often used as a stand-in for overall health.

While weight can indicate a person’s health status, the number alone is far from enough information to pass judgment on someone’s overall well-being. In fact, there are many aspects of health that reflect physical condition and overall fitness that have nothing to do with weight.

Holistic health is a philosophy that considers these other aspects, looking at the overall balance of someone’s habits, lifestyle, and outlook to help determine their overall physical, mental, and emotional well-being.

What is Holistic Health?

The concept of holistic health has become more popular in recent years, but the philosophy has actually been around—and used by some specially-trained nurses—for over a century. The core ideas behind holistic health were laid out by the famous caretaker Florence Nightingale, who started talking about the idea as far back as the late 1850s.¹

In short, holistic health asks a practitioner to consider a person as a whole and look at their well-being in this light rather than separating out and focusing on individual factors of their condition. In other words, providers work to address root problems and promote overall healing rather than exclusively trying to stop or address symptoms.

The original concept talked about the inseparable nature of a human’s health and environment, but the tenets of holistic health have since expanded to include considerations about someone’s history, physiology, and lifestyle and how they all intersect to create overall health.¹

To address these additional considerations, a provider may employ a broader range of treatments than a traditional Western doctor, including meditation and mindfulness techniques or suggestions based on ancient Chinese medicine. Adequate nutrition, healthy exercise, and stress management techniques may also be employed to bolster both physical health and psychological wholeness.

How Does Holistic Health Work?

Holistic health is a whole-person approach to health, looking at the different factors that contribute to creating overall well-being. Holistic medical practices are based on six core tenements:²

• Do no harm
• Treat the whole person
• Identify and treat the causes
• Utilize the healing power of nature
• A doctor’s primary role is to inform, educate and empower patients
• Promote overall wellness

Hopefully, focusing on these broader aspects of health—rather than a plan that would simply promote weight loss—can help someone see they’re more than a number on a scale, even if they’re on a weight loss journey. This can lead to greater emotional and mental health benefits, which can, in turn, have a powerful impact on physical health.

Holistic Approaches to Eating Disorder Treatment

A holistic practitioner will likely ask in-depth questions about not just someone’s illness and symptoms but also their history and lifestyle. They may suggest ways to alleviate or balance these other aspects of someone’s life to create healthier harmony within their body and mind.

Benefits of a Holistic Health Outlook

The biggest advantage of holistic health is the prevailing mindset it promotes. Humans are more than a bundle of symptoms, and a provider exclusively focusing on aspects of an illness may miss the forest for the trees.

The overall idea behind this school of thought is to cultivate respect for oneself and one’s body through adequate self-care. Self-love and self-respect, regardless of body weight, shape, or size, are the overall goals of a holistic point of view. This can also promote the kind of organic and sustaining happiness and self-esteem that can help maintain recovery.

Holistic health can also be used as a weight management tool, helping people reach a healthy weight without putting so much pressure on themselves to abide by specific societal standards. That’s because holistic health focuses on healthy eating habits rather than specific diets. Using these types of techniques has also been shown to help with sustainable weight loss.

Tips for Practicing Holistic Health

There are many ways to practice holistic health for better physical, mental, and emotional health. Some of the top techniques you or your loved one can try include:

• Heath At Every Size
• Mindfulness
• Mindful eating

Mindfulness

Mindfulness describes a group of practices that help people focus on the current moment. That includes any thoughts, feelings, or sensations someone may be experiencing, as well as outside situations.

In mindfulness practice, people are asked to remain separate from these experiences. Instead, they’re taught to be an objective observer, simply noting what’s going on without passing judgment.⁴

The idea is that taking a step back to observe without judgment can help create mental breathing room and clarity by allowing people to separate their thoughts and emotions from reality.⁴

Mindful Eating

Just as mindful meditation asks you to bring awareness to the sensations of the present, mindful eating asks patients to bring that same conscious observation to the act of eating.³

Savoring the touch, taste, sight, and scent of food can help someone learn to enjoy or appreciate it more and work on healing their relationship with food and eating.

Health at Every Size

The Health at Every Size (HAES) movement was founded on holistic philosophies. It promotes the idea that weight and health are not mutually exclusive and that health instead exists on a continuum, with varying considerations for each individual.⁵

Incorporating these types of philosophies into everyday thinking may make holistic approaches feel even more intuitive, helping someone understand that weight gain or weight loss are far from the only concerns in life and that the best approach to holistic weight management is to learn to love and trust your own body, and work on making yourself happy. 

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