“Your approach to food is your approach to life”
--Shelley Chapman
Creating and sustaining a healthy relationship with food is not only a goal for Shelley Chapman’s clients but a personal one for her as well.
Chapman, known to clients as “The Food Relationship Coach,” struggled with emotional overeating and compulsive eating in the past, especially while attending college at Spelman University. A Master’s degree in Psychology from Harvard in tandem with personal experiences with disordered eating have allowed Chapman to gain a unique insight into her clients’ relationships with food and eating.
“I help people recreate their relationship with food. A lot of us are going around and we are eating sort of mindlessly. Helping people understand their relationship to food is really key and crucial in helping people understand how they relate to other things,” said Chapman.
The problems that we, as human beings, have in our lives seem to be manifesting in our relationships with food. According to 2006 ATUS and Module data, in the United States, we spend only about an hour eating per day. This means many Americans are just rushing through mealtimes like they are life. By offering consultations, original recipes, one-on-one coaching, and workshops, Chapman is attempting to reverse the statistics and the status quo.
Chapman tries to emphasize the importance of taking the time out of one’s day to value food not only as the vital source of nourishment and energy that it is for us but also for the ability it has to bring people together.
“Being present with food, using the whole ingredients of everything but literally putting life into your food and not putting in ingredients that are chemicals and made in a laboratory. And sitting down and breaking bread with each other, and even with ourselves. Take this practice and translate it into other areas of your life,” said Chapman.
Although Chapman has always loved cooking, her path to becoming “The Food Relationship Coach,” did not actually begin with food. Initially, Chapman made all-natural beauty products. She branded her beauty products with the name “Naturi Beauty,” but began finding her creative hand stretching from the bathroom to the kitchen.
“I found myself cooking a bunch of food and inviting people over just so I could cook. The ingredients that I was using in beauty products are very similar to the ones in cooking. I started looking at the relationship that we have with ingredients. Like coconut oil and palm oil. Coconut oil is not only used in cooking but in baking, skin care, hair care,” said Chapman.
With the launch of her new brand, Eatrelatelove.com, Chapman hopes to draw more attention to people’s relationships with food and use it as a platform to reach her goals, which include hosting a food relationship cooking show.
For now, Chapman continues her food relationship cooking, even extending it to catering for a wedding, in which she took an innovative approach.
“I said listen, I want to meet with you and your fiancé and I want to hear your story. What was your first meal? What was the first thing you cooked for him? And I’m going to base the food on that. I think it’s a really beautiful way to connect your guests to your story,” said Chapman.
As a perpetual proponent of connecting food to people and more importantly people to food, Chapman is sure to please the bride and groom and their guests. In her cooking, Chapman will be tying the threads that connect all of them and giving them a little inspiration to pass it on.
For more about Shelly Chapman, visit eatrelatelove.com.
