If you came of age in the 1980s and 1990s, you’ll no doubt recall the bonkers diet culture of that era. The Beverly Hills Diet, first published in 1981, espoused eating only grapes on a Tuesday, while the Cabbage Soup Diet – well, you can probably guess.

Meanwhile we were also encouraged to exercise to excess and unfeasibly thin body types were held up as the ultimate goal, all you needed to do was ‘feel the burn!’. Unfortunately the only thing this shrank was our self-esteem.

It’s no wonder that against this backdrop a whole generation of women, and to a lesser extent men, developed a ­seriously messed-up mindset when it came to food. Weight loss meant strict regimes involving serious deprivation. The phrase “a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips” was the mantra.

And so food became the enemy, standing between us and our unrealistic ideals; embodied, literally, by the supermodels of the day. Happiness depended on the verdict of the bathroom scales. Speaking personally, it has taken a long time to unpick the dysfunctional food habits I collected over time – depressing meal-replacement shakes, having cereal twice a day, or otherwise existing on miserable salads.

Weight management is important for health at any stage of life, but never more so than in our middle years. A UK observational study based on the NHS records of 2.8 million people found that those defined as obese in middle age had twice the risk of high blood pressure and nearly twice the risk of heart failure than those who were not overweight. This is just one of a number of studies linking obesity to poor long-term health outcomes.

It’s never too late to rethink your relationship with food – and not just so you can get back into your old jeans. By making friends with food again, we can maximise the number of fit and active years we have ahead of us.

Here’s how you can reset your midlife food mindset

Focus on weight management not weight loss

Trying to lose weight can seem like the dietary equivalent of scaling Mount Everest, a one-off gargantuan effort so that you can finally stick your flag on that mythical spot known as your “target weight”.

But studies have shown that when it comes to losing weight and, more importantly, keeping it off, consistency can be more effective than adopting extreme measures. In a study published in the journal Obesity, which looked at the weight-loss success of 183 obese adults, it found that those who had lost weight gradually and consistently were more likely to have kept the pounds off 12 months later.

Making permanent tweaks to your eating habits will facilitate a slow and sustainable weight loss. So think of weight loss as the side-effect of eating well, rather than the central aim.

Foods are not ‘good’ or ‘bad’

In his new book, Lose Weight Without Losing Your Mind, nutrition coach Graeme Tomlinson has a clear message and it’s one that is crucial if you want to change your relationship with food.

“Food is made up of ingredients, not feelings or opinions, so it’s impossible for food to have a moral value,” he points out.

“While you may beat yourself up for eating a so-called ‘bad food’, be sure to know that all foods are simply nutritionally different. Each food will have different ratios of macronutrients or different amounts of vitamins and minerals. What matters is your overall diet over time, not individual eating episodes. Understanding this can free you from the uselessness of food guilt.”

To garner a more positive food mindset, we need to move away from the vilification of certain foods. No food is either “good” or “bad”, they simply exist on a scale from more nutritious to less nutritious – and we know, of course, to eat the more nutritious foods regularly and limit the less ­nutritious ones.

Having more self-compassion around eating is the key to guiding ourselves towards healthier food choices. The other thing to bear in mind is that if you eat a balanced diet, you should not feel hungry and so you are less likely to feel deprived.

Incorporate more nutrient-dense foods

Numerous studies have shown that the stomach produces less acid as a result of ageing, a condition known as hypochlorhydria. Low stomach acid can affect the absorption of key nutrients and has been linked to a range of chronic conditions, such as osteoporosis, autoimmune disorders, allergies and skin problems.