Don’t let sickness, depression, and disease THUG YOU OUT. Eat healthier, think healthier, speak healthier, and more positively over your life. When you do so, you will soon begin to conquer your life and healthy through newfound empowerment- mind, body, and spirit.
SupaNova Slom
Food is not just a way to survive; it has a relationship with us. This connection with food is deep and revealing. The satiated man and the hungry man do not see the same thing when they look upon a loaf of bread. As said by Sufi poet Rumi once, Foods have to create a feeling of goodness. Theirs is a saying that, our behaviour depends on what we eat. It does not only give us vitamins, calcium, and other macro & micronutrients, food also has an emotional and cultural value in our life.
Some of them eat food physically, they just eat food. While some of them eat mentally they enjoy eating, they feel every bite, and never hold negative thoughts about the food. Eating food is an art. Making healthier food choices helps us feel calm and energetic. To start eating healthy food, self-monitoring helps us to become more conscious of what accelerates us to eat in a particular situation (stress, anxiety, tension, happiness) and more attentive to the food we choose and also the portion size.
Many of us use food as a coping method to deal with feelings, such as boredom, stress, and happiness. Eating may relieve for some time but later may lead to guilt and also an unhealthy physical body. Here food is not a soothing agent it increases stress, lowers our confidence level and aids us in gaining weight.
Read More: 10 Ways to Build Self-Confidence
Role of CBT in eating healthy
Cognitive behavioural treatment helps us to deal with what we are thinking, its patterns and our behaviour. The aim is to control the stimulus, like not eating in a particular mood or feeling, and not buying or storing unhealthy food products at home. Cognitive behavioural treatment teaches the management of distraction and also replaces it with healthier options. Stress management also helps in choosing healthier eating habits. Strengthening the positive attitude towards healthier options involved in the treatment.
Cognitive behaviour therapy shows a way, what and how we think about food. It helps to understand how to self-vision our thoughts that can demoralize our eating healthier and managing options. This therapy also helps us to find out what’s a good option we have and practice using positive attitudes.
Statements like eating this particular food is too hard, I cannot eat it and I cannot achieve my goal (either weight gain or loss or muscle building, or others) or after attaining success, going back to eating unhealthy options, discourages us, which further depresses us. Positive thoughts or statements Like self-realization about overeating habits, trying to understand the motive behind our eating options, ‘what triggers eating, do I feel hungry or do I feel to eat only because of some particular emotion and how to stop eating pattern are a positive approach to a healthier life.’
Read More: Breaking the Silence on Eating Disorders
Individuals’ Relationship with Food
To overcome such eating habits, distraction is the best option, or drinking some water may help to suppress the feeling of hunger, adopting a hobby and keeping busy are some of the options to avoid overeating. Keep a watch on the portion size, plate size and colour of the edible elements on the plate does matter in choosing the food to eat. Encouraging ourselves and keeping continuous monitoring help a lot to attain a healthier goal or lifestyle.
Without a doubt, each of us thinks that eating is extremely subjective. If a group of people look at the same plate of food, no two people would feel the same thing about the food, this changes the relation of the person with the food, or metabolize it the same way. Our eating patterns may influence our spouse’s eating patterns and affect the relationship. Engaging in conversation with others on mobile using social media or concentrating on other issues rather than looking towards the spouse disturbs the emotional bonding between the couple. Eating together, and having a personal and cheerful chat with the spouse intensifies the bonding between the couple.
Read More: From Comfort to Compulsion: Decoding the Secrets of Emotional Eating
The place we are dining influences the portion size, when we are with a cheerful and joyful group around us we tend to eat more, without thinking. This is why we cannot avoid having food at parties and during festivals. Attentive eating is more satisfying and pleasing. Consumption of alcohol also affects the dietary habits of the person; eating snacks which are mostly fat-filled, fills the stomach with unhealthy options and added to that they avoid proper diet after consumption of alcohol.
Suppression of thoughts about food sometimes is a bad idea which may result in overeating. Health-conscious persons who follow a diet habitually, and who hold back food thoughts regularly are more susceptible to food cravings, further leading to overeating. Eating healthy rather than avoiding food is the best tip to stay happy. A healthy diet can build our inner health and recover our mood. Emotional eating is that situation when we eat because of our frame of mind, not hunger. Negative emotions make us opt for high-fat and sugary foods which are replaced with healthier versions of snacks.
The surroundings impress our food carvings, when we reach any restaurant and hear the orders of other people, we tend to order the same food option as it pleases our sense of hearing and also awakens the inner suppressed desire to eat that particular food item. Most of the children while watching television or movies tend to ask about the food which are aired on the screen. This happens as it pleases their vision, the colour and the presentation of food. This explains how our suppressed desire is out even when we don’t and their effects on our body are wish to eat or not hungry.
Read More: Deconstructing Pop Culture’s Impact on Eating Disorders
Some of them try to eat and taste the food just because they like the name or colour of that food item. The underlying motivation here is to get recognized for being different and daring to jump into new experiences. Some food names sound so musical to our ears, that the senses try hard and make us eat and experiment with that food. Some food tastes reach nostalgia; a sense of bond is developed between the food and us further nurtured by our brain.
Some psychologists say that what we think and feel about a particular food can be as vital as its nutritional significance and their effects on our body are the real nutrients within. The brain regulates emotions and other important functions such as hunger, thirst, sexual drive or arousal, and so on. Our brain activates and associates with the body. To explain, the brain takes sensory, and emotional feelings or thoughts and translates this data into physiological responses.
If we feel like eating a fat-filled food or a pizza or chocolate, then we are sending negative signals to our brain and not helping our body to metabolise the food we eat. This negative feeling activates and stores the food as fat in the body because it is manipulated to store it as fat. The influence of our mind is strong enough to make us unhealthy living beings, even after eating healthy food (placebo effect).
Psychologists believe that many factors such as economic status, cultural, social, and individual life influence the eating pattern and in turn, food influences thinking behaviour. The more we are positive towards food, the more we are energetic and happy. Making healthier and more careful choices is tricky and challenging, as said earlier it depends on many factors.
Some of the things that Psychologists concluded that may help us understand our relationship with food and ourselves
1. Fat Food:
Fat food is not always bad contrary to common belief that food with high fat content is bad. This leads to people consuming only low-fat food. Being higher in volume, low-fat food gives more calories than small portions of fat-filled food. And not all fat is bad for the human body.
2. Food Presentation
Food presentation: The visual appearance of food, its presentation, and colour create the mood to eat that foodstuff. Plate colour and sizes are remarkably important, and cannot be underestimated. Eating a small plate gives a feeling of eating more and this feeling fills the the stomach.
3. Ageing
Age too is an important element; ageing weakens the taste sensation as the sense buds are lowered in number. This ability of taste sensation is crucial to taste one experience.
Read More: Mental Health Among Elderly People
4. Healthy Food:
Healthy food when taken in large amounts is not healthier. We perceive what we are made to believe. The media and traditional methods make us believe us a particular food is healthy and we tend to think it is healthy. Yes, it may be healthy but when taken limitedly.
5. Good food tastes bad:
We are made to think that healthy food is of bad taste, maybe sour or bitter or no taste. But, this is not always true. Healthy and tasty options can be prepared. A person on a diet may avoid full-fat food but they are convinced to think it’s tasty. This tendency forces people to eat less if they find the food delicious.
Finally, we can say our brain power and what we eat can have a strong influence on our body. Hence avoid strong negative statements or suggestions to the brain.
Think healthy, eat healthy and stay healthy and happy.
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