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Relationship with food: a rolling factor in weight loss.
 We
all have relationships: with our parents, children, partners, and co-workers. We
have also seen that, for better or worse, we have a relationship with our
food. To have a healthy
relationship with food means that one is able to eat for the reasons of
physiological rather than emotional
hunger and to
stop eating at a point when the body and mind are truly satisfied. In order to
have a
healthy relationship with food, one must first have permission to
eat. Our
diet mentality has robbed us of even having permission to eat.
Many of us don't even know when we're hungry or
comfortably satisfied. If our urge to eat is triggered by external situations
such as the time of day or the availability of food, we may lose the awareness
of our body's messages of hunger. If eating is our primary coping mechanism for
dealing with uncomfortable feelings, we may never experience physical hunger
since we are medicating ourselves with food before we even experience the
sensations of hunger.
When you watch inner signals of hunger you tend to make food choices without
feeling guilt; honor hunger, respect the fullness and enjoy the pleasures of
eating.
A healthy relationship with your food begins by paying attention to what you
eat. This simple beginning accomplishes several things at once.
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You begin to eat smaller bites.
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Focus more on quality than quantity, and
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Enjoy what you eat even more.
The basics of
eating involves the taste buds present on your tongue. If you
take gargantuan bites that your mouth brims with food and your
cheek is packed solid. In that case you can’t even taste 90 percent
of the food you are swallowing. You are doing something, but, not
tasting the food.
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A healthy relationship with your food allows you to appreciate eating at a
relaxed pace that benefits you. Fortunately, you are more in control of this
kind of relationship than most others. Unlike your partner, you can determine
exactly what all the facets of this significant other-your food-are like. As
opposed to personal relationships, where each of you can have competing agendas,
foibles and weaknesses to work through, developing a relationship with your food
is completely under YOUR control. Also, there’s no problem leaving one set of
foods for another.
Key Principles of the Fat Fallacy
-
Eating
habits develop your relationship with your food.
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A bad relationship will make you
fat.
From a dietary standpoint, majority of us go for the quickie, and the point
of eating is to finish. Finish and then do something else. Thus, the process of
eating becomes nothing more than the interval before we’ve satisfied our urge so
we can go back to “important” things. Enjoying your food doesn't mean getting to
the end as fast as you can. It means spending as little time eating as possible!
We need to think differently and approach diet and health from a mature
point of view. This implies, of course, that our old immature points of view can
be “upgraded” very easily if we want them to be.
In the end, this is about you. What kind of relationship do you want to
have? Is your goal just to finish and then roll off to something else? Or do you
want a relationship where you take your time, where the point is to savor the
process, where you want to enjoy it as long as possible?
Building a healthy relationship requires:
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Some commitment to retraining how we think-buying quality food,
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Allotting the time to enjoy the process, and
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Giving the meal the social importance it deserves.
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Learning to differentiate between physical or emotional hungry. If
you're not sure, drink some
water,
as you may be dehydrated. Take a few slow deep breaths, as fatigue and
stress
often masquerade as hunger. If you realize you're not physically hungry, ask
yourself what triggered your desire for food. Look for alternate options to
fight stress like
exercise,
meditation, calling a friend, being in nature, taking a relaxing bath.
Eating is a joy, not something to treat like a nuisance. You have to be
there when you eat. Food is a pleasure, not something to be inhaled so
quickly you can’t even taste it. Retraining what and how we eat ultimately
builds this new relationship. Some will undoubtedly see it as ironic that,
in the end, simply interacting in a healthy way with your food is all that’s
needed to take the weight
off.
Eat only to the point of
energy. If you eat
past this point, you will feel sluggish and actually lose energy. It is
important to make sure you are breathing fully as you eat, bringing oxygen to
the body in order to digest the food.
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