Nutrition can be a puzzling topic, point blank. When you make the decision to manage your weight, you’re suddenly surrounded by messages of food as “the enemy.” Oftentimes, it starts to consume our lives and our weight management journey.
Examining Your Relationship with Food
Have you ever stopped to think about your relationship with food? Most of us don’t. And yet, it’s a pretty intimate relationship. Food is often associated with feelings and situations that we experience day in and day out. For example, many of us eat for…
- Pleasure
- Comfort
- Socialization
- Rewards
- Boredom
And that’s just the beginning of it! To make matters worse, the food-industry is at the center of much of our lives. Think about all the times you interact with food. You shop at the grocery store for all your meals and snacks, and you probably make use of fast food/convenience food on some days when your schedule is tight. We use food to celebrate special occasions, meet-up with friends/family and even to accompany special meetings and events. Food is a huge driving force in our lives, and it always seems like we’re being pressured to eat more and more of it… which becomes especially problematic when trying to manage our weight.
Changing Our Perception of Nutrition
Yet at the heart of the matter, food is intended to nourish our bodies and give us the fuel we need to live our daily lives. We need it for our brain just as much as we need it for our body. Food helps us sustain our energy levels, concentrate on tasks at hand, power our daily movement, build muscle, supply us with needed nutrients and so much more. Imagine our bodies as moving vehicles. Food is the fuel we need to start our engines and drive-off down the highway.
But our complicated relationship with food makes such a simple concept that much more difficult. So why not work on changing our relationship with food and the way we perceive it? Here are some tips to get you started.
- Use mindfulness to begin thinking about WHY you reach for food in the first place.
- Find other ways to socialize than going out to eat, cooking big meals, etc.
- Begin to identify WHERE you eat and HOW you eat it. (ex: Do you eat mindlessly when you’re at home on the couch?)
- Reach out to a dietitian, counselor or other trusted health professional for tips and tricks.
- Research the food industry and examine the effects it has on your life.
- When grocery shopping, think of food as FUEL. What foods will help your body function at its best?
In the end, we have to teach ourselves that food isn’t the “end-all, be-all.” It’s simply a way for us to gain the energy we need to concentrate on other parts of our life — such as our job, raising a family, having fun and staying active. Food is just that… fuel.
