What is Your Relationship to Food? – Vol. 360, May 5, 2016
Your relationship to food is a reflection of your relationship with life. If you feel tension regarding food, ask yourself, “Where else in my life do I feel tension?” Then address what comes up for you. If you feel stressed out, figure out where in your life you feel stressed out, and make the necessary changes.
Many weight loss clients focus on just that, weight loss, to become the sort of person they want to be in this life. The only problem with this is that until one develops a feeling of self-worth, the weight may not budge – or if it does, it will return because the underlining cause for the weight has not been dealt with.
If you are in a job or relationship that is stifling to you, feels destructive in some way, food could be the way that you soothe yourself. In this case, it is the relationship or the job that needs to change for the food issue to go away. Focusing on the future that you are creating for yourself will allow the food issues to diminish.
So many women in particular have no sense of hunger. They know what “starving feels like – ravenous before allowing any calories get by their lips. What they don’t know is what it feels like to be “hungry.”
To have a better idea of how this works in your body get a sense of what you feel like right after you ate an entire Thanksgiving dinner – so full you feel like you are going to explode. It was hard to move, along with that uncomfortable feeling in your gut.
Then think of a time when you were ravenous, you haven’t taken the time to eat all day long. Maybe you recall feeling tired and weak, along with not being able to think very clearly.
Then think of a time when you ate just till you felt satiated. When you had enough good energy for 4 or 5 hours. Your mind was working great and you felt very good.
Food effects how your are going to feel physically, mentally and emotionally, so it is important to give it the importance it requires and eat it in the way that it was meant to satiate you and nourish your body.
Think of food as nutrition only. When I work with my anorexic and bulimic clients, this is the main idea that needs to be gotten across to them. Without the proper nutrition your body will be unable to function properly. Once they get that idea cemented in their minds, they are more easily able to eat a balanced healthy diet.
For my overweight clients, it is all about learning how to fill themselves up feeling better about their lives instead of with food, while learning how to eat healthfully.
A diet high in grain products leads to high blood sugar and poor sensitivity to the hormone insulin. Poor insulin sensitivity has been shown to cause abdominal fat accumulation. A vicious cycle occurs with the more abdominal fat you store, the worse your insulin sensitivity becomes.
You can learn how to eat correctly by eating a protein rich breakfast – a couple of eggs cooked in coconut oil, with a slice of ham and some berries. You burn 25 calories for every 100 calories of protein you eat.
Good quality fats are important for the regulation of your hormonal balance, including many fat burning hormones. Good fats are grass finished butter, coconut oil, avocados, extra virgin olive oil, wild caught fish salmon, mackerel, tuna, and trout, grass fed beef, bison, free range chicken, whole free range eggs, nuts and seeds such as sunflower, and flax seed.
All these “fattening foods” will help to improve your overall fat-burning hormone balance, your satiety and feelings of fullness after a meal.
Veggies, all colors including many green ones. They are full of antioxidants and vitamins and minerals that your body needs.
Whole eggs with yolks loaded with vitamins, minerals and antioxidants.
Fatty fish are a great source of inflammation-reducing omega-3s
Coconut oil is a prime source of medium-chain triglycerides (MCTs) well known for appetite regulation, energy and immune benefits.
We crave the foods we are allergic to. If you are having issues with your skin or stomach pain, think about the foods you may be eating that may be causing it. Stop eating this food for a while and see if the symptoms go away. Keeping a food diary is a great way to keep track.
If you are living with a sleep deficit, that also can cause you to eat more food then you need because of your need for more energy. Do what you can to attend to your sleep deprivation, allowing food to be used for the energy the way it is supposed to.
People aren’t drinking enough water because they are consuming drinks with added sugar or worse diet sodas that make people hungry for the lack of calories in them. What they do have in them are various poisons to your body known as sugar substitutes. Tea and coffee are diuretics so they are not going to help hydrate you in the long run.
Your best bet is to drink plenty of water. If you like it better with some fresh juice, mix it half and half. The less juice the better though because you really don’t need all the fructose from the fruit juice.
Stay away from high fructose corn syrup in any foods and drinks hat you come across. This is a very dangerous product because our body doesn’t know how to use it for fuel. Also, the corn used to make it is genetically modified, making it worrisome. Stay away from soy and wheat for the same reason.
The most important thing to keep in mind is that you need a wide variety of whole foods. Stay away from foods that have ingredients you can’t pronounce or don’t know what they are. Stay away from packaged foods with artificial anything in them, because these are chemicals that your body doesn’t know how to deal with.
In my own case, I had to lose about 16 pounds to be where my weight has always been. All I did was a little exercise in the whirlpool of my health club – stretching and a bit of movement, eating whole foods, increasing the good fats and decreasing massively the amount of carbohydrates I was consuming. The net result so far has been going from 138 pounds to 122 pounds in less then four weeks. For my petite 5 foot frame, this is a reasonable weight at 54 years of age. So, the food choices you make are the most important for your health and body size along with disposing with anything in your life that is stressing you out. There was absolutely no calorie counting and there was no restriction from foods I love like a good hot cocoa made from Trader Joe’s Cocoa mix and some raw honey to sweeten it.
Our health is the most important thing we have. If we lose it, life doesn’t feel so good. I know, because I have spent too many years in the past ill, in one way or another. So, take care of those issues that you need to and eat well. Your body, mind and spirit will thank you as well as those with whom you interact every day.
