Emotional Eating: Be Conscious
I’ve always loved food, and anybody who knows me know that as long as it has no peanuts (stupid allergies) I’m game. I’ll try and food from any place, from a street meat in Toronto to a shack on the side of a mountain in HK peak, road side snacks in Pattaya to The Square in London. Any food, anywhere.
But there is more than nutrition when it comes to food: there’s flavour, tradition, history, culture, and CONTROL. I’m a self proclaimed control freak, there are so many things that I have absolutely no control over. There are obvious things, like the weather, the time of day, the number of stars in the sky. There are other things that I could control but seem out of reach, like yearning for travel, my mood fluctuations, and learning new hobbies. But one thing I can always control is the amount of food that I put into my body.
When I had first started university, I had gone from delicious home-cooked meals, to eating nothing but Mcdonalds and Nesquik cereal, washed down with some mimosas in the morning and paired with vodka shots at night. (Unhealthy, I know). The healthiest thing I had was orange juice, but even that is filled with sugars.
When I was finally fed up with all that weight I’d gained, digestive problems, lack of strength, mood swings from malnutrition (I was eating a lot of calories, but there wasn’t any nutrition involved), I went the other extreme: I ate nothing but clean, unprocessed, raw vegan foods with high levels of exercise.
I had gone from the world’s worst eater to a calorie-tracking obsessed vegan who used food as punishment or reward, rather than a source of nourishment. It took me a long while to realize that it’s ok to have treats and eat out and have a drink every once in a while.
“Emotional Eating” sounds almost like a clinical term, but it’s intuitive name is all too familiar. Eating to celebrate; eating for comfort; eating because I’m just plain bored. As it turns out, emotional eating was used as a way to fill some sort of void. Either way: food is not for therapy. I am not a doctor, or nutritionist, but there are some clearly unhealthy habits that I can see in myself.
The key is consciousness. Eating should be a celebration, or at the very least, a way to give you body the fuel it needs so you can continue to kick ass at whatever it is that you do.
Instead of turning food (or lack thereof) into a punishment, I try to think before eating, taking a moment to realize why I’m eating and what I’m eating. I am one of those people who believe that food is more than fuel. It’s the love and preparation that goes into it, the history of the dish, he culture that invented it, the story of what the current meal creates.
Before you eat, take a moment to look at your food and take it all in. Thank it. I’m not saying that you have to pray or bless it, but be thankful for the opportunity to absorb and learn from its culture, tradition, and love that it brings, along with its nutrition, flavours, and comfort that it can bring. Eat it slowly, don’t rush your digestion, and appreciate the food that you are lucky enough to enjoy. Being conscious of emotional eating does not mean that you have to eat without emotion. It just means being conscious and self-aware while you eat, so you are actively eating, not just frying to fill a void.
Food is an art form unto itself: it’s got colours, flavours, and specific dishes for specific meals and celebrations.
