Modern society has created a series of diet problems and weight-related health problems, whether that is obesity or eating disorders. However, a natural healthy body is not designed to deprive itself of food or count calories – it simply craves food that is rich in protein, vitamins and minerals.
Eating is a natural process – if you’re hungry, you should eat until you are satisfied, then stop. However, for many people, eating is a comfort blanket or a way to relieve emotional trauma. This is a short term feeling though, which leads to over indulging and eventual weight gain.
It is possible to change your mind set when it comes your eating practices though, so that you eat when you are hungry and not just when you crave comfort. You can do this by creating positive associations with food rather than negative ones. Also, try not to associate any one food as being bad or good – it isn’t a bad thing to enjoy your favourite food. The best thing to do is to eat a balanced diet packed with nutritious meals, and to find positive activities to replace comfort eating. Furthermore, don’t limit yourself – ironically, we over indulge if we feel pressured to just eating foods we feel are ‘good’ for us, so make sure you take time to treat yourself once in a while.
Try to spend some time analysing the emotion you’re feeling when you feel the need to comfort eat – once you realise whether you are lonely, bored or angry, you can deal with that problem separately without masking it with food. As time goes on, you will have learnt how to train your mind to deal with issues head on rather than comfort eating. In order to build a healthy body, you must feed it what it needs.
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