Mindset & Nutrition - How Our Thoughts, Emotions, & Beliefs Around Food Affect Our Health & Well-Being
“One of the most fundamental building blocks of food is neither vitamin, mineral, nor molecule. It’s our relationship with food. It’s the sum total of our innermost thoughts and feelings."
-The Slow Down Diet by Marc David
So you’re eating a salad because someone told you it was healthy yet you don’t like salad and aren’t enjoying it rather just shoving it down and feeling unsatisfied. Or you’re eating ice cream because you love it yet the whole time feeling guilty about eating it. Can you relate?
Our thoughts, emotions, and beliefs play a huge factor when it comes to eating, nutrition and our relationship with food.
What we think and how we feel about food can be just as important as the the foods actual nutritional value when it comes to metabolizing and utilizing the nutrients of the food.
If we believe a food is “bad” for us then it will be. However someone else may be eating the same food with the belief that its “good” for them and again it will be.
When we eat food with a full measure of pleasure and delight, the metabolic breakdown of that food is fuller and more efficient. The exact opposite will happen when we eat with guilt, shame, anxiety, stress and fear.
Questions we can ask ourselves to bring awareness around our relationship with food:
How am I feeling when I’m eating this food? Am I happy, sad, anxious, worrisome, in a state of stress? What am I thinking? What beliefs do I hold around food? Am I happy and truly enjoying the food I’m eating? Am I feeling shame and guilt for the food choices I have made? Am I eating something because its “healthy” yet I don’t really like and enjoy it? Am I in a state of worry & fear around the ingredients in foods thinking they will make me sick? Am I satisfied or unsatisfied during and after eating?
Our emotions are energy and they play a huge role in eating and nutrition. Whatever you are feeling is valid. Whats important is to become aware of these thoughts, feelings, and beliefs, observe them and begin to change them to fit the lifestyle and reality you are wanting to create.
Changing our inner most thoughts, feelings, and beliefs around food is what will be most beneficial in creating a healthier relationship with food, our bodies, the planet and to help guide us to reaching our goals and highest intentions.
Don’t get me wrong I do feel there are foods and ingredients in foods along with ways our foods are produced and grown that are not for our highest good. Meaning that when we consume too much of them they can assist in creating dis-ease and illness in our bodies. I think its important to be aware of this yet not overly obsess, stress, or fall into fear of it all because that is most likely doing more harm than good.
When we become aware of how we are feeling and thinking while we are eating and even while we are shopping for food we can begin to evolve these thoughts, feelings, and beliefs into ones that are more in alignment with our goals and intentions around food and our overall health, which in my opinion should be freedom - freedom to eat what you want when you want without it disturbing your peace. Take it with a grain of salt.
Free from not worrying and obsessing over the ingredients, the time we eat, how much we eat, how many calories the food has, what the exact macros are and if the food is considered “good” or “bad”.
Eating for enjoyment, nourishment, pleasure, celebration, and balance.
In Love & wellness,
~Jess
Reference:
David, Marc; The Slow Down Diet: eating for Pleasure, Energy & Weight Loss.