If you want to lead a life full of energy, then there is no substitute for building a healthy relationship with food. Since it will be time for New Year’s resolutions in a few weeks, it seems prime time to rewind and see how you made your diet choices. If you feel the choices were wrong, you have a chance to improve on that in 2017 by working on your relationship with the food you eat.
What’s your relationship with food?
But before you read the ways to improve your relationship, it’s important that you understand the nature of this relationship – it could be a love affair or a hate story, depending on how you connect with the food you consume. Remember, you don’t eat only when you are hungry but you often combat sadness, loneliness, and depression by eating your favorite food.
Unfortunately, some people might have a tragic relationship with their food. That’s when it becomes an obsession, and you start living only to eat your next meal. Food turns into an addiction and makes your life unhappy due to bad health and low energy to perform everyday tasks.
So, it’s important that you build a healthy and a loving relationship with the things you eat. But how one does this remains a mystery for the majority of people who are struggling to balance their diet. Let’s explore 7 different ways to turn this relationship into a mutually beneficial, healthy, and rewarding connection so that you can reap the benefits of feeling hungry.
1- Make positive choices
What choices you make play an important role on how to build your relationship. For example, listening to weight loss experts on TV or the internet would usually lead you to think about foods NOT to eat. That’s where you need to make positive choices instead of these negative aspects of eating.
Consider an example of an evening snack. Assuming that you are planning to eat nuts and some diet fruits, you can look at this in two ways:
Positive choice: Think and focus on what you are going to eat. For example, in this case, nuts and diet fruits.
Negative choice: You haven’t included any chocolate or ice cream in your evening snack. Focusing on the fact that evening snack means ‘NO chocolate’ is a negative way of thinking about your food choices.
2- Variety is important
If you have done your research, you’d be content to eat only chicken, broccoli or another superfood, and maybe a humble quantity of protein shake for breakfast. But doesn’t that sound utterly boring?
Eating according to a menu is healthy, but that doesn’t mean you have to opt for a menu that’s for robots. You can easily find a menu with variety. If you are happy to develop your own weekly food plan, it’s advisable to try to discover different food groups every week and add them to your plate according to your daily calorie and carbs check.
Eating a variety of food keeps your taste buds interested in the next meal, building a strong bond between your mind and your food.
3- Avoid temptation by limiting your access to certain types of food
When you want to avoid certain types of foods, such as the ones that would make it difficult to reach your fitness goals.
Having easy access to ‘forbidden’ foods and then making a choice ‘NOT’ to eat would be a terrible thing. That would be like adding negative energy to your relationship.
In addition to the problem of making a negative choice to achieve a fitness goal, you will also have to deal with the temptation to eat something. Unfortunately, you can’t always resist the temptation and sometimes you will give in to it.
To solve both these problems and to avoid fueling negative energy into your relationship, the best solution is to remove such food from your home so that you have to go to a supermarket even if you are unable to resist the temptation.
4- Eat more fresh food and less processed food
Eating processed food is a compromise that you make in case you can’t find fresh and wholesome foods. It shouldn’t be a preference. Go to a fresh fruit market and see how it makes you feel better even when you haven’t bought anything as such.
Just the feeling of being there, surrounded by fresh fruits and vegetables, helps you improve your relationship with food.
5- Enjoy your food instead of thinking about nutrients at all the times
Although it’s important that you know your food in terms of their nutrients, it shouldn’t become your obsession. You don’t have to think about how protein you are consuming when eating meat. Instead, enjoy eating your food. Enjoy the fact that you are eating tasty meat.
You have done your calorie and nutrient calculations earlier, and it’s better you put your mind on the pure ‘joy’ that you get from eating.
6- Leverage the fun that comes with social eating
Social eating is enjoyable. If you haven’t experienced it yet, simply cook for someone. It’s probably one of the simplest pleasures set in the primitive part of human brain. Your relationship with food will start improving when you eat it to fuel social relations.
7- Maximize your potential by making healthy choices
Making healthy choices helps you stay full of energy. That means you are always ready to face new challenges that life presents. In addition to eating right, it is essential to exercise regularly. If you are finding it difficult to get started, check out some workout motivation tips by experts.
Having a healthy relationship with your food will change your life. You will feel full of energy, purpose, and you will find yourself getting closer to your goals in life.
Guest Post by Evelyn.
See also:
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