Your Psychological Food Relationship and Your Health

Your Psychological Food Relationship and Your Health
Your physical food relationship is based on your eating
habits and food preference, while your psychological food
relationship is related to how you think about food and its
effect on your weight and body image.

Your psychological food relationship begins to dominate
when you succumb to eating to satisfy your appetite instead
of your hunger, which is a physical need to supply your
body with nutrients.

Your appetite, not your hunger, is in control when you
decide to eat a to-die-for dessert even though you have
just finished eating a hearty meal. Indulging your appetite
to satisfy your eating pleasure rather than your physical
hunger is an unhealthy psychological food relationship.

What make you form a psychological food relationship?

You may remember a pleasant experience with a specific
food, thereby triggering your appetite. In addition, your
emotions, positive or negative, can trigger your appetite.
For example, an occasion for celebration may induce you to
indulge your appetite and eat for sheer pleasure;
isolation, loneliness, and depression may lead you to
overeating.

It must be understood that self-defeating thoughts and
unhealthy eating behaviors only perpetuate unhealthy
emotions and bring on another food-addiction episode,
thereby forming a vicious circle of uncontrollable eating.
Unless you recognize and acknowledge the trigger, which is
often the emotion itself, you will continue to overeat.

So, how do you resolve your problem of having an unhealthy
psychological food relationship?

Seek a positive solution to your negative emotion, instead
of comforting yourself with food. Admittedly, it is easier
said than done.

If you are bored, you would most likely keep on telling
yourself that you are bored until you eventually become
part of your belief system; it is like a self-fulfilling
prophesy. To keep yourself occupied, you begin to eat for
the pleasure of it. However, the pleasure soon dissipates,
and you become bored again. Remember, comfort food is never
comforting. To alleviate the boredom, you resort to eating.
Before you know it, you have become a food addict who has
developed an unhealthy psychological food relationship.

The solution to the problem is to find something to do
other than eating to overcome your boredom. Of course, that
requires some discipline and determination.

In addition to boredom, another common emotional trigger of
overeating is anger. You may be angry with yourself or with
someone else. Anger is a response to fear, frustration or
pain. You unwittingly use food to suppress your emotion.
After indulging yourself with food, you may become
frustrated with yourself for overeating, and you may end up
eating more to deal with the emotion of frustration, and
thus forming a vicious circle of emotional eating. Do not
use food to distract yourself from feelings of anger;
instead, learn to deal with your anger head-on. Never hold
in anger because it will turn back on yourself. Neither
should you internalize anger, for it may lead to
depression. The key is to release your anger instead of
suppressing or ignoring it.

Other than boredom and anger, stress is another
food-addiction trigger. Contemporary life is stressful, and
part of the stress stems from within yourself. Life
stressors can initiate your emotional appetite, and thus
creating an environment for overeating. Once you respond to
stress by overeating or giving up on yourself through
self-defeating behavior, you are allowing yourself to
develop an unhealthy psychological food relationship.

The solution to the problem of stress-related food
addiction is to identify your stressors and change the way
you respond to them. Remember, the stressors are always out
there, and it is the way you respond to them that makes a
difference in your life.

Did you know that fear is also an emotional trigger of
unhealthy food addiction?

Fear could be an underlying emotion that precipitates your
unhealthy eating behavior. You might be afraid of eating a
normal amount of food out of fear of getting fat. Or you
might be afraid of not reaching your weight loss goal. Your
subconscious fear often turns you into a food addict.
Remember, some food addicts are not overweight, but they
are so obsessed with their body image that they form an
unhealthy relationship with food. They incessantly count
fat grams and calories, and they weight themselves all the
time.

The only way to change your unhealthy food relationship is
to change the way you think about your body image. If you
are a woman and a perfectionist, you will always be unhappy
with your weight and body image, and you will have an
increased risk for developing an eating disorder during
your lifetime. Remember, your self-worth should be tied up
with who you are, not with what you see in the reflected
mirror, which is often grossly distorted.

>From time to time, we all eat for emotional reasons.
However, emotional eating becomes a problem when it
interferes with your health and well-being. Improving your
psychological food relationship may prevent emotional
eating from developing into an eating disorder.

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Stephen Lau is a researcher, writing medical research for
scientists. His publications include "NO MIRACLE CURES" a
book on healing and wellness. He has also created several
websites on health and healing.
http://www.longevityforyou.com
http://www.zenhealthylifestyle.com
http://www.chinesenaturalhealing.com
http://www.rethinkyourdepression.com