Food has been on my mind. I’ve had my 30th green smoothie and I’m pondering the meaning of it all in relation to health.
Why do we choose the food that we do? I remembered my worry when my childhood dog devoured Mom’s plastic flowers. (His eyes turned orange and they returned out. No animal was harmed). As I looked at my historic diet, my dogs venture wasn’t so surprising. For example, most modern chewing gum is a plastic base plus sweeteners, softeners or plasticizers, flavors, colors, and, sometimes a hard or powdered poly coating. Why would eating plastic seem good to us?
Why consume something that’s not good for you?
Reasons abound. Convenience food enters the system here. It’s easy. It satisfies – for a short time. Then the sugar, salt, flavors and caffeine encourage us to have more and more. If it has only a small nutritive value, we will eat more in order to try to get what we need. When we are nutritionally starving, the bar on what foods we will accept has lowered. Everything sounds good.
Advertising and suggestibility influence our habits from a young age. After a time we associate the food or drinks with friendship and happy emotions from memories or commercials. When that connection is made several times, our brain goes directly to the food or drink. We don’t choose the food because our body hungers for it, but because our mind links it with a solution. The satisfaction is brief. When the food is gone, the good feeling goes too.
What is the discomfort if it’s not true hunger that causes us to eat? After cutting out all sugar, sweet foods, caffeine and alcohol, I’ve had the opportunity to ponder this. It may be an empty stomach notification. It might be then it may be due to a nutritional imbalance or an emotion. Boredom, thirst, anxiety, fear, anger, disappointment, tiredness, restlessness are often cues. Let your body guide you to be aware. Noticing the feelings before you headed to the fridge. The awareness can clear years of patterns of unhealthy behavior. After you notice the emotion, that may be enough. Or you may go forward to use an energy method like EFT (tapping) or bodywork or therapy to help clear old emotions out of the tissue.