How To Develop A Healthy Relationship With Food
How to develop a healthy relationship with food means that one is able to eat for the reasons of physiological rather than emotional hunger and to stop eating at a point when the body and mind are truly satisfied. In order to have a healthy relationship with food, one must first have permission to eat.
During a fat loss diet, inevitably you come to be terrified with the sheer mentioning of certain ‘evil’ foods (candy, fried meat, anyone?). That’s understandable, given how much attention you pay to consume exclusively low-calorie meals.
This eagerness to consume only good foods and completely ban evil ones urges you to endorse a negative and awkward approach to certain types of food. People preoccupied with the evilness of foods might end up obsessing about it, turning the latter into some calorie monster that needs to be constantly in check. This often results in some eating disorders, if one is not careful with their relationship with food, sternly compromising their emotional and physical health.
Why don’t we have a look at what you should do to avoid building a negative relationship with food?
The fear of “bad” food may lead to emotional disorders
Don’t think of food as good/bad
Instead of labeling foods as good or bad, delete any food blacklists you’ve compiled and start thinking of food in terms of healthiness levels. If you start thinking about how healthy or unhealthy a portion of food is, it will entirely change your approach to food, enabling you to accentuate the positive side of it, like nutrition, nourishment, and fat loss boost.
So, instead of thinking of food as little devils jam-packed with calories, think of how you can benefit yourself by consuming them; be it nutrition, health-boosting, or weight loss.
No food is essentially bad
Truth be told, there will be a time when you will be all fed up with your strict diet, so it would be wise if you were predecided on certain diet-breaking meals you could include in your diet. Diet-breaking meals constitute emotional relief and motivation boost. This will establish in your mind how eating allegedly, evil foods, won’t make you fat again. More importantly, this will also mitigate your views on what bad foods really are.
Consuming bad foods whilst might sound counterproductive, is a vital part of a successful diet. Ideally, you should have diet-breaking meals 3-4 times per month, to really understand how there is no bad food, just food misuse. Evidently, you cannot consume such meals more than 4 times per month, as it could potentially sabotage your efforts for weight loss.
Taking a Break from dieting
Another way for you to generate a positive association with food is by occasionally opting out of your diet and resuming normal food consumption. This will allow you to realize that in order to maintain your new weight you will not have to keep depriving yourself of food, just eat normally and always in moderation.
As it often happens, when on a diet, your metabolism starts slowing down, so you are forced to reduce your calorie intake, even more, reaching a point of insufficient and unhealthy food intake. This establishes in your head the idea that if you slightly overeat you will instantly gain weight.
That’s where diet breaks come in; they allow you to wake up your metabolism and make you realize that eating more quantity doesn’t always result in weight gain.
Succeeding in your weight loss goals means to start investing in a healthy relationship with food, food is your fuel, that how to develop a healthy relationship with food, after all, treat it as such.
