We all need food to survive and one of our greatest pleasures is the variety of foods available to us to satisfy this need. Most of us are able to easily differentiate between an array of tastes and smells, and because of this we’ve turned the task of eating into an elaborate ritual where we endeavour to regularly surround ourselves with all kinds of foods. Almost every day we’re tempted to eat much more than what’s necessary, or to indulge in poor diet “comfort foods.” Our relationship to food can become completely out of phase, should we be suffering through particular emotional changes or issues. Our natural rhythm is for us to eat several times every day – and unless we’re quite careful, inattention can get the best of us and an unbalanced diet can quickly become our habit, thereby leading to many potentially serious health problems in the future.
We can see the gravity of the problem by looking at our population as a whole. Issues of obesity are rampant in society and many of these issues can be traced to what is known as “emotional eating.” When people are suffering from the worst form of this “hunger,” they’re eating to deal with personal issues or to satisfy their never-ending emotional hunger. The most common phrase with respect to food that most of us usually hear is “comfort food,” which means a kind of food which temporarily helps someone repair, replace or forget about something else. Unfortunately, our “instant” society provides us with constant access to all kinds of “quick and easy” foods, processed products with almost no real nutritional value, which often have a very high sugar content as well.
When it comes to your own eating habits, it’s crucial that you recognize whether or not you’re an emotional eater. If you notice that you’re looking to ice creams, snacks and fast foods during stressful times, and you allow yourself to regularly indulge, then you’re just making your addiction worse. You are not thinking about holistic health solutions or holistic nutrition, but rather going for what you believe to be a quick fix, which in effect is just aggravating the problem. You might feel a short-term comfort or “high” but the consequent low will just make you focus even more on the issues which were there in the first place and have not gone away.
Realize that it may not be easy to overcome your food addiction and your emotional eating habits. The first step is certainly recognizing that you have a problem, but you may need the help of a trained health professional or a support group to intervene to break the cycle permanently. One thing is for sure, we will face challenges and emotional difficulties throughout our lives, but we should try and maintain a physically healthy life as much as possible to enable us to ride this roller coaster best.
Dr. Elson Haas of the Preventative Medical Center tells us that we will need “greater attentiveness and a willingness to deal openly with emotions and other adversities that may block our way to healing.” Analyze your diet very carefully and start planning to kick your sugar addiction, which may well be at the core of the issue. Chances are that whatever is holding you back and helping to create your challenges can be diet related, and if you are an emotional eater, the kind of fuel that you put in your body will not be able to provide you with the mental and physical tools to help you do battle.
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