How Do You Spell Love? F-O-O-D!
Food nourishes the body and the soul. It’s common to bond over food, especially with friends, family, and loved ones. It’s connected to our deep health, emotions, and sometimes spiritual beliefs. Food is used to satisfy our own needs, but it can also be used to show and share an emotional connection with others. From your mother's first milk as an infant, to your grandmother's homemade apple pie, food is a way we connect and show love for others.
Haven’t you heard the saying “the heart of the home is the kitchen”? For as long as we can remember, the kitchen is a gathering place whether that’s for meals, family meetings, or a space to chat with company. It's used as more than just a space for food. Therefore it should be looked at as more than just food, it’s part of an emotional and social connection.
Old family recipes are passed down from generation to generation, and these pieces of the past connect us with our heritage. Food has always progressed, changed, and innovated with time. So, we should keep up with the times as science and research continues to update.
Understanding food is not just about knowing what we should eat, it is also about appreciating the connection between nutrition and its effects on our thoughts, emotions, and social interactions - as well as the impact it has on our health and performance.
Here are a few examples of how to be more aware of food’s connection to our emotional brain and mental + physical wellness:
Try recognizing how you feel when you eat certain foods, the nutrient density/quality of said foods, and how that impacts your health. This is a common missing link to healthy eating patterns and behaviors.
Start paying attention to outside factors like your skin, your energy levels, and your thoughts. Food is so much more than just emotions and fuel. Food is medicine for our bodies.
Start paying attention to how you feel after you are done eating. For example, have you ever enjoyed the initial few bites of something and then started to feel bloated or irritated or uncomfortable? That’s not uncommon to experience, it’s just commonly overlooked.
Since it can be common to have uncomfortable feelings after eating certain foods, it’s extremely helpful to phase out foods that you have a negative interaction with.
Example: gluten, dairy, added sugars, eggs, peanuts, heavily processed foods (i.e. - freezer meals, snacks in a bag/box) etc.
These are just a few examples of ways to be more mindful of how your nutrition is impacting you on a larger scale than what sounds and tastes the best.
If you are looking for a good way to reset your natural food instincts, consider trying an elimination diet where you cut out common inflammatory foods like the examples above and eat primarily whole foods for 14-21 days. Once you’ve phased out foods that tend to be inflammatory for you, slowly add one at a time back into your routine and pay attention to how you feel. If you’re still having negative interactions with any particular food items, we would suggest keeping it out of your routine for the majority of the time.
The greatest benefit of following an elimination diet is the learning process that goes with cutting out those types of foods. When you hold yourself accountable and get through the initial phase of breaking through cravings, you realize how good it feels to eat or avoid certain foods. It is so important to connect your temptations with their actual effects. As the stoics would say in regards to our temptations “Once you understand that indulging might actually be worse than resisting, the urge begins to lose its appeal. On the way, self control becomes the real pleasure and temptation becomes the regret.”
