Can we really have our cake and eat it? discover the first step to overcoming emotional eating
As a Nutritional Therapist and Health Coach, many people tell me their biggest challenge is how to overcome sweet cravings or over-eating the wrong kinds of foods.
The first and most basic place to start is to eat in a way that balances your blood sugar at least 80% of the time. This means focussing on whole foods like fish, meat, lentils and pulses, lots of veg and salad, a little fruit, and small amounts of rice, potatoes and pasta.
BUT (and it is a big but), for any healthy lifestyle plan to work in the long term, it has to be sustainable, and that means not only easy to follow but enjoyable. The truth is, cutting out entire food groups and never having the scope for a glass of wine or a piece of birthday cake is a recipe for disaster.
The sad truth is that we have fallen out of love with real food, and we no longer trust ourselves to know what to eat any more.
The damage began when western governments started to introduce their reduced fat guidelines, based on flawed research which has since been debunked. Big food manufacturers then began to produce their low and fat free, so called ‘healthier’ food products. And this low-fat food began to replace what we had been eating without problems for hundreds of years, if not longer. Sadly now that huge amounts of money was at stake, it wasn’t quite so easy to get government policy changed.
But there is something else going on, too. We are so time poor that rewarding ourselves with treat foods like cake and biscuits is the easiest way to show ourselves some self love . My experience in running a nutrition clinic is that so little of why we eat what we eat has to do with nourishing our body (regardless of whether we believe anti-fat propaganda or not). The far greater part is to do with how we feel about ourselves and about life in general. Eating half a packet of chocolate biscuits is much easier than working out what we really need, which might be a way to de-stress, feel loved, get attention, kick back our heels and even sleep. We are almost completely out of touch with our own bodies.
When I’m working with clients, we focus a great deal on lifestyle and mindset because it is a critical factor in deciding whether we make healthy food choices. Simple fact: if you feel stressed or miserable, the chocolate biscuits are always going to win – unless you have a plan in place for dealing with those things.
Pepper this with a heavy dose of guilt – because many people know what they should be eating (and don’t get me started on ‘should’) –it’s easy to end up making food decisions based on a crazily long list of rationales.
Eat the damn chocolate cake and move on! Choose the cake. Then stop the conversation you’re having in your head about it. Eating a slice of cake is not the end of the world. Do not get all ‘well, I might as well eat the whole damn thing’.
My passion is to spread the word that eating real food to nourish the body and soul is both desirable and achievable. And you can have cake. Really you can -just not quite as often as you might be having it now. Find other ways to feel what you need to feel. Consider ways to enhance your self care. I guarantee you are not doing enough. Just as relationship gurus advocate not looking to another person for happiness, the chocolate biscuits won’t make you happy either and you know that. Enjoy the theatre and magic of cooking and eating foods you love and that love you back. Then read a book, go on a long walk via a country pub, swim, dance, sing … Whatever floats your boat.