Our Relationship with Food by Erik Willis

About 9 months ago I decided to enroll in the Institute for Integrative Nutrition because I wanted to improve my health from an emotional, mental, physical and even spiritual standpoint. As the heading suggests today I am going to talk about my personal relationship with food and what I have learned as I go through the curriculum.

I want to talk about the things that can easily get in the way of one having a healthy relationship with food. The biggest one from my point of view is what I call the psychology of food. As children we are all very impressionable and we learn a lot of things that are very powerful and can and will shape our lives either positively or negatively.

In this article I want to focus on what I would a negative experience around my dinner table ritual as a child. Firstly, seconds were highly  encouraged(I was a growing boy after all.) Along with that I didn’t listen to my mother to slow down when I eat. Lastly we always had dessert. Now onto how that translates to today and the effects as well as what I am doing to right the ship.

Not surprisingly, I have issues around portion control and I tend to eat really fast. Over time these habits led to me getting a fairly severe case of GERD. As far as dessert is concerned, the urge is very strong due to force of habit but also due to addiction to sugar. Whether I go to a convenience store or sit down at a nice restaurant the urge until just recently has been too hard to pass up. The way to combat these forces that are working so hard against us is first to become aware and then to chip away at the bad habits until you begin to turn things around. That’s not to say I don’t have dessert now and again but it’s a once in awhile thing as opposed to an all the time thing.

The other force at work against us at least in my opinion is the constant marketing bombardment to push us towards what is easy cheap and convenient but devoid of any real nutrition. Look at the fast food industry worldwide for example. Also if you take my example of the psychology of food and dinner table rituals, taking kids to these places is in my mind unacceptable. The processed food industry is a multibillion dollar industry but should not be supported in any way shape or form plain and simple.

Fighting for a good relationship with food on that front has been a lifelong battle. More recently, I have begun to dig my heels in to really get a grip on allowing myself to bow down to the monstrosity of the processed food industry.

It is meant to make you addicted, it makes your hormones imbalanced to make you feel good and many other things that I don’t have time for in this article.

I want to focus on food making you feel good which isn’t bad in and of itself. However, what I noticed in my life is that,over time I became a very emotional eater. Whether it be boredom, depression etc food makes me feel better. But again it’s not healthy to depend on food for the majority of my happiness or rather my perceived happiness.

One of the most important things I learned about in my courses thus far is the idea of primary and secondary food. Primary food according to my learning is anything that feeds the soul and spirit snd not so much the body.

So to break up boredom and to not let food be the main way that dopamine is released I started looking for ways to release it in other ways.

The hobbies I have gravitated towards are nature walks with photography then turning them into cards and such for friends and also to sell at craft fairs in the fall. My other hobby involves poetry, learning to play the guitar and harmonica more skillfully and to write songs. I have bigger aspirations with that as well. Albums and such.

I feel like the time I spend doing other things than eating to keep my mind off food along with the powerful release of dopamine is working quite well to battle the things meant to derail my positing and nurturing relationship with food. Certainly food for thought. Just for the readers information, I will be writing articles regularly on topics related to my health coaching practice so I hope you will come back and read them for your benefit.

If this article was of interest to you and you would like to explore taking steps to having a better relationship with the food you eat as well as exploring ways to spend time doing activities that release dopamine in a positive way. Feel free to leave a comment to this article or to call me at 603-209-0680. Thank you!