|
Understanding
Your Relationship with Food
by Nutritionist Fiona
Hunter
Before we can begin to understand the
complex relationship that most of us have with food, we need to
understand that we all eat for a variety of reasons — very often out
of habit or to satisfy emotional needs rather than hunger…
We
use food to celebrate, to relieve boredom, to make us feel better when
we're unhappy or lonely. Certain people, places, moods and situations
can also prompt us to eat. Sometimes we eat to satisfy hunger, but often
it's to satisfy a psychological need rather than a physiological need.
Often we're unaware of the psychological cues that cause us to eat when
we're not really hungry.
Identify Your Triggers
Keeping a food diary will help you to
identify the triggers that make you want to eat when you are not
physically hungry. Buy a notebook and divide the pages into columns with
the following headings:
Date
Time
|
Food
what you ate
|
Place
where you were
|
Who
you were with,
What
you were doing,
Why
you ate the food
|
Mood
your mood at the time
|
Hunger
how hungry were you on a scale of 1-5, where 1 = very hungry and
5 = not hungry
|
Keep A Record
Keep a record of everything you eat and
drink and how you feel for a month. At the end of the month review your
diary and make a list of all the triggers that prompt you to eat when
you're not really hungry.
Date
Time
|
Food
|
Place
|
Who
What
Why
|
Mood
|
Hunger
|
Thurs
8th, 10.30am
|
Choc
bar
|
Office
|
Working
- hungry, missed breakfast
|
Ok
|
2
|
Thurs
8th, 10pm
|
½
tube Pringles
Bottle white wine
|
Home
|
Alone
- watching TV - late home from work, no energy to cook proper
meal
|
Bored
/ tired
|
1
|
Sat
10th, 3pm
|
3
choc biscuits
|
Anna's
House
|
Anna
got biscuits out - not hungry but couldn't resist
|
Ok
|
5
|
Identify Your Triggers
Once you've identified these trigger
factors you can start to think about solutions and ways to avoid those
situations in future. Using a technique that psychologists call
behaviour modification you can work out strategies that will help avoid
or change the way you behave when faced with these triggers.
If, for instance, you find that when you
get home after work you're so hungry that you end up eating a family
sized pack of cheesy snacks whilst preparing the evening meal — plan
ahead — have a healthy snack such as a banana or yoghurt before you
leave the office so you won't be so hungry when you get home.
If your diary reveals that you use food as
a way of making yourself feel better when you're unhappy or depressed
make a list of non-food related activities that will help lift your
spirits when you're feeling low: rent a video; have a manicure; take a a
long leisurely bath rather than reaching for a chocolate bar.
Avoid Eating When You're Not Really Hungry
We all know, that when it comes to losing
weight, there are no easy answers or quick fix cures. Old habits are hard
to break and changing ingrained behavioural patterns is not something you
can achieve overnight but by using behaviour modification techniques you
can teach your body to respond differently to external cues. Here's
some tips to help you get started:
|
|
