Food is emotive, food is life. We revolve all our major events around food with family dinners, barbeques with friends, holidays, birthdays and even than Saturday night in on the couch is about what food you are going to eat. It’s no wonder we have shifted the balance with food from fuel to confidante. So how do you find your way back to viewing food as fuel instead of your emotional support when you have had a bad day?

Habit #1 Food is Stress Relief

You come home from a long day, your boss is on your back, you slept through your alarm this morning and your hair isn’t sitting right. You reach for a chocolate bar….

How to break this habit

Pop your trainers on and go to boxing session, run, walk or whatever exercise you enjoy doing. Nothing relieves stress more than exercise.
Call a friend and have a rant – it’s great to get it off your chest.
Have some retail therapy (guilt free of course) this is purely just to shift your focus and reward yourself WITHOUT using food.

Habit #2 Food Feeds Guilt

You feel so guilty about what you ate yesterday you are going to punish yourself by eating more bad food

How to break this habit

Negative talk is NOT doing your body any good. You are only one good meal away from getting back on track so take these steps:

• Accept why you ate what you ate
• Think of how you could approach the situation differently next time
• MOVE ON

Habit # 3 Food is All or Nothing

In order to achieve your goal you have to be 100% strict all of the time, your food has to be perfect and eating healthy means you become a hermit and end up binging anyway.

How to break this habit

Let go of the need to be perfect and embrace the need to be consistent. Consistency is the key to seeing long term results so rather than just eating salads for every meal, try to change one habit per week – whether it’s adding a cup of vegetables at lunch and dinner, or have an extra two glasses of water per day.

 

Habit #4 Food is a Time Filler

You’re sitting at home bored, and your tummy grumbles so you head to the fridge, back to the couch, to the fridge and then the pantry and repeat 3-4 times before you decide what you are going to eat. YOU ARE BORED NOT HUNGRY.

How to break this habit

• Have a glass of water and busy yourself for 15 minutes, if you still feel hungry then you are actually hungry, if you are not then you were either thirsty or bored.
• Fill your time with activity rather than food – go for a bike ride, rearrange your wardrobe, whatever it takes to distract you.
• Drink more water – a lot of people cannot distinguish the different between when they are hungry and when they are thirsty so just to be safe drink more water.

 

Habit #5 Healthy Food is Boring

You have the same grilled salad five lunches in a row, the same fish and three veg each night….of course that is going to be boring. Even in you had a cheese pizza five lunches in a row you would be bored of it.

How to break this habit

• Get variety – make a different meal each night and have the left overs for lunch the next day
• Explore foods you may not have tried – i.e. kale
• Salad does not just mean lettuce, tomato, cucumber and onion…step outside the box
• Try one new recipe each week
• Remember it’s not healthy eating to have meat and vegetables at every meal, it’s regular eating

If you are struggling with your relationship with food simply email naednutrition@gmail.com for more personalised nutrition guidance.

Author, Sinead Tolley, Naed Nutrition