We all need to eat to survive, but many of us cannot control the way we eat. There are also many others that want to improve their eating habits. It is a sensitive topic for many people, especially as many people have differing views about nutrition. Just like religion can be, many people are adamant about what they believe is the correct way of eating.
When I did a prolonged fast for the first time, I did some research about eating. Going back around 10,000 years before agriculture was established across the world, humans needed to hunt to survive. There were times when food was in abundance and other times when humans had to go for days without food. It made me think how strange it is that the humans of today feel that they really need to eat 3 times a day.
After fasting, it helped me to think about how much food is taking control of my life. Growing up there were many foods that I became emotionally attached to. When I have a chance to eat food that I haven’t had for many years, it brings back good memories. I think that can be good, as long as the food is healthy. I don’t want to get depressed and feel that I need a particular type of unhealthy food to take me out of that depression.
For me, there is one thing that I have begun to notice in terms of the satisfaction of eating, and that is that I am able to be more satisfied when I am calm. I eat well when I take time out of everything else to eat a meal. I cannot eat and work, or eat and have a heated discussion at the same time. I also notice that I may eat more than I need to if I am stressed. I am sure many other people have similar experiences. That is why I try to wait until I have no distractions when I am eating.
This seems to make sense to me and makes me understand the term emotional eating well. According to research conducted on a large cohort of 1027 teenagers, they found that the higher the amount of social anxiety experienced by the teenagers, the higher amount of emotional eating they were engaged in. With the prevalence of unhealthy foods available in school canteens and parents being busy with work and unavailable to support their children sufficiently, it has become a problem for all of us.
This kind of problem, of course, does not end in the classroom, but it should. More education is needed, and support given to these students, so that their emotional eating does not continue throughout their life. Problems dealing with their food can eventually become a burden on hospitals due to perceived physical health problems on top of mental health problems that already exist.
I think that many people, old or young, think that their eating habits can easily be fixed. I believe this as well, but just because it can be fixed, doesn’t mean it should be postponed until next year or the next decade. We need to look after our physical health now, before it causes problems that cannot be reversed.
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https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0883941722001650
