FAQ - Food and Function - How do I change my relationship with food Part 2

In part 1, I introduced the question 'what is your relationship with food (and drink) like? Over the coming weeks I am going to explore the three elements I spoke about (physical, social, emotional) and try to lay out some of my thinking on this.

So, this week, the easy one. The physical. In other words, how can separating out the role food plays in supporting us physically help us in regaining some control over our eating? In this short snippet taken from episode 107 of the podcast, I offer some thoughts and provide some ideas on how this might be able to help us practically when looking to curb what we eat in small but significant ways. You can find the full episode here.

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Dave

Dave Algeo

Midlife Health and Weight Management Coach

Reclaim your Health, Life and Sense of Adventure in Midlife and Beyond

https://www.midlifereshape.com/#weightmanagement #weightloss #weightlossjourney #coach #midlifecoach #midlifewomen #midlifemen

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Dave

Dave Algeo, Restless Mid-Lifer' It is never too late to get life back on your terms and have even bigger adventures!'dave@restlessmidlifer.com

Transcript:

If we're looking at this from the perspective of how can this help us, how can the knowledge help us that we have physical needs, the repair,

the energy levels,

you know there's a certain amount that we need to respect and provide, how can we use this knowledge?

And as I said it's about getting that sustainable gap if we're particularly trying to lose weight rather than just manage or maintain.

We're trying to find a sustainable gap, something we can manage and handle for any length

and with that then it brings in the question, as I've said I'm going to talk about social and emotional relationships with food in due course, but if we can kind of strip it back to the questions around the physical for now,

what we're looking at is the question of am I genuinely eating this or looking to eat this because it is fulfilling that basic energy need, the energy needs of my day, or am I doing it for another reason? Social and emotional we'll talk about in due course, but it might be something as simple as it's routine, it's what I do,

or I'm bored, or as one of my clients calls it mouth boredom,

you know I just need at some point,

you know I'm bored, I just need something to eat and you know that kind of thing, so there's mouth boredom.

I love that phrase because I think I could definitely relate to it,

but are there other factors that are driving why we eat in terms of a physical sense?

So things like that and I guess the question then is how can that help if we can start to ask that question?

So the first thing is the question of am I hungry is, it's an interesting one isn't it, because there potentially is,

it can be easily confused between genuine hunger,

those hunger pangs etc,

perhaps thirst as well, you know I'm a thirsty,

in which case is it worth perhaps testing that out and questioning,

and again I have a client who has something that we've developed and they call the at a place where they might snack or go on a little bit of a binge,

they stop and ask right where am I on the crapometer from zero to five,

zero and one to three being yeah pretty good,

three,

meh, four and five heading towards the crap, the s**tstorm as she calls it,

and that's where we start to park on our rational present self and start to respond automatically to cues whether we're at the fridge before we know it and pull something out the fridge and we're eating it before we know it, but part of the questions that she asks herself is right okay if she's scoring a four, a three and a half, a four or above, the question comes in right okay am I hungry and what am I doing, so genuinely that, am I thirsty and what have I had to drink, because sometimes it is that, so that hydration level is something important, so that could be one factor,

am I thirsty rather than hungry,

and I'm sure you'll have come across those in many diets or little diet hack tips so it's not nothing radical etc there,

the other thing is looking at I guess two areas,

well the boredom is an interesting one first, so if we talk about boredom you know or mouth boredom,

do you find yourself snacking or going for a snack or having a meal simply because you know you've reached a point with work or a break or a natural break or a point with work where your head's you know battered or you can't think straight and the natural inclination is to step away and go and check out the cupboards for something, crisps whatever,

and if that's the case yes there might be some emotional aspects to it but it might be just satisfying a need to do something different,

to change up and mix up things,

so there's, I'm going to differentiate between genuine boredom, sorry boredom and mouth boredom because there's two interesting things there, one is boredom could be, what else could satisfy that and sometimes a change is as good as a rest is the old cliche but can we change something up, do something different and it may be work related or maybe step away, it might be something short and sweet like a 10 minute walk or a little bit of stretching,

a drink of something or a conversation with somebody, something different that's physical and not necessarily related to what we take in because once we start to realise in terms of this physical there are more reasons than we eat,

no shit Sherlock I guess, there are more reasons that we eat than the emotional, social and the physical, there's things like the boredom side, then perhaps we can have tools in the kit or if this then that rules, I like to think about them, if this happens then that is what I'll do or if that is how I feel I'm bored then this is what I'm going to do, so perhaps you could think about what you could have in your toolkit or your arsenal in terms of activities to do

instead and one of the things we need to be have a caveat on here is we're not saying not and restricting because if you're one of the challenges with snacking in particular is if we get really hard on ourselves and this may work for some but for some for others it may be that that's this thing that creates us tension and and can lead to ultimately a binge later or very shortly after,

what we need to think about is how we talk to ourselves in that and how can we talk to ourselves in a way that's not restrictive, so tell you what I can have that but maybe let's give it 10 minutes I'm going to go and do something else.