Healthy relationship with food

    
    In my childhood my grandmother never allowed me to leave food on my plate. She told me scary stories about what could happen if I will. One of the stories, for example, was about unfinished bread. She told me if I leave it I will get some serious disease or I will simply stop to grow up and will stay the same size for life, because I won’t get enough power for growing. Biggest concentration of energy was in the last piece of bread, she believed. She taught my mom in the same way.

    When I asked my Georgian and Japanese friends about their experience, they told me similar stories. I guess the previous generations had a really harsh time with food, when it wasn’t enough and they have to eat in store and never leave a piece on their plates.

    So, I use to do it too. I don’t have a problem with availability of food but I have bad relationship with it. I didn’t really notice that something wrong going on between us till I found some article about it. It is important to understand that problem exists for starting to change this situation.

    When our relationship to food falls out of harmony, we lose our innate enjoyment of eating. When the relationship has been disordered for many years, it is easy to forget what “normal” eating is like.

    Here are some elements of healthy relationship to food.

1.    You feel happy and fully engaged in life when you are not eating. (Food is not your only reliable source of pleasure and satisfaction).

2.     If you are not feeling hungry, you don’t eat.

3.     You stop eating when you feel full and are able to leave food on the plate.

4.     You have intervals of at least several hours when you are not hungry of thinking about food, punctuated by (meal) times when you do feel hungry and take enjoyment in eating.

5.     You enjoy eating many different kinds of food.

6.     You maintain a healthy weight that is steady of fluctuates within a range of five to seven pounds. You don’t need to weight yourself more than once every few month or years.

7.     You don’t obsess about food or count calories in order to decide if you can “ afford” to eat something or not.

    If someone or all of the items on this list don’t apply to you, you’re not alone. Many of us have developed unhealthy habits due to a variety of influences in our lives. We need something to help us restore our natural sense of balance, satisfaction, and delight with food. If I will find it by myself I will share this information with you J, if you already found it, please tell me what it is J.