Episode 64 – 5 Ways To Nurture Your Relationship With Food
Nurturing your relationship with food can lead to forming new states of mind and can also improve how you treat food in your life. This can enhance your own relationship with your “self”. Having a good relationship with food won’t happen instantly. It takes time, intention and reflection.
Nurturing your relationship with food can lead to forming new states of mind and can also improve how you treat food in your life. Your relationship with food can richly enhance your relationship with your “self”. Having a good relationship with food won’t happen instantly. It takes time, intention and reflection.
Food is something that most people view as essential. Yet to others, food is a total burden to the body. Food becomes complex. It leaves them feeling anxious, along with negative physical symptoms. In my world, food is to be enjoyed. It has a sensual component, and I like to really enjoy my meal – not only how it tastes but how it looks.
This article explores your relationship with food so that it’s not so complicated, and offers you tips to nurture it. If you’re interested in exploring how food plays a role in your life, check out these 5 ways to nurture your relationship with food. Be sure to leave me a comment below.
5 Ways To Nurture Your Relationship With Food
1. Do A 5-Day Detox
Detoxes are great ways to remove the toxic load that our diet poses on our bodies. Even if you’re not experiencing any symptoms, our bodies are still exposed to herbicides and pesticides from food. Doing a detox under the guidance of a trained Naturopathic Doctor can help faciliate the process by prescribing certain homeopathic remedies to support the body. Naturopaths can offer you suggestions and evaluate the best course of action moving forward with your goal to nurture your relationship with food. The results of a detox might include weight loss, mental clarity, pain reduction and decreased inflammation. Your body’s going to feel a lot better after the detox, and it’ll reset your taste buds. This can definitely nurture your relationship with food!
2. Consider Intermittent Fasting
A daily ritual such as intermittent fasting involves purposefully skipping meals. There are many fasting protocols to choose from. Some fast for 16 hours, and have an eating window of 6 hours, and others do a 24-hour or 36-hour fast once per week. Much like the benefits of doing a detox, intermittent fasting is proven to provide significant benefits such as balancing hormone levels, weight loss, improved energy, reduced inflammation and it also gives you a boost in concentration. Intermittent fasting also requires special consideration.
If you’ve ever done a fast, you’ll notice that you feel great with everything eliminated over that period of time but once you start to reintroduce foods, life can feel heavy again. To nurture your relationship with food, and appreciate and be more mindful of the food you do eat, try to shift the times that you eat in the day. You will quickly notice how much you appreciate food and certain flavours, and what your body really needs.
3. Do More Home Cooking
By preparing and cooking your own meals, you have more control over the quality of ingredients you use. This can improve your connection to the foods you’re putting into your body. The foods your prepare at home are fresh, which creates more nutritious meals. Those wholesome meals, prepared with love, can help you to look and feel healthier. Home cooking can also boost your energy and mood, support a stable weight, improve your sleep and relieve stress.
Think of how different your food will taste when you add a little love and nurturance from making a meal together with your friends and/or family? When cooking for or with friends and family, you also create family traditions. Think of that one recipe your mom only makes around certain holidays. What feeling does that evoke?
Easy tip (super fun with kiddos too): Take the time to do menu planning. Check out some cookbooks, or online apps, and do your menu shopping together. Be sure to read your labels, and encourage your kids to understand what’s in the foods. This can create healthy food habits and builds-in family time with your favourite person or people. See my article on The Top 10 Food Ingredients To Avoid.
4. Welcome New Cultures of Cuisine
Eating foods from different countries can be intimidating. Trying different herbs and flavours helps you connect with your taste buds and palate. By exploring different cuisines, you’re inevitably exploring different eating habits, which brings in an exciting and new adventure to eating. For instance, the chinese eat with chopsticks, and in India, they eat with their hands. Yet in Japan, it’s customary to slurp their noodles when eating ramen. By shifting gears and taking a trip around the world for dinner, you’re bound to realize that food has a powerful relationship in our lives. It provides us with a sense of variety (see episode 6).
Check out The Travel Channel’s, 20 Must-East Foods From Around The World. Farima Alava will make you dream of travelling the world with the amazing food photography. It all looks so incredibly appetizing and can definitely nurture your relationship with food!!!
5. Practice Mindful Eating
Mindful eating is when you’re mindful, and pay close attention, to the feelings happening inside your body that trigger you to eat. When you are eating, you maintain awareness of the process. Eating with mindfulness is to nurture your experience of tasting your food, and knowing why you’re eating something (see 6 Easy Steps To Mindful Eating, Episode 31). This is often a great place to start if you’ve developed a bad relationship with food. Signs might be to feel guilty when eating, or you ignore the signs your body is sending you before, during or after eating. You might even restrict calories or go the opposite way and binge eat. To turn this around and nurture your relationship with food, mind your plate and slow down your eating, so you can taste your food and enjoy the experience.
Summary
Developing and nurturing a healthy and positive relationship with food takes time and patience. Remember that if you’re in alignment with your highest good, and you put a little time-in each day to reflect on what and how you’re eating, you’ll see a shift overtime. Just go easy on yourself. And get ready to rewrite your food story today!
Other Resources:
The Everything Guide To Intermittent Fasting by Lindsay Boyers, CHNC
Kitchen Stories free app
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