Are We Eating Ourselves To Death?
I noticed recently when being around teenagers they seem more focused on food than I ever was at that age. Is this due to lockdown when nothing was available and now everyone is out and about, they are making up for the lost time? Maybe you’ll start to notice the teenager with the big bottle of fizzy drinks and the family-size bags of crisps and sweets. It’s like we’ve made it acceptable to super-size everything. Added to that we are more accepting of all shapes and sizes which is great but is that encouraging our young people to eat themselves into health problems?
The mind is naturally wired to eat food to survive back in the day we would spend all day searching and hunting for food. Now we can press a button on our phone and food arrives in minutes. Food is everywhere but our minds haven’t been updated to the new programming.
It’s why so many people fail at losing weight they are giving up with willpower and fighting against the mind and body at every turn. Did you know 62% of the UK population is overweight and 25% of those are obese? I’m going to bet that majority of those people have tried a diet at some point in their life. When you are overweight your chance of long-term health problems is higher. We all know this but even this fact is not stopping people from overeating.
The thing is losing weight isn’t hard all you have to do is count your calories and make sure you eat fewer calories than you’re burning. Now depending on what diet you decide, some will say eat all you want but you just need to stick to your calorie count. Great, that means you can still have your McDonald’s every day. The body however is very clever it will keep making you feel hungry until you have enough nutrition and water. Ever noticed how you’re hungry 20 minutes after your burger and chips? Exactly!
The body will keep you feeling hungry if you don’t drink enough water and have enough nutritional food. Did you know that only 6% of the UK population is hydrated? If you just drank your two litres of water every day, you’ll start to stop at least one of your fits of hunger.
We have six different pangs of hunger that can occur and the third one is emotional hunger. We eat to celebrate to cheer ourselves up when we are sad, we socialise over food. It’s a massive part of our culture just think about going to a birthday party and there is no cake just carrot sticks would you feel disappointed? Of course, we have built up lots of good emotions and memories around eating cake. We programme the mind from a very young age and unfortunately, it has not been towards the healthy stuff.
If I asked anyone on the street to tell me what a healthy diet is most people would say fruit, vegetables, and protein. Then ask them if they believe they have a healthy diet most people would say “I try but it’s so hard”. Why is it so easy to eat rubbish than eat healthily?
Have you ever seen a marketing campaign that says “Oranges could reduce wrinkles” Imagine the world would be out of oranges in minutes? We’ve been marketed to most of our lives by the big food industries sending us messages that start to program the mind. If you don’t believe me just fill in the blanks. Have a break have a _ _ _ _ _ _ . You’ve been _ _ _ _ _. If you filled the blanks with Kitkat and Tango then you likely grew up in the 90s with those adverts.
Food companies understand how the mind works and they want you to feel something when you watch the advert, they are programming you to link emotions to their products, so you buy them. When faced with a green smoothie or a can of coke guess which one will win every time?
This leads me to another hunger which is sugar if our blood sugar levels are low the body will crave it the brain needs glucose as fuel. Sugar will stimulate the reward centre in the brain just like alcohol and drugs giving us a feeling of pleasure. The food industry has known this for years and it's why sugar is in most things you buy.
Many years ago, on one of my January detox, I decided to take sugar out of my diet. I had to look at the ingredients to everything I was eating, and it made me realise how many things had it in like gravy, crisps even some cooked meats. I’ve given up many things on my January detox and sugar was by far the hardest thing I had ever done. I got cravings for weeks and when I was out with people the emotional links to so many foods and drinks made it torturous. I realised at that moment the addictive nature, but I didn’t care on the 1st of February I started eating sugar again. The first time I eat it again it was like overdoing the caffeine I felt like my body was racing. My mind was all over the place and I couldn’t concentrate. I was spinning out on sugar like children do when you first give them chocolate. Suddenly I understood we don’t feel the ill effects of sugar because we have been topping it up since we were kids.
You would think after that experience I would have stopped eating it for good, but how can you in a world filled with tasty sugar-filled food? My pleasure centre was activated my emotional attachment to sugary foods was back. I do have to wonder if one day sugar will have to display warning stickers like tobacco, maybe it will say “This food may cause you cancer or heart attacks”.
So here we are in a time where food is everywhere that stimulates our pleasure zones and keeps us coming back to eat more. How the heck are we going to stop overeating against those odds? You must start using the mind in a new way by programming your own adverts. A quote that helped me was “What you eat becomes you”. I started picturing all the food I was eating becoming new skin and hair. Then I got deeper and pictured it going into my blood and pumping around my body.
The mind is a powerful place, and we haven’t been taught how to use it. It’s why I’m so passionate about helping people with their minds and making the changes they thought would never happen. Once I started working with the mind I finally understood my food patterns and behaviours that were stopping me from being successful at weight loss. I started putting my health first and asked the question ‘How do I feel today?’.
I noticed how my body was when I ate unhealthy food and I started to reprogramme my mind. I finally switch things out and instead of craving the sugar-filled foods I’m addicted to the feeling I get when I’ve eaten healthy nutritional food. My mind is calmer and more focused when I eat good food my body feels lighter and has more strength.
Am I one of those all-natural eating people that never eat sugar or crappy food of course not? If friends or family are cooking, I eat the food but each time I remember to notice how my body feels afterwards. When working with the mind you must be in it for the long game, the more you reprogram it the easier it becomes to say no to unhealthy choices. So perhaps one day I’ll be all natural but for now I’m happy with 85% healthy food and 15% rubbish.
If you would like to learn all my secrets to how I got from sugar craving monster to where I am today, then join my workshop. But if you’re not ready that’s ok but as you go about your everyday life just start to look at what people are eating and how the focus is all on food and drink. Notice if the friends around you are getting that little bit bigger or more tired and sluggish. Then look at your plate and what you’re eating and ask yourself “Am I eating myself to death?”.
