The Mind Battle With Food

I love food I’m the person that goes to a buffet and needs to try everything especially if its something new that I’ve never seen before. It’s why I like to travel you get to experience new foods that excite the taste buds.

Now I’m no genetic freak that can eat anything and not put on weight, so I must monitor my food and exercise. In the past I have done every diet under the sun and lost the weight only to put it back on a few weeks later. Isn’t it annoying that it takes so long to come off but putting it on is so easy?

Until I became a mind junky, I never really looked at my food patterns, we all have patterns and consuming food is no different. In fact, we have an added factor that we need food to survive. Which means the mind will always be drawn to wanting food.

In my house my mum always said, ‘Finish your plate there are starving kids in Africa that would be grateful for the food you’re eating.’ My Irish mum wasn’t the best cook and one day over a plate of bacon and cabbage my older sister said, ‘You can post my plate to Africa as I’m not eating that.’ From a young age I was taught to always clear my plate so that’s what I did.

The kitchen is the heart of the home and feeding people often brings family and friends together. We gather in the kitchen like it’s our modern-day campfire. If you have people that love to cook there is a whole experience that goes with it and appreciation for the love they have poured into the meal.

I’m a baker and there is nothing more rewarding then turning up to a friend’s house with a cake or muffins. Everyone loves cakes especially the homemade kind, it’s the quickest way to make new friends.

We also attach memories and emotions to food. I think I got my love of baking from my Auntie who would always bake our birthday cakes. One year the cake had lolly pops all around it I thought it was the coolest thing ever! And that started my love affair with cake!

I’ve only met a few people in my life that see food as fuel and can go without for long periods of time. The rest of us are eating monsters and that is why so many people are overweight.

The thing is it’s not actually your fault back in our caveman days our whole day would be about getting food either by hunting or gathering. We would have to work for our food often going days or weeks without meat. We are genetically wired to search out food and water for survival.

Our ancestors have been around about six million years, but the modern form of humans is only about 200,000 years. We really are in nursery when it comes to our evolution and only since the industrial age 300 years ago that our food started to change. Then in the 1950’s processed food began where we didn’t even have to make food from scratch.

So now we have a mind that is programmed to want food whenever it sees it, ‘I need to survive’ versus a world where food is everywhere. The battle of the food mind has begun and unfortunately for many people they are losing the battle.

Now the marketing companies were very clever they knew we needed food to survive, and they also knew our need to thrive. So, if they could target these needs in their marketing. For example, ‘Milk gives you strong bones’ or ‘you are really spoiling us’ the mind will have us pulling out the wallet to buy. The very smart marketers even had us thinking healthy food was boring and why make something from scratch when you get a whole meal in minutes.

Let me bring the body in for a few moments when processed food arrived the body’s natural programming was for hydration and nutritional food. If it doesn’t get the healthy stuff, it will keep feeling hungry and thirsty. In the past we often got our water from the food we ate so when you feel hungry the chances are that you're thirsty.

Here we are in a modern world where food can be delivered to our door and most of the food, we are eating isn’t fulfilling the bodies needs and we are drinking coffee and soft drinks that are not hydrating us.

So how do we go against genetics and a mind that wants us to survive or thrive?

We need to firstly understand the food mind and then start to observe our own food patterns.

Let me give you one I had to work on after understanding these patterns. I would always say I was going to treat myself on the weekend. I had linked cakes, wine, chocolate and crisps as treat foods but really, they are foods that are not good for us. As much as I’d like to claim grapes in wine as one of my five a day, it’s not.

I really like this metaphor for eating bad food from Eric Edmeades ‘you wouldn’t put diesel into a Ferrari’. When you eat the rubbish food that’s what you’re doing to the body, you’re putting the wrong fuel in it and hoping it will drive well. I would be super healthy during the week so that I could treat myself on the weekend. Now don’t get me wrong I still have food that is not good for me. But I no longer see it as a treat and the more I tell my mind it’s bad for me the less I crave it the reprogramming has begun.

We have so many patterns when it comes to food and if you’re coming from a culture where food is important your best to start with observing the mind talk. What do I mean by mind talk? Let me share my example when cake is in front of me, I hear my mind say ‘You must taste it you’re a baker, it would be rude. Then the quiet voice says, ‘but you know sugar effects your sleep maybe you shouldn’t’. It’s the battle and luckily now because I have put in the mind work, I have more choice than I ever did before.

I’m not going to sit here and say that working on your mind will keep you slim as that’s just BS. We all know that to lose weight you must eat less calories than you’re burning that’s just science. But will understanding the mind and working on your food patterns help towards it absolutely. It’s another tool in the armour against the food battle and one I hope will help you win.