What are you hungry for?

30 Jul

I was chatting with a holistic psychologist at a health fair yesterday and we got to talking about Nutrition. It's always interesting to hear other disciplines present their food findings. Food is an integral part of our beings and plays an enormous role in our culture and society. But what, how, when, and why we eat often gets confused with what, how, when, why we feel. Psychologists often see patients with various emotional issues that have manifested in attachments to specific foods. In reality one could be starving for appreciation and trying to satiate it with chicken curry and find that they can eat themselves fat and never feel full. Why? Because they are feeding the wrong hunger! Along with this our bodies are often dehydrated and thirsty but our brains react by feeding it whatever food it finds or the body is craving nutrients and rather than being conscious of this and nourishing our bodies we feed it more junk. To avoid overeating and to start actively eating it's important to first check in with your body and ask what it is hungry for. We as a society are slowly or ,perhaps rapidly, making a u-turn and going back to living like our ancestors where we tended to our needs not our cravings and desires.