The Heart of Nutrition: Exploring Your Relationship with Food (Part 1)
- Vishrutha Thulasiram
- Nov 9, 2023
- 2 min read
Food means different things to different people. To some it means hope, to some it is life and for others it’s a daily stressful experience having to decide what to eat three times a day. But that isn’t what we’re here to talk about, we’re going to talk about all the different roles that food plays in our day-to-day and how our day-to-day interactions and experiences affect our food choices. Hey, hey hey! It’s actually pretty interesting stuff. Like did you know what you choose to eat and how much of it you eat is actually influenced by who you eat with? Yep! That’s right.
The food that goes on our plates and into our tummies actually have a variety of roles apart from the very obvious role of keeping us alive. The many roles that food plays can be divided into three categories:
In the physical body (Physiological):
Provide fuel and energy
Helps with growth, maintenance and repairs
Regulates processes like breathing, memory, etc
Provides immunity and protection against disease
In social settings
Gives a reason to bond
Important aspect of spiritual, cultural and religious gatherings
Often viewed as a token of friendship and acceptance
In our brains (Psychological)
Provides a sense of comfort, love and security
Cooking for others and eating together is considered to be a love language
Associated with emotions and events
Used as reward and Punishment
If this ain’t enough proof that food is a lot more than just calories. I’m not sure what is 🤷🏽♀️
That’s why it’s quintessential that a diet plan should include and cater to all these functions, in addition to your health and fitness goals. Let’s say that your diet doesn’t include a particular type of food that you grew up eating. Now for months on end you are forcefully avoiding that food. What does that do?
You start dreading meal times cause your food is no longer comforting you the way it used to
Your adherence to your diet is low, which means you cheat on your diet more than you’re supposed to.
Constantly falling off track severely affects self-esteem and causes a terrible cycle of overeating and starving.
It sounds like a lot I know. But this doesn’t mean all diets are bad or that you should stop paying attention to the food you eat. It’s the opposite actually. You need to pay closer attention to what you eat so that you can also accommodate foods you enjoy and love!
That’s it for part one of the blog; in the next one we’ll see how our day-to-day interactions, our social state and our psychology affect our food choices. We’ll also learn a simple hack to make your diets work for you.
Until next time, let’s #growwiththeflow🌈 and remember that small habits = BIG MAGIC ✨
xVishrutha 🌻
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