Changing Your Relationship With Food

I initially started typing this post in September 2020, but decided to take my sweet time with it. Why? I wanted carefully evaluate my own relationship with food (especially after a recent loss of a loved one) and since it is always a good idea to practice what you preach. I wanted to post this once I changed my own relationship with food.

Emotional Eating

After a few months of evaluating my eating habits and food choices, I noticed some toxic habits I had with food. For instance, a lot of my food cravings were based on my emotions. I craved fatty foods (such as fast food or other high calorie food options) when I was frustrated, stressed out, angry, or sad. To satisfy my cravings, I either drove to those various restaurants or ordered them via Door Dash. I would tell myself “I deserve it” as a reward for studying hard or with the intention of “feeling better” because I was eating the fatty foods. In all honesty, eating the fatty food made me “feel good” temporarily, but I almost always regretted eating it afterward. The food also made me sluggish and tired, so I wasn’t as effective or efficient studying afterward.

Recognize & Take Action Against Bad Food Habits

As mentioned earlier, I had to recognize what my motivation/reasoning why I wanted to satisfy my fatty food cravings. As a foodie, I truly enjoy eating (whether its home cooked meals or dining out). However, I specifically craved what was unhealthy based on negative emotions I was experiencing. Satisfying that craving made me temporarily forget those negative emotions. But once the thrill of eating something delicious, yet unhealthy was over, I still had to deal with what ever it was that made me feel that way to begin with. Recognizing this was only the beginning of my journey to healthier living.

Next came the challenging part, making changes in my bad food habits. Essentially, I had to throw out bad habits and replace them with healthy ones, which made the task feel a little less daunting. Removing fatty food triggers in my home was a small step in the right direction. But how do you fully implement these new habits with long lasting change?

Partnering with God Through the Change

As a person with a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, I wanted to dive in a bit deeper than just starting new habits. I wanted to get to the root cause. During one of my dedicated alone time with God moments, Holy Spirit help me to realize that I was using food as a bandaid instead of dealing with the real issue. In fact, I discovered that the motivation for the fatty food cravings were actually areas in my life & heart that I didn’t trust God with (including past hurts) or areas I haven’t fully surrendered to Him. Talk about having a humbling experience!

As a result, I decided to surrender those areas in my life to Him and spend more time with Him, especially whenever the emotional eating cravings came up. I specifically sought out Bible devotionals that focused on healthy eating or having an overall healthy lifestyle, which I read in the morning and evening (to both start off and end my day). One devotional that stood out to me the most was Eat, Live, Thrive Diet. This devotional gave a better, realistic and (most importantly) Biblical perspective on why it’s important to take good care of our bodies by the things we eat (check out their 90/10 eating plan). After all, our bodies are temples for Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19 NLT).

Six months later, I no longer emotional eating. Was it easy starting off? No. Most things aren’t easy when you first start them, but sticking to it is the key. Honestly, fully surrendering things to God and letting Him heal me was my key to success in this aspect of my life!

I still have food cravings, but I do an internal evaluation on what is motivating those craving. This helps me to not act on impulse and to check myself whenever I have fatty food cravings. By doing this, I’m no longer prone to satisfying those emotional fatty food cravings. To hold myself accountable, I also track what I eat each day with Lifesum.

As I mentioned earlier, the Eat, Live, Thrive Diet devotional helped change my perspective on eating the things I eat. I live by the 90/10 diet plan that they mention in the devotional. The 90/10 diet plan is 90% of the food you eat is healthy/nutrient dense whereas the remaining 10% is the “fun food” (aka the not-so-healthy food). It’s a practical plan that anyone can implement into their lives, even a foodie like myself!

Whatever your reason may be, I pray nothing but success in your plan to change your relationship with food!