Many of us would agree that we often surrender to eat emotionally to fill ourselves. Food consumed to meet emotional urge has nothing to do with actual physical needs and harms our healthy well-being.
It is vital that one learns about right eating habits that later become fundamental for good health.
An emotional eating opportunity starts from early childhood when immense love of parents forces us so much that there is hardly a scope for us to have our own say. The practice starts because of ignorance of parents and children about right eating habits but continues for longer time for many of us unless we are forced.
Culture of Food is Symbol of Love in family:
Our Asian back ground of parenting is not always regular expression of love through words. Love expressed usually is via actions, symbol and mediums.
Verbal communication as language of love in Asian families continues to become exceptionally rare due to rapid cultural changes, generation barriers etc. This is also partly because verbal communication is not accepted as language of love. Food habitually is measured as “the strongest medium by which love is conveyed / communicated”.
Parents make sure that their children are well-fed and eating is considered a joy above all else. Family elders not only dwell & sell on quality/variety of food but also negotiate for extra pieces in spite of full signal.
A popular and well-liked saying for all (wives) is that “the way to a man’s heart is via their stomach”.
It is also seen that financial challenges rarely come in way of spending on food. Parents love to buy / prepare / cook food to demonstrate fulfilling of their responsibilities. It adds to belief “more food eaten, the better it is”.
Reasons for expansion of this culture could be many such as:
- Scarcity of food during growing up of parents,
- Environment where love finds expression only through food and,
- Demonstration as measure of sacrifice etc.
- Food prepared is much more than needed bringing ethical pressure not to waste the food.
- Events culturally force to eat symbolic foods such as sweets, cake etc.
These reasons are further popularised through other mediums such as films and endorse situations of inadequate food to feed all in family. Parents often would sleep without enough food.
Following could be considered to replace Emotional Eating:
- “Family events” need not be necessarily / culturally “food events”.
- Moving away from civilization that says “To be fed is a joy and to be overfed a luxury”.
- Modifying customary communication placed around food e.g.: “Have you eaten? / What did you eat? / Shall I cook or buy something for you to eat? / What do you feel like eating? / Since you have eaten this thing shall I cook some other food for you?”
- Not to interpret “No” to offer of food as “rejection” of love.
- Stop emotional blackmailing for eating. Consider this to be an immense emotional desire of host to feed which may be wrong too.
- Build environment for healthier food that is eaten together in emotionally stable condition, happily and with gratitude.
- Popularise Availability & Awareness of healthy food as culture. Encourage more healthy food choices through innovation and creativity.
- Build imaginary controls / habits to eat healthy food at right time of day.
- Consume healthier food on priority so that there is lesser space for consuming unhealthy foods out of temptation (emotional eating).
- Government must enforce rules on advertisers creating emotional pull for food and must detail pros and cons of advertised foods such as food conceivable from chocolate, biscuits, cookies, cakes & pastries.
- Disconnect with habit of stocking up.
- Empower by educating children in schools for healthy food habits & discard obsolete deformed beliefs about food in society.
Research indicates that major reason for majority of diseases is erratic food habits. Failure to destroy twisted, erroneous beliefs for food leads to large amount of pain and suffering in our early adulthood.
It is high time to establish new relationship with physical need based food and take responsibility of our emotional eating habits individually and collectively.
Everyone is different, have different reasons, needs and solutions. It would be highly beneficial if you research for adopting appropriate food habits.
Exploring solutions to your emotional eating urges and its specific solutions would help you to become a “Healthy You”.
