OH! Magazine - Australian Version February 2016 | Page 11

THE J Y OF EATING PART 2 any of us have forgotten that healthy eating can be enjoyable. So here are a few tips to help remind you about the joy of eating. For previously published articles on this topic email [email protected] M Recognise Non-Hungry Eating We all eat for lots of different reasons and hunger is just one of them. You might eat when you’re upset or angry – I call this swallowing your emotions with food. Perhaps you eat when you’re bored or procrastinating. Or you feel like eating something just because you see someone else eating that particular food, or unbeknown to you an advert for a food product slipped into your subconscious mind resulting in a craving you then indulged. A little non-hungry eating is absolutely normal and is of no consequence in the overall scheme of things. In fact it can be positive and joyful. Just think of savouring a slice of birthday cake or taking the kids for a gelato at the beach on the weekend. These occasions are not about satisfying hunger. Rather they are about recognising that food is more than the nutrients it contains. We can eat healthily while enjoying such non-hungry eating events, provided they don’t happen too often. The first step in knowing whether nonhungry eating is a problem for you is to recognise how often you do it. So your challenge today is to count up how many times you go to eat when you’re not DR JOANNA www.drjoanna.com.au ( Nutrition ) Dr Joanna shares more tips to help you reignite the joy of eating. actually hungry, then in your journal or diary write down the reason you were going to eat. You may find that you resist actually eating the food, simply by being more aware, but regardless write it down so that you start to see your own patterns of eating and your susceptibility to external cues to eat. To recognise non-hungry eating think of your hunger on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is utterly ravenous and 10 completely stuffed. Number 5 is when you can’t feel food in your stomach, but neither do you yet feel hungry. Today, every time you are thinking about eating, stop and ask yourself which number you are on. If you are a 5 or above this is non-hungry eating. The second step is to then identify why you want to eat. Is it a legitimate joyful eating occasion or would some other activity actually be better to fulfill your need? Love Your Body I know this sounds a little clichéd but a positive relationship with your own body involves respecting it sufficiently to want to feed it well. It’s easy to stuff rubbish food in your mouth when you tell yourself that you don’t care what you look like, or that you hate your body anyway so what does it matter? This is not about aspiring to the perfect beach body – whatever that is. It’s about being respectful of and grateful for your own body. That doesn’t mean you have to love every part of it; we all have areas we wish were thinner/more beautiful/smaller/bigger and so on. But it is about learning to accept them and appreciate everything our body does do. Your challenge this week is to appreciate your body and ensure self-talk, both in your head and anything you say out loud, is positive regarding your body. Banish negative thought and replace it with a positive affirmation. That might be about something you do love about yourself – perhaps you have a great smile or good strong arms - or it might be a positive about what you can do to improve your body. For example “I hate my fat stomach” becomes “I’m carrying too much fat around my middle, but thankful ly this is something I can change and I’m working on improving my eating and my lifestyle to gradually lose this excess body fat.” It’s a subtle change in mindset that makes a difference. List the things you do love about your body and play to your best assets. Dress up nicely – ladies and gents – as when you feel good about yourself you’ll find it much easier to nourish yourself well too. This information is extracted from Dr Joanna’s ‘7-Day Joy Of Eating Challenge,’ which was created in conjunction with the Happiness & Its Causes Conference where Dr Joanna will be presenting on this topic in April 2016. For more information or to book tickets click here. Or, to learn more about Dr Joanna’s fresh, personalised, research-based approach to getting lean at www.drjoanna.com.au ( OH! MAGAZINE ) FEBRUARY 2016 11