What Does Food Mean to You?

Food means something different for each of us. For me it means satisfaction, indulgence, self-complimentary ( I think I’m a pretty good cook), savory as in savoring the positive moments in life because I had many negative moments throughout my life, gorging on second helpings because of past limitations, my excuse for eating more than I need is often ‘because it tastes good’ the real reason? I’m not quite sure yet but I plan to work it out, and I”m sure if I keep thinking about it I will come up with more examples of what food means to me. The answers I gave so far are almost certainly a result of my past; food becomes comfort, memorable, self-sabotage, it’s social, it’s personal, it’s public, it pleases, it displeases, it even simply fuels our body but it’s rare that we think exactly that when we are eating.

We relate food to who we are, who we were and who we want to be. We use food as a tool to bury feelings, to celebrate feelings and to blame our shortcomings on. We often rate ourselves by our commitment to what we eat, how we eat, why we eat and we let food define us.

Once we can understand and accept the reasons we treat food the way we do, once we really get to the bottom of our relationship with food we can develop a new relationship with food; we can let food be our friend instead of our enemy. Food feeds our cells, it fuels our body giving us energy, balancing our moods, our blood levels, sleep, making our health the best it can be given that we eat the right foods and the proper amounts on a regular basis. As Hippocrates said many years ago, “Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food”.

The next time you feel particularly connected to a certain food in a sort of disconnected way, stop yourself, go deep inside and try to relate how the particular food makes you feel when you eat it. There’s no right nor wrong about it, it just is and that’s okay. Slowly you will be able to better control the way you relate to and treat food.