Food: a pleasure or a curse?
Without food, we fail to thrive and eventually die, with too much we have a whole host of health problems. As I’m sure you know we eat not just when we are hungry but for a whole host of other reasons. We eat to be sociable, to celebrate or commiserate, we eat because we like the taste or because we need comfort when we are feeling miserable. The abundance of food in the Western world creates the issue of managing its availability and we are surrounded with enticements to buy and eat more…… and more! Ken Goss points out in his book The Compassionate Mind Approach to Beating Overeating that as we follow these cultural demands we will probably (let’s face it definitely) put on weight which then leads to us becoming a target for moral and medical condemnation and we feel guilty and ashamed of our eating.
Stuck in the weight trap?
When you are stuck in unhealthy eating patterns and in a cycle of dieting and long term weight gain it’s demoralizing and depressing. It can take over and affect all aspects of our lives. There’s so much more to life than solely focusing on our diet and weight isn’t there? We, as complex human beings, are so much more than our stomachs and the size and shape of our bodies.
How do we get unstuck?
So how do we change things and get out of this destructive state of affairs and change our approach? I know from personal experience that there can be a big gap between knowing what I should do (I’m a qualified nutritionist for goodness sake) and what I actually do. Before I enrolled on my master’s course in nutrition I had got down to a healthy weight and was enjoying being fit and active. The course began, I loved every minute of it! However, I got lost in the chaos of assignment writing, family and work commitments and I got an injury that changed the way I exercised. I gained the weight I had worked so hard to lose… while I was learning about nutrition!
Bridging the gap
I’ve found that there is a way to bridge the gap and all it entails is using a different approach; one taking into account that we are more than our stomachs and incorporates how our minds work too! I’ve put together a new course called Understanding Your Eating and it starts in 9 weeks’ time on Friday the 28th of April. There are still a limited number of places available. I’m really looking forward to getting started and in participation, I’m going to write each week about some of the concepts that we’ll cover in more detail on the course. You can get therefore get a taste of what you could learn if you come along. Keep checking my blog posts each week for the next instalment!
If you would like to book on to Understanding Your Eating please fill in my contact form.
