Food of Love

I recently visited Food Matters Live, a huge conference / exhibition bringing together people and organisations with an interest in building a sustainably healthy food landscape across the world. Hundreds of businesses showcased innovative food products and services, whilst the conferences and seminars offered copious food for thought on topics like the obesity management, clean label food, sports nutrition and sustainability. Given my interest in healthy lifestyles and keenness to discover new ways to bring good nutrition to my life, it was a no-brainer that this might be an enjoyable event for me, and I wasn’t disappointed.

Aside from being introduced to loads of amazing new nutrition products (and a few free samples!), I left the event feeling my appetite for deep thinking had been whet as well. Working as a health coach, I spend a fair bit of my time thinking about what makes people tick when it comes to achieving / maintaining a healthy weight, and, more importantly, how the heck we might go about getting people living well on a population-level scale. This was the focus of many of the discussions at Food Matters Live, with one panel session in particular getting the cogs whirring for me: a forum on the psychology of food choice.

Yes, somewhat counter-intuitively, the answers to these big questions about population-level change start with the individual, with the internal factors that influence what and how we choose to eat. Eloquently stated by Bee Wilson at this event, we humans have an ‘invariably complex relationship with food’ and are ‘prisoners of’ this when we make food choices. In other words, our choices are deeply intertwined with our emotions, memories and experiences, such that it’s often impossible to separate these. However, as Pierre Chardon notes, we often forget that our food choices are tied up with our emotions, instead rationalising that we ‘were hungry’ or ‘liked’ the food we chose.

In reality, the complex underlying processes that influence our food choices include our upbringing (with messages such as ‘you should always clear you plate’ being particularly problematic), the variety of foods we have been exposed to across the life-course, the effects of traumatic events, and our emotional states at any given time. Many of these things we have no control over, yet some of us are more health-conscious and seemingly in control of our diets than others. Bee Wilson commented on this, noting that she used to fall into the latter camp and now considers herself fortunate to be in the former. Why is this? What makes some of us more aware and able to control what we eat than others, and what gives us the ability (or not) to change this?

As one of those people who has made this transition, this got me thinking about my own passage to conscious living and healthy eating. How did this process begin? What triggered it? Which of my personal qualities and past experiences were instrumental in making this happen, and how? In what ways do all of these factors interact with each other? I certainly don’t purport to know all the answers to these questions, at least not fully, but I have some thoughts that I feel ultimately shed light not just on my own experience but on one of the keys to a widespread shift towards healthier living on a global scale.

My own quest to live more healthily began 5 or 6 years ago with a desperate attempt to feel better after a relationship breakup. I did some reading online about ways to boost my mood, and quickly started to learn of the impact nutrition has on our mental state. I began eating

Eating more raw vegan food is one of the steps I've taken to a healthier me

more of the foods that were said to improve mood, and this proved to be the start of an ongoing and unending search for the healthiest possible version of myself. I became interested more widely in the functions that different foods fulfil, and in the other ways in which my lifestyle would impact my mind and body. Bit by bit I built (what Derren Brown would describe in his fantastic book Happy as) a ‘considered life’ filled with meaningful pursuits and healthy choices.

This rings true of the experience of Bee Wilson who I mentioned earlier. She described her own transition from health unconscious to healthy eater as being a ‘meal by meal’ process - an incremental lifestyle change – ‘not just going on a diet’. This, I think, is the crux. On top of our individual psychology often being stacked against us, and an obesogenic environment tending to steer us towards less healthy choices, we are bombarded with messages that ‘dieting’ is the road to health. Cut out this food group; take that supplement; buy those meal replacement shakes. The result? Aside from those of us who have made a concerted effort or simply been lucky enough to enter the world of healthy lifestyle enlightenment, we are left with unrealistic expectations, unsustainable diet plans and no solid knowledge of what our bodies actually need.

Being plastered with unrealistic and inaccurate messages only serves to further embed the often unhealthy relationship with and thoughts/feelings about food. The losing battle we’re already fighting becomes tougher and tougher, and we fall deeper and deeper into habitually poor lifestyle choices. That is, until something clicks, snaps us out of it, puts us on the road to control over our own lives and health. That thing will be different for all of us; for me it was improving my mood, for other it’ll be looking better, some people will look to be alive for longer to see their kids grow up. The common denominator is that we will only ever change if something is intrinsically valuable to us.

Healthy choices come from within

So what’s the answer? It’ll be invariably complex; in fact there are likely to be infinite combinations of solutions to suit each individual. Each of us needs to find our own ways of connecting to what’s important to us, engaging with healthy lifestyles and doing what we can to work with our inner psychology and the outer environment. Culturally, unfortunately the odds will continue to be stacked against us if something doesn’t change. Instead of being told what plan we should be following, which foods we should be cutting out, how many meals we should be replacing with shakes, we needs to find these individual paths. As a health coach I love that I get the opportunity to work with people to help them to understand the healthy eating guidelines and work out individual action plans that work for them. To start bringing this holistic, person-centred approach to the masses is the challenge, and I’m not quite sure where we start with that in a world where capitalism and commercialism rules the roost. If you have any thoughts as to how we move forward with this, I’d love to hear from you.

Step Into Christmas!

Christmas fun with Miranda

Welcome to my little, What I Call, Christmas Special blog post (Miranda Hart fans will no doubt appreciate this opening :)).  It’s a time of year for joy and fun, food and drink, family and friends, and appreciating all the good things life and the world have to offer.  Of course those of a certain religious status may find it offensive that I’ve said that, but honestly for me that’s what Christmas is and has been all my life; it’s not that I don’t appreciate the religious origins of Christmas, but I don’t have any qualms with admitting I’m not religious myself.  However, I think some of my own values when it comes to Christmas match the Christian ones: it should be a time for forgiveness, thankfulness and peace; this I hope is something we can all agree on, no matter what our religious backgrounds.

As I’ve already hinted at, for me, spending time with family and friends is pretty much the most important thing about Christmas.  In my last post I spoke about mindfulness, about taking more time to notice what’s going on and how I’m feeling in everyday situations.  This had led me to really think about and take note of the dynamics between people in different types of relationships, and at this time of year when many of us come together with family and friends, I thought it’d be fun to note some of my observations on relationships.

The first is that parents can be so mean and unreasonable to their kids!  When I was at the Track Cycling World Cup a couple of weekends ago (see my post That’sHow a Superhero Learns to Fly), there was a dad sat next to me with his young boy.  The kid managed to spill his lemonade all over the floor, and the dad went nuts at him: “you STUPID boy, I can’t believe you’ve done that, you need to be more careful…!!!”.  Many of us can probably remember being shouted at as kids for spilling things, but observing the situation as an

I've noticed parents shout at their kids for the silliest reasons!

outsider I found this guy’s reaction a little absurd: of course the kid didn’t mean to spill the drink and of course he was trying not to spill it (he surely wanted to drink it, after all).  It seems ridiculous that a parent gets so angry with a child for what is clearly a simple mistake that we all make.  He probably wouldn’t have dreamed of shouting at his friend in the pub for spilling a drink, or at his wife if she’d spilt or dropped something in the house!

I had a similar experience today in M&S where a girl walked past a pile of boxes of Christmas crackers and a couple of them fell over.  Her dad: “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?  Pick those up; what have you done?!!!”.  She said it wasn’t her that had knocked them over; I’m not sure whether this was the case or not but even if she had, once again her dad’s reaction was so over the top relative to the situation and the damage that had (or more to the point hadn’t!) been done.

Having a laugh with friends: one of life's true joys!

My next observation is how within pairs or groups of friends, you can say and do things which would be completely meaningless or plain weird to an outsider but make perfect sense to you and your friend.  Of course this is the case with in jokes, which we always have to be careful not to use out of context: as a result of a habit of one of my best friends from uni, who I lived with, several years on I find myself tempted to say “good luck; don’t miss” every time someone informs me they’re off to the toilet!  Another great one is how me and another of my best friends from uni can have the following interaction: Me: “Umm…” Her: “Yeah” Me: “Ok” Her: “Cool” and we’ve genuinely had a meaningful conversation with a tangible outcome.  Brilliant!

Another thing I love about friendship is how there are some people you don’t see or even speak to for months or years, and when you do get together it’s like you were never apart.  Believe it or not, until a couple of weeks ago I hadn’t seen either of the girls I live next door to properly for well over a year!  In my defence, myself and one of the other girls had both been living elsewhere for quite a bit of that time, but even so, there’s no excuse for us not seeing each other for so long!  But the amazing thing about my relationship with these girls is that we’re almost like family: I’ve lived in this house (on and off) for twelve years (that’s half my life, since I was twelve years old!), so we’ve kind of grown up together, and undeniably been through a lot as a group.  So when we do see each other we have a lovely time and chat for hours and hours, which makes all the time apart worth it.  Lovely.

We should be kind to ourselves at Christmas without stressing about work or stidies

At this special time of year, I’m making an extra big effort to really appreciate my family and friends.  I’m fortunate enough to have a couple of weeks off work so I really have a lot of time to spend with them, and I’m using mindfulness (see my previous post!) to make the most of it.  Something else I’m using Christmas as a good reason for is simply being kind to myself, which is something I think most of us overlook, not just over the festive period but all year round.  I don’t just mean looking after ourselves by eating healthily and exercising (I’m the first to admit this type of thing largely goes downhill for me over Christmas!) but treating ourselves in a friendly and compassionate manner (for instance not feeling bad about exercise and eating going out the window for a few days!).  Many students, particularly at this time of year, will know the horrible situation of being constantly in one of two less-than-enjoyable states: either studying, or feeling guilty for not studying, which leads to never feeling truly relaxed.  It’s important to schedule in recreation and leisure time whatever else you’ve got going on, and to make sure you switch off those feelings of guilt and really enjoy relaxation time to the max.

Essentially what I’m saying is, the way I see it, Christmas is all about truly enjoying yourself and appreciating life (not that you shouldn’t do this all year round!).  This might mean making some alterations in order to achieve this.  For example, going back to my observations about dynamics between families and friendship groups, if you start to notice certain things that are positive and negative about your own relationships you’ll appreciate the good bits more and have some insight as to how to change the negatives.  Come to think of it, the same can be said for any aspects of life: the more you are aware of your feelings, thoughts and surroundings, the more you can learn about what you need to do to improve your life, and which bits don’t need improving because they’re already good!

To conclude, I want everyone to have a great Christmas and New Year period, and hope for some this post will provide some helpful tips for maximum enjoyment, or at least makes for a good read.  One final tip I’d give is don’t try too hard to enjoy Christmas.  I’ve been guilty of trying to force myself to enjoy things on occasions and it just doesn’t work.  Instead, focus on consciously noticing and being aware, and enjoyment and happiness will naturally follow.

Thanks as always for reading; please make my Christmas extra special by sharing my blog to help to boost my readership .  It’s here to be read by as many people as possible after all; that’s why I write it!  And finally, I’d like to wish all my readers the merriest, happiest and healthiest of Christmases.  Eat, drink and be merry! 

"The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring"
Oscar Wilde