Overeating is mental.

Peacesteem

What do you think of when you hear the word food? I wish the word "health" came to mind but it doesn't.

Finish the following sentence.


When I think of the word food, I think of ______________________!

lucille_heather

calories....sadly

SalemBoSox88

Yummy!

Peacesteem

MMMMMMM!

Peacesteem

orgasmic...

wolfsbayne

Fuel

EmbraceTheDarkSide

Kind of. Part of us over-eating is what our bodies have been trained to believe is a "normal portion." We've grown up with piled-high plates, supersized meals, and deliberately misleading marketing (to us... our parents... our educators). The war continues with these new "healthy" and/or "super" foods.

The fact is that we live in a strange time.

For most of our species's existence, we had a shortage of calories... so our bodies optimized themselves for packing away calories when it could get it. Now, calories are cheap as it gets... but our bodies haven't had the time to adapt.

TL;DR: Hunger is physiological; getting fat is an evolutionary coup de gras; choosing to manage our consumption is mental; marketing screwed us over

Rocbola

gardening.

cbarn025

fuel/energy/carbs

Peacesteem

I like how you synthesized and evaluated this writing prompt.

When I think of food some words that come to mind are:
Orgasmic
delicious
yummy
mmm!

After reading your post I realized that most of my thoughts if not all sound like words from the marketing lexicon of advertising. I feel like my brain has been branded to associate food with something that it was never meant to be instead of nourishment. Ironic that nourishment is one of the words that does not pop into my mind when someone mentions food...darn those food commercials.

TitanGM

Happiness

Go_Mizzou99

I wonder how much Leonardo ate to get this mental

SuperTiredMom

Eating.

trojan_bb

Energy/Calories.

I pretty much only view food as a tool now. Sometimes I'll associate emotion to it when I'm eating for the experience itself like at a restaurant, but never at home.

Peacesteem

Social


I was at a friends house and she offered me some of her homemade buttermilk biscuits. I'm watching my carbs, fat grams and try to avoid milk. Yet, how could I say no? I wasn't turning down food, I was turning down an offering from a friend food she made with her own hands and wanted me to experience. So of course I ate it, When I took my first bite it was heaven and I don't even like biscuits.

So what do you do in social situation when someone offers you some of their delicious signature dishes/recipes.

ashandstuff

Derp_Diggler

Joy. And I consider myself lucky to associate it as such. Considering I have to do it everyday, often multiple times.

EllieB_5

cheese

Ely82010

Oh damm, do I have to cook again?

milmomto2

FAT

salembambi

yes

Peacesteem

yes

That was funny!

neandermagnon

I like how you synthesized and evaluated this writing prompt.

When I think of food some words that come to mind are:
Orgasmic
delicious
yummy
mmm!

After reading your post I realized that most of my thoughts if not all sound like words from the marketing lexicon of advertising. I feel like my brain has been branded to associate food with something that it was never meant to be instead of nourishment. Ironic that nourishment is one of the words that does not pop into my mind when someone mentions food...darn those food commercials.

It's not commercials or marketing or branding or anything like that. Any animal thinks of food and thinks "mmm" maybe not "delicious" or "orgasmic" because they don't have language, but they think of how much they'll enjoy eating it... and human evolution has included food sharing and social eating (i.e. all eating together as part of social entertainment) for at least 2 million years maybe as long as 7 million years of hominin evolution (i.e. it predates humans)

there is nothing wrong or bad about enjoying food or socialising with food. Obesity isn't caused by these things, it's caused by the fact we have developed advanced enough technology to provide ourselves with a reliable source of food without having to do any physical exertion to get it. Any other era, people had to exert themselves to get food. Hunter-gatherers had to hunt animals and wander around the countryside gathering other foods. For most of history, people had to plough fields and tend to crops and harvest them... all physical labour. Even in fairy recent times people still had to walk everywhere. When my mum was a little girl, just to go shopping you had to go to several different shops - butcher, baker, greengrocer, etc, and walk there and back, carrying all the shopping. Now we have food in a more plentiful supply than ever before and every kind of labour saving device to not have to move our bodies. You can even order restaurant food by phone or internet to be delivered through your living room window. That's the cause of obesity. Enjoying food and viewing food in ways that have nothing to do with nutrition isn't the problem. Eating too much and moving too little is the problem. Solution: eat less and move more... or even if you don't want to eat less, you don't have to, just do enough exercise that none of what you eat gets stored as fat.

It's important when trying to be healthy to allow yourself to enjoy food without guilt, because the ultimate goal is long term maintenance and no-one can do that on a diet that makes them feel miserable. So enjoy your food, just make sure you do enough physical activity that it doesn't get stored as fat.

cwolfman13

I'm both a foodie and nutrition freak...food for me is nourishing fuel as well as something to be enjoyed and shared and celebrated. I'm really into presentation as well as preparation and complexity of flavors and nutrients. It is quite possible to lose weight and maintain that loss all the while taking pleasure in the goodness that you are putting into your body.

dodochoga

strange but all i can really think of when I read that sentence is my favorite food, Chipotle burritos, lol.

MaggieTor3

That's a good answer, Neander.

Another part of today's problem is that for many people as they were growing up, sweet things were rewards. "If you eat all your vegetables, I'll give you a piece of cake for dessert." Or "if you clean your room I'll give you a cookie."

The healthier way would be "dessert follows the main course, so when you've finished your vegetables it will be time for cake" or "if you clean your room we'll do something fun together". Even that's a bribe, of course, because the reward for cleaning your room is a clean room! But that makes me sound like my grandmother.

It used to make me feel good to eat. Unfortunately what I liked to eat was crisps or potato chips, often with a whole tub of dip. For 9 weeks now I have felt good eating the food I know is good for me. I hope I keep on feeling that way.

Thanks all for sharing, and thanks for letting me share

Peacesteem

strange but all i can really think of when I read that sentence is my favorite food, Chipotle burritos, lol.

This made me laugh so hard...I don't know why:)

Peacesteem

Oh damm, do I have to cook again?

Ditto

skinnyinnotime

How much protein is in this

Peacesteem

I gave someone the sentence starter; and they said:


Snicker Ice-cream bar!