How to take care of yourself with eating well?

#eatwell #selfcare #whatyoueatiswhoyouare #eatinghabits #eatingasreward

There is a huge amount of information available how food influences our wellbeing and what we should consume to take care of ourselves. You know that you are literally what you eat. We are mainly aware of what makes us harm and what has a beneficial effect on us and we still struggle to change our eating habits. Why is that and what can we do?

Food and beverages influence how our brain functions, how well we sleep, how good is our performance when talking about physical and mental challenges. Consuming good quality food and drinks ensures that our body has the energy all day to finish with the daily tasks. Our brain uses 20 % of the calories we take into our body. If you want to live a balanced and healthy life, it is important to take care of this area of your life, but if you want to mentally work on new challenges and achieve results, this is a must. Nevertheless, if your objective has anything to do with health, losing weight or exercising, you might want to evaluate your eating habits and see how could you improve them.

Changing bad habits and replacing them to new ones takes time and effort and during the coaching process we look at it what are the obvious and what are the hidden motives why you struggle to change this area. Obvious reason might be a behaviour that you learned from your family and you just follow it, even if you are aware of the negative impact. For example if you were educated to finish all the food on your plate, you will have difficulties to get rid of this habit even when you are already full and you don't truly feel like eating the last bits on your plate. Hidden motives might be when you use food as a reward system or to distract yourself from something that bothers you.

For example when you are going through a stressful or very difficult phase in your life, you might use snacks to silence the problems in your head. Or when you had a hard day emotionally as you had difficulties at your workplace, you are lonely and on top of that you are feeling under the weather, so at the end of the day give yourself a reward in the form of a great burger or pizza with some desert instead of the "boring" salad.

Sometimes other areas of your life might have a negative impact on your eating habits, so for example if you don't sleep enough, your body will want to make it easy for you and will find the quickest and most effective solution: your brain will make you crave for food high in carbohydrates or sugar and you will need to fight with this instincts or get your sleeping habits fixed.

To change the habits we need to look at the holistic picture and not just work on the symptoms, we need to dive deeper during the sessions and understand your belief system, the true motives of your actions and how is your life in general.

But everything can be changed with some effort and perseverance. The question is, are you willing to make the decision?