What Influences Your Food Choices?
Posted on 25th November 2019 at 08:37
Have you ever really sat down and thought about ‘your’ food intake in great details? What you eat, when you eat it, why you eat it, where, who with, at what times etc. Don’t you think It would be wise to spend some time understanding the foods you put in your mouth? Now that doesn’t mean go research them on Google. It just means create real life data about the foods you rotate through your weekly food intake. Will it take time? Damn right it will but does any great thing happen over night? We will look at below, the factors that can influence your food choices.
Don’t take offence if you fit into any of these btw, relax.
The money available to you. The ‘cheaper’ a food is, the greater the calorie density & poor quality it usually is. You ever been in a corner shop with 20p & came out with a bag of veg, a pack of meat & some carbs? No.
There is a direct relationship between obesity & peoples income. This is something people have played on for years now but seem to bypass the fact there are supermarkets, online stores & much more that can offer a lower price point of high quality foods. What we find is people are still struggling to get out of that habit & actually take some time out to improve their food choices by being that little more savvy with where they shop & how they spend their money.
Stress levels. Do you find, the more stressed you are with work, family life & other factors. This plays a role with the foods you choose to eat. These can be foods that will give you an instant reward & emotional attachment too. ‘Man I’m stressed, let’s get pizza’.
Remember, we cannot control hunger or appetite. These are physical responses the body itself creates. We instead look at the value of food regarding its reward system, it’s emotional attachment, we then tend to ‘over consume’ these foods. These are emotion-led habits.
At the beginning of this year I can openly say the main factors that influenced my poor eating habits & food/drink choices were down to ‘work related stress’. Something I can only see now. I would happily drink 3/4 beers a night to ‘relax’ me. I associated the ‘relaxed’ feeling with controlling my ‘stress’. When In actual fact it was the complete opposite. Poor sleep, poor energy levels etc.
What I mean by ‘work related stress’ is the fact I’d started a new project. Opening the studio. Was I stressed? In it’s own right ye!
Once we get a handle on our vales to food & what they offer us. The more control we will have over choices of food.
Write down the foods you rotate through your weekly ‘food intake’ & make a note of what attachments you have to them. When you eat them, what you feel from them, where you eat them, who you eat them with etc. How do they make you feel, how do they make you feel the day after.
Now how can you manage these factors?
Source locally produced goods that are affordable, great quality & offer you what you need. You just need to do some digging (not literally, don’t go to some poor fuckers allotment like) You don’t need to stay in the habit of picking the bottom shelf foods!
Manage your stress. Easier said than done I know. Set little targets for yourself to achieve, start with 1 day, then 2, then 3. This is such a broad subject we could have another blog for it!
Get to know your triggers, be in control of them & manage them. Not the other way around.
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