Health is more
than
just physical well-being, being mentally healthy is a must too. It’s
important to not only focus on physic but also mental aspect. Several weeks ago I find my self using eating to
comfort
me on every “not-that-good”
situations. I wonder how
if I eat savoury foods and snacks then gaining some happiness, while I hope it can reduce my uncomfortable feelings. But finally I realize
that was not a good habit. I ate everything that I thought it can reduce my
emotional complexity. I didn’t even think about the nutrition and calories which
enter my body. And according to what I read, it’s emotional eating, using food to make my self feel better—eating to satisfy emotional needs, rather
than to satisfy physical hunger.
“As I ate the oysters with
their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold
white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture,
and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the
crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy, and to
make plans.” - Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
When people turn to food and they're not physically
hungry, it means that they're using food for something else besides satisfying
the needs of the body. They're using it for a different kind of hunger, an
emotional hunger, a psychological hunger, or a spiritual hunger. - Geneen Roth, Hughes & Hughes
The sentence Ernest Hemingway’s written above tells us that he used food to
feel some sensation and it made him happy. Hemingway described the effects of a
simple plate of oysters on his happiness and well-being while in Paris in the
1920s. It means he used food not for satisfying his physical hunger but for
psychological hunger like what Geneen Roth has said. So do I, who sometimes
make an association between delicious food and happiness. It’s okay when I do
it once or twice. It’s okay when I make an association between coffee and stress
relieve, then I drink coffee sometimes. It’s okay when I eat donuts to refresh
my mind and begin to make several plans. But it won’t be okay when it leads to
uncontrollably consumption. And it won’t be okay when it turns to be long-term
habit that leads to obesity. Before you regret for everything that you have
done to your body, better to realize earlier that you are what you eat (—everything
that enter the body like food, information, knowledge, etc.) And yes, I do
apologize to my body for using food as an escapism, also for letting the weight
gain day by day as the effect of uncontrollably eating. Now, I don’t even know
why I ate that super oily fried rice or fried cabbage with fried chicken in
huge size while I didn’t know what kind of oil they used to fry.... or how much
calories I gave for my body, babe.
Several research has found that chocolate can encourage body to produce
endorphin. Endorphin is kind of compound that’s able to reduce stress. Even
there’s still many variants mostly consisted by dark cocoa. But I often meet
chocolate bar consisted by more sugar than cocoa. It’s okay to eat them once or
twice. But it’s not okay to consume sugar in excessive way since sugar isn’t
good for our health in some amounts. Our body is consisted by approximately 5
liters of blood. And we just need only 5gr of sugar a day. Pancreas will work
harder every time we consume more than our body needs. Eat chocolate or something sweet when you are
sad is okay. But, it’s better to manage our emotional state in order to avoid
eating sugar in excessive way. In long term, managing our psychological aspect
is a better choice than depending on food to reduce our emotional complexity.
It’s not easy to manage and it takes process to reach a stable state. But if we
don’t start to learn, to accept, to realize, we will never grow.
As I realize I’ve let my self fall
in this unhealthy habit, I try to read several articles how to manage my
emotional complexity. According to Herman and Polivy (2005), the relation
between eating and mental health is thus bi-directional: one's psychological state
can affect what and how much one eats, and eating affects one's mood and psychological
well-being. The consequences of eating on mental health may reinforce healthy
or unhealthy eating patterns.
The end, let’s try to control the cognitive aspect, like managing emotion,
trying to fix the way we see problems, practicing “ikhlas” even sometimes it’s hard to do. And like what Herman and
Polivy (2005) said, since they have a bi-directional relationship, so from the
one side, we can control our emotional state in order to not reinforce the
unhealthy eating pattern. While the other side, we can control what we eat
which affects to our mood and psychological well-being. It may be not easy, but
we can train ourselves to do it so. Good luck everyone, be healthy, be happy!
Cheers,WP.
Cheers,WP.
