Do your food choices influence your life choices?
Being immersed in Caribbean culture, social gatherings with friends and family always involve food. It has become an expectation that when attending an event, some sort of food will be available. In some cases, eating a plate of food at the party is not enough and an additional plate is needed to take home for lunch tomorrow and for a significant other.
What we don’t realize is that we are mindlessly eating foods that we don’t particularly like but because food is readily available we eat it anyway. By the end of the event, we are left with a gluttonous feeling which affects our overall mood. In most cases, you feel tired, lethargic, dejected from the conversation and disinterested in exercise. By this point, food has affected not only your waistline, but your life choices.
You are in charge of creating your own habits and your habits determine your future. "
In another scenario, most of our unhealthy population leads less than ideal lives because they are not setting themselves up for success. These individuals wait until the feeling of hunger is unbearable before opening up their thought process towards what they will be eating for their next meal. At this point, the desire for food is so strong that it becomes less about choosing healthy, nutritious meals and more about simply satisfying hunger. In scenarios such as this you might have told yourself “Just this one time.” or “I will plan better tomorrow.” but it never ends up happening. Being aware of how certain foods affect your body and being prepared to make the right choices when hunger hits is a form of ‘mindfulness’. In order to create better-eating habits and avoid unhealthy moments of weakness, we need to practice mindful eating.
Food will always be a staple at social events and hunger is inevitable however, we control over how we think about food and how we plan our food choices. No matter how much we try to control the relationship between foods and our personal habits/choices these two life phenomenons are important to our development and quite related. Meal prep is easier than you think! First, put some thought into what meals you like and know are healthy or somewhat healthy. Write those meals down. After all, making something homemade is almost always healthier than buying it premade.
A typical human will not desire more than 10 meal choices for breakfast, another 10 for lunch and an additional 10 for dinner. With that being said, we tend to eat the same several meals in rotation without realizing this. By writing these meals down we can create a database of meals that can easily be slotted into our very own meal plan. The most time-consuming part of making this list and this meal plan’s success is to create a grocery list from the assortment of meals that you wrote down. Then going to the store and purchasing those ingredients. At first, this may sound daunting and expensive but in truth, making it a habit now makes making the healthy choice down the line much easier. A habit has to start somewhere. You are in charge of creating your own habits and your habits determine your future.
- Donovan Ingraham
