Is Food a Cure for All That Ails You?

We are so blessed to live in an environment where food, a basic element of survival, is so abundant yet because of this abundance food has taken on a meaning beyond merely helping us exist, in fact by some it is viewed as a cure for all that ails.

If excess weight is an issue you deal with you have to stop looking at food as a way to calm the pressures of life because when food is used in this way it quickly shifts from being a short-term solution to being a long-term problem.

Food is often our "drug of choice" because it does have a calming effect on us. This is why we will often turn to food when we are feeling stress or anxiety, yet it is not an effective stress management tool because the extra food causes weight gain which often results in more stress.

There are many reasons we turn to food other than physical hunger, and it can "seem" effective when all we want is...

- a little stress relief
- a release from boredom
- a distraction from anxiety or conflict
- a break from work
- a quick "pick me up"

But food is a temporary fix for these emotional issues not a cure. To truly break the habit of using food as a cure-all you must start to recognize how you use food. This requires you to "tune-in" to how you are feeling when you turn to food. Are you aware of feelings of stress, anxiety or fatigue when you eat? Does the thought of getting a snack pop in your head every time you are bored? If these emotions are driving your eating habits you must work to find other ways to control them: get up from your work and drink of glass of water, read a book, talk to someone, take a nap, the list of possibilities is endless but as long as you keep viewing food as the only solution you will not even consider other possible ways of handling your daily stresses.

Food is not a cure for all that ails you, in fact there is only one thing it can cure and that is physical hunger, anything else is a short-term fix with long-term consequences. With a little work you will uncover ways to deal with your emotional triggers and you will discover that you no longer need to use food as a coping tool.

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