Beat the Guilt, Use your Noodle!

Beat the Guilt, Use your Noodle! If we learn to set sound and reasonable boundaries with our own mind, a huge list of twisted problems would be automatically ticked off.

Role of Food in Influencing the Mind.

Warm Greetings to you foodies, secretly foodies and those who recognize themselves as non-foodies!

“To eat, or not to eat, that is the question…” What better way to open this account than quoting Shakespeare? Haven’t you found yourself submitting to and negotiating with this question (though a tad less dramatically)?

Seldom, we do fancy a bite at a food item we absolutely relish but hold ourselves back. However, the rest of the time we give in to our temptation anyway. Does this point to a sheer lack of control over our senses or worse still, a vice one may be carrying? (Hold onto this question.)

A woman refusing to eat a burger.

Stoics, a school of Greek Philosophy in the post-Socratic times and Martin Seligman, the Father of Positive Psychology, not long ago; advocated the art of Temperance aka a state of balance. Balance, my worthy readers, shall always remain an understatement!

Driving you back to our conversation on Food and The Mind; eliminating a preferred and savored tidbit would only lead to greater dissatisfaction, discomfort and disinterest.

Dissatisfaction: due to absence of the desired delicacy; deprivation.
Discomfort: due to irritability stemming from restraint.
Disinterest: due to fixation on one thought.

Instead, a healthy way to tackle this issue would be to spread out the predetermined portion (certainly not a large portion) across a span of a day’s time. This way binging on a dish can be prevented while enabling one to revel in the pleasure from a particular food item for longer.

If we learn to set sound and reasonable boundaries with our own mind, a huge list of twisted problems would be automatically ticked off. Imposing justifiable limits on the quantity of food by taking into consideration vitals of one’s health and the clock in our body can definitely go a long way.

Your mind shall grow up to be how you groom it.

A] What you ACCEPT?

B] What you RESTRICT?

are two of the most integral questions to be considered.

Just as while raising a child, a parent must be conscious of what’s getting reinforced both explicitly as well as implicitly; we too must be cognizant of what part of our personality (id, ego and superego) is getting predominantly reinforced.

(If two diametrically opposite perspectives studied in Psychology, Psychoanalysis and Observational Learning, ever converged, this might be what it’d look like!)

If we consistently give in to the demands placed by our mind about certain appealing dishes, the ‘Id’ aspect of our personality (as theorized by Sigmund Freud) will be gratified maximum number of times.

On the contrary, if we observe excessive, irrational and unnecessary amounts of restraint, our mind might gradually stop reflecting stimulation from a palatable choice food.

Take this as an earnest attempt at spinning out a diverse perspective on experience guilt as a consequence of an occasional indulgence in a slightly unhealthy yet scrumptious food.

Research proclaims the occurrence of associations between specific food items and health. Below enlisted are just a few of the commonly held notions:

“Salt will raise my blood pressure.”

Salt cellar

“Sugar will rot my teeth.”
“Though caffeine is addictive, I can’t make it through the day without a cup of coffee.”

Coffee aesthetically pored in a cup alongside spilled coffee beans.

These associations begin their journey as an implicit thought in our mind, which organically and much spontaneously manifest in discernible, overt behavior.

The above mentioned are primitive in nature, however, the complex ones involve religious and cultural threads too!

You should not have to wind your way back to excruciating guilt every time you eat or meet your eyes with your favorite food.

A large platter of food items carrying loads of calories.

If you’re struggling to sew your way up a rough patch in life, you’re allowed a meal or two, probably not too healthy but makes you feel good about yourself. Having said that, I do not intend to promote for unhealthy binge-eating habit to be developed.

A girl seated across from a bunch of cupcakes rather distressed.

Sometimes, just let go, go with your gut. Your gut instinct, always (minus eeny-weeny sometimes), which means almost always, knows what’s best for your gut health.

If you usually experience guilt in varying proportions after indulging in your comfort food; here’s a call-to-action (CTA). Permit yourself to let go once a month. Mark the day you’ve treated yourself to an extravagant gourmet food, on your calendar.

A girl wondering if she should take a shot at eating all the delicious patisserie delights present on the spread.

Condition your mind in such a way that you get to consume this edible guilty pleasure only once a month. This regime would render you satisfied and also aid in doing away with the variable of guilt from the equation shared by Food and The Mind.

Thank You for gripping with this blogpost till the very end!

Awesome Blossom!

A word from the writer of this blogpost:

Hello, dear readers! I’m genuinely happy to have you wait around till I take this opportunity to speak to you. Let me put it out there that I’m no foodie, at least not a widely acclaimed one! However, it was wonderful trying my hand at writing something I’d never pondered much over. This article has been churned out in the light of my early encounters with the impact of my diet on my skin. I sincerely hope that you, my glorious readers, would write back to me what you thought about this and if at all there’s any other dimension you’d like me to articulate on!

Further reading: (for the inquisitive minds out there!)