5 min reading

It is all started when I met my girlfriends for coffee while having our “we-time”. One of my friend, Linda (not the real name) suddenly said: “I am in a relationship! And I am so happy with my partner”  When everyone started to congratulate her, she continues….”but there is one problem, … I think I am addicted to my partner!” If you guess that her partner is not a living thing, you are right. She is happily in a relationship with food, or desserts to be exact! 

While there’s nothing wrong to have a relationship with food, being addicted to it, is another story. According to Dictionary by Merriam-Webster, Relationship is - the state of being related or interrelated. For example, if the food that we eat is good for us, our body will feel good. On the other hand, when we are sick, we don’t have any appetite.

As with any other relationship, it can go south or north; and as with any relationship, we want to make sure that we have a healthy and fruitful relationship. 

 So, how about trying these 5 “baby” steps to start a healthy relationship…with food?

KNOWING OURSELVES  

Before starting a relationship, we need to know about ourselves,..what we like, what we need, and what we want. Only by knowing ourselves, we will be able to know what are the things that can make us happy and why those things make us happy.  For example, for someone who doesn’t like to eat vegetable in general, it is unlikely that he/she will be able to be persistent in a vegetarian diet. On the other hand, for someone who likes to eat vegetable, he/she will find that it’s hard to increase the protein by eating meat.

KNOWING THE OTHER PARTY

Just like a relationship with another person, to start a healthy relationship with food, we need to make an effort to get-to-know them. The simplest thing to do is to take a look at the nutritional content of the food, which can be found easily from the internet. Next, we can find out about the benefit of each food. How about trying it out with your favourite food? As for me, I like to eat blue cheese. Google search on blue cheese showed that 100g of blue cheese contains 353 calories, 29g fat, etc. While it sounds like nothing good came from this food, a further check revealed that blue cheese is a source of Protein and Vit b-12, as well as rich in minerals. From knowing this important information, we can start trying out to mix and match the food that we eat, so we can get one step closer to eat healthily.

RESPECT EACH OTHER

Many relationship gurus will say that to have a long lasting relationship, the couple needs to respect each other. I personally think that this advice is also applied to our relationship with food, although with a twist! I shall say that in this relationship, the respect is somewhat unilateral, instead of bilateral. So, what do I mean with respecting our “partner”? To me, respecting the food means is fairly similar to mindful eating. Why? Because by being mindful while eating, we don’t take the food as granted. Instead, we enjoy the texture, the taste, and the smell of the food. We can also learn to appreciate the preparation needs to bring the food to the plates.

For example, before start snacking, we can ask ourselves: Why do I want to snack now? Am I hungry? Or is it just for fun? While eating, we can ask : How does this snack taste? Too salty, too sweet, or just nice?

GIVE EACH OTHER SPACE

Another great relationship advice that I heard or read is to give each other space. So, what I meant with give our “partner” some space? To put it simply, varied the food intake. No matter how good a thing is, if it is overly consumed, it will bring more harm then good.

So, how can you apply with your relationship?

For example, I enjoy eating banana. I can have one or two bananas for breakfast, and another one or two for tea break. I can continue with this habit for a week. Unfortunately, while banana is good for health, eating too much of it can cause higher potassium in the body, which can cause stomach pain, nausea and diarrhoea.

CHECK ON THE RELATIONSHIP PERIODICALLY

Last but not least, to maintain our relationship, we need to “check” on the relationship periodically. I don’t mean that we need to weigh ourselves daily or weekly. To me, checking on the relationship means that we need to re-review our eating habit periodically. Are there any foods that can improve our health but we have not tried before? Or have we done well in our “healthy eating” project? If, Yes, we can celebrate some small achievement along the way. 

I believe that there are many more ways to start the healthy relationship with food, which have not been describe here (maybe you can share yours with me?).

Nonetheless, no matter which steps or methods you are trying, it is important to remember that a healthy relationship can only be achieved if both parties are work hand-in-hand (although in this case, the effort will come from you J). Also, it is worth to remember that while it might not be easy to maintain the relationship, the “fruit” of the hard-work will make a healthier and happier you! 

“What do you think about your relationship?”