The Joy Of Eating: The Virago Book of Food

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Categorizing your eating helps to understand when you are eating for reasons other than nourishment and gives you a guideline on what you need to do to lose weight or maintain a healthy lifestyle. Always remember whenever you eat it will fall into one of these four categories. Boredom or feelings of emptiness. Do you ever eat simply to give yourself something to do, to relieve boredom, or as a way to fill a void in your life? You feel unfulfilled and empty, and food is a way to occupy your mouth and your time. In the moment, it fills you up and distracts you from underlying feelings of purposelessness and dissatisfaction with your life. Emotional hunger often leads to mindless eating.Before you know it, you’ve eaten a whole bag of chips or an entire pint of ice cream without really paying attention or fully enjoying it. When you’re eating in response to physical hunger, you’re typically more aware of what you’re doing. See “ How to Stop Self-Sabotaging Your Diet” to learn how your thoughts affect your food habits and strategies to overcome common pitfalls.) 4. Accept Your Body

Foods that are no longer forbidden became ordinary foods that you can eat matter-of-factly and moderately. Do you eat to feel better (to calm and soothe yourself when you're sad, mad, bored, anxious, etc.)? Eating with your full attention can relax your body, quieten your mind, reduce stress, improve digestion and increase satisfaction. Principle 4. Observe and satisfy your hunger Not sure about anyone else, but I know that sometimes the Fun Eating becomes too commonplace – going from enjoying every single bite with conscious satisfaction, to Fog Eating masquerading as Fun Eating. The first bite is “mmm” and after that, it’s “Oh, I finished already.” Having had bad habits in the past, this can often then be the go-to initial thought for food, especially if not preparing yourself.We all long to eat as much as we want of food we enjoy . . .without feeling guilty and worrying that our weight will go out of control. Your body is constantly changing, and you’ll weigh something different every day. If, for example, you ate a salty dinner last night, your body may be retaining anywhere from five extra pounds of water weight. With variances like these, why live and die by what a mechanical numbers machine tells you? This is when you eat and are not conscious of it. It could be eating a bag of chips while watching our favorite program on television and not realizing how much until the bag of chips is empty. It is eating when you are not hungry or eating when you are distracted. It is my intent and sincerest hope that through sharing my food and nutrition philosophy of Joyful Eating, I can help you break free of diet stress, guilt and shame. We long to nurture our children and delight in family meals . . . without continually second-guessing ourselves and feeling like the food police.

Resolving feeding issues is important enough to merit an investment in time and money. You don’t have to spend years struggling with your child around feeding. You and your child both deserve to have a relationship around food that is relaxed and joyful. What can you do to find help? In this moment, your body is exactly the weight, size and shape it should be. No amount of resisting what is, blame or guilt will change your body in this moment. Accept the body you have right now, and choose to move, nourish and care for it in ways that make you feel most energetic and alive. Let go of controlling and punishing yourself for what is in this moment. Principle 3. Consciously eat Lots of people confuse joy with happiness, and although they are closely related and often occur simultaneously, these feel-good emotions aren't synonymous. Happiness is an emotion that brings bursts of intense pleasure, excitement, and satisfaction, while joyfulness is a stronger, longer-term state that results in feelings of inner peace and contentment. Can you put off eating for five minutes? Or just start with one minute. Don't tell yourself you can'tgive in to the craving; remember, the forbidden is extremely tempting. Just tell yourself to wait. The ‘slow’ breakfast of jam, toast and coffee that Sara Carillo has been eating every day for many years. Photograph: Sara Carillo

Pollard has a young son and a husband and neither are involved in her breakfast ritual. The meal is time alone. “I like getting up while it’s still dark. I like how it sort of gently gets lighter and lighter … I really love sitting in the kitchen with the quiet and looking at the garden with my coffee and my toast. It very much is having this little time to myself.” ‘Three things in a bowl’ Anya-Josephine Marie Taylor-Joy, who is simply known as Anya Taylor, is American Actress; she is well-known for her role in the television crime Drama Peaky Blinders. Work with your body. The key to getting over your notion of a “perfect body” is to accept what you have. If you hate your body, it won’t work with you. Your poisonous thoughts about your body will always sabotage your efforts to have a great food life. If you accept your body — and even learn to like it — you can achieve peace with your food life. When you accept your body, you will realize that having a good food life leads to the body that is perfect for you. Follow the Satter Division of Responsibility in Feeding (sDOR). You do the what, when and where of feeding and let your child do the how much and whether of eating. At home, much of my recent cooking has been inspired by “Something to eat solo”, a chapter in Crave by Ed Smith, published earlier this year. The book is organised “by flavour, to suit your mood and appetite” and in devoting a section to eating alone, Smith says he wanted to “counter the cliched assumption that ‘you can’t be bothered to cook for yourself’ – because if you are going to cook for yourself, and can afford to, you might as well make it joyful. A dinner party might not appreciate you splashing out on burrata from the local deli, but you will.”