A nice dinner with wine. A movie with a good friend, sharing a tub of popcorn. Eating a hurried lunch across a desk at work with a co-worker. Preparing a nice family meal. Thanksgiving. Tasting someone else’s ice cream cone. Bringing a treat to a small get-together. A dinner-date in a new place.
Eating alone sucks. Food, when you are alone, can possibly nourish your body, but what you crave is nourishment for your social-soul.
You eat together because it creates its own mood, its own pleasure beyond the food itself. Food is more than just eating.
So, how do you uncouple your need for human interaction with your need for food? You don’t. You shouldn’t.
What you need is to uncouple relationships from the pleasure of eating the wrong food.
Too often you eat too much, and you eat the wrong food when you are with someone else. The closer the relationship, the more likely you are to not follow the sensible rules you have made for yourself.
You get into one of those: “I won’t follow my rules if you won’t follow yours.” “It’s such a special occasion, I’m going off Weight Watchers for this meal, how about you?”
What we need is permission to say, “How can we both find great pleasure in this meal, and keep on the path of our weight recovery?”
Are there no pleasure foods that can keep you both going in the right direction?
Perhaps, at the end of the day, that is an important quest you and your friends can go on together: “Let’s find a dozen GREAT PLEASURE FOODS and WONDERFUL MEALS we can really enjoy together.”
If you don’t, you will always be battling the results of the wrong foods and meals. If you don’t, and, you “stay on the wagon” together, you will each have a sense of being deprived of the joys of great food with enjoyable people. Which leads to wrong food choices later. And will deepen any unhealthy relationship you may already have with food.
So, a key activity is to search for, experiment with, and enjoy new comfort and pleasure foods with your friends. Do it together. That kind of support you can each use.
When you do that you will have not only a new relationship with food, you will share new experiences with dear friends.
In the long run, wouldn’t that make your day lighter?
3 thoughts on “Food Is About Relationships”
Denise,
Yes, support is the most important thing once you made your own decision to lose all that extra weight and establish your relationships with food's help.
Sounds weird, as we don't think and act in these terms. But at the end, when we learn and practice healthier choices, we live a happier and more fulfiling life.
Thank you for sharing this personal moment of your life.
It is SO important to gain the support of those close to you when you are trying to eat healthfully— I think in my case, it might be THE most important thing. I live with a self-confessed junk food junkie, and our adult son and daughter (our house has a revolving door…) and no one cooks except me… I have been experimenting with healthier recipes and not mentioning it, and so far, so good.
WOW! Great point about food being linked to social feelings Even if we are alone!! Our culture Definitely supports this…I also agree with you that the "buddy system" for support and accountability is the only way to go if you want to make a lifestyle change. Great post. Especially when we are all trying to make changes for this upcoming, new year we can apply these ideas and strategies to MANY goals we hope to accomplish! thanks.