Most of the people today visit hospitals or doctors because of what they ate and to an extent for not having proper lifestyle.
It all comes down to discipline and what they believe is valuable in life. An average person’s decisions in life are majorly influenced by food. Now a days many people just feed themselves and they eat to feel good, just for any kind of occasion or to deal with different kind of mental and physical health issues . This in turn shows negative impact on ones health and wellbeing.
Today this is what majority of people do – For instance if someone is miserable due to a fight with spouse then go have 2 large mugs of beer with some French fries or other junk food, if you are depressed then we go have a large bowl of ice cream along with some fudge on it, if we feel cranky then we have a can of coke, if feel celebratory due to some joyous occasion then we go have a party to have unlimited amounts of fried food with deserts, if your kid is pestering you then you offer some cookies or candy bars or sugary food to silence them, You are tired and exhausted with just normal work stuff and commuting daily then just get the false sense of gratification by having a huge meal loaded with not so healthy food at night.
It is just a lifestyle of desperation, working all day, work in jobs due to their compulsions, not giving enough time to delve and work on their passions or interests, having a guilt that they are unable to give enough time for their kids or family, clearly feeling the strife in their personal life and relationships yet unable to make positive changes.
When you feel like you are not doing enough or you are doing enough but not feeling happy, you don’t give a damn about tomorrow or 1 month from now or 1 year from now or 5 years from now. We give more importance to instant gratifications than long term happiness, we tend to do what we want to do and avoid what we need to do on a daily basis. These are the things that also contribute to us making haphazard decisions not only in our diet but probably in other areas as well. This kind of daily lifestyle makes us feel like a mess even though we consciously strive to have a healthy balanced life. And these emotions would flare up during our eating patterns.
Now you just grab food based on your impulses and those impulses would most probably pushing you to say to yourself “What the hell would happen if I eat just an ice cream, I am going to work my ass off anyways” that too you would do this after having a heavy meal . You have a cup of coffee in between meals with 2 or 3 scoops of sugar in it and feel alert for a while and get a crash in no time which only makes you to grab something else unhealthy to feel good. You go on this roller coaster on a daily basis and see no difference in your physical and mental well being immediately, but over a period of time you will be disappointed with your body image, you would be disappointed with your medical reports, you would be visiting doctor for self-induced health issues.
It is also something to do with being present, recovering and being mindful apart from eating well and exercising. You basically come home all stressed out. You sit in front of the TV or Netflix. You eat food not being conscious of what you are eating parallelly. Then you don’t go to bed on time as you keep watching TV and browsing content on your mobile simultaneously. Meanwhile you lost track of time and don’t go to sleep on time. As a result you get insufficient rest. You wake up in the morning to get along with your daily rut. You feel like drained though you are just out of sleep because you messed up last day. Now you have some breakfast that gives you that dopamine rush, so have some happy food only to get a crash in no time even before lunch. It is one thing snowballing to another just keeping us in this self-destructive habits.
We have some many pediatric dentists earning a fortune these days. But we as parents are just not concerned about how we can make a conscious effort in inculcating good eating habits to our children. Even by giving sugary food or junk food at a particular time daily programs children’s brains in expecting that happy meal at that time of the day. It is just addictive similar to any other addiction like smoking or alcoholism or drugs etc., We as parents are distorting the sense of taste of a healthy child and programming their eating patterns badly in their early age. Many people don’t even brush their kids teeth twice daily in early ages but at the same time they do not think twice before giving these gooey substances to their kids.
People making these food products study neurochemistry, evolutionary biology, reward systems of human brain, physiology of addiction to market the product strategically. There is so much of research and money going behind developing these addictive unhealthy foods. There is so much of money spent in placing these food products strategically in supermarket shelves.
Especially to attract the eyes of small manipulatable kids, they will be subconsciously bombarded with these attractive addictive information of food products everywhere or where ever you go right from TV, social media, videos, podcasts, kids channels . Biggest sin that food product companies are making in these times is to advertise all these sugary and processed food on kids channels.
Food companies and food joints like Mc D, KFC, Domino’s pizza have all these meal combinations strategically planned and so much of physiological research that went behind them. People are just trapped in this ugly marketing strategy as these combi- meals would have attractive discounts. Basically these are the food combinations that just bypasses our satiety signals to brain and makes us eat more . It is enough even if they trap a few customers misusing this basic neuro chemical patterns of human brain.
We need to disassociate with the guilt or depression coming with these choices we make in our lives. We need to just know some of the basics of how our human brain reacts and works , the patterns and wiring behind our emotions . This will allow us to make conscious decisions and prevent us to fall in these traps designed for us to eat more and think less. When we are aware of fundamentals of evolutionary biology of brain and neuro chemical responses we try to separate ourselves from the guilt of not having that self-control to lead a healthy life. The more you are aware of your unconscious thoughts and phycology behind the marketing strategies hitting us , we can prepare ourselves slowly to improve our decisions over a course of time.
Basically all these kind of eating habits gives way to metabolic syndrome, chronic diseases and many other lifestyle disorders which are just self induced. This is basically western food consumption habits and lifestyle just borrowed from many sources like movies, advertisements, television, pop culture etc., So please be mindful and act with self-responsibility.
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