When did food become the answer to all our problems?
Food is amazing. It represents social life, celebration, culture, history and more.
But, I don’t think we’ve ever had such a tenuous relationship with food in human history. For most of history, people were just grateful to have food on the table. And in times of harvest, when food was abundant, people celebrated.
So … when did the problems start?
I don’t know exactly, but I’m pretty confident that we can see a connection between the rise in mental, emotional and lifestyle stress, along with the increase in cheap, abundant, nutrient empty food.
We started using food in place of nurturing relationships, human connection and seeking the help we needed.
We place the blame on food for the health problems that started appearing with more and more frequency.
Then the prescription became diets. Rigid, inflexible, arbitrary rules that put people in an even more emotionally distressed state, while never truly addressing the void in their lives.
The sad part is, food will never be the answer. Food isn’t even really the problem. It’s only the symptom.
Food can never fill the void that comes from a life of unlived potential. We use food, alcohol, Netflix, and social media to fill our time and numb ourselves emotionally.
Until one way we wake up and wonder “What Happened? How did I end up here?”
It doesn’t help that we’re relentlessly bombarded with messages that somehow we’re not good enough and that we never have enough.
The worst part of it is, it doesn’t have to be like this. But, actually, that’s the best part.
It doesn’t have to be like this.
That isn’t just a platitude. I’m witness to it happening every day in my clients’ lives. It gives me such incredible joy to watch them shine.
It’s not easy, and it doesn’t happen overnight. But little by little, day by day, the seeds are being planted, and then one day, they find themselves living with a joy and freedom they haven’t experienced in a long time.
I call myself a nutrition coach, but it doesn’t take long for my clients to figure out that in the process of addressing our relationship with food, we’re addressing quite a bit more.