Learn what affects your eating habits. In this section, we're going to be covering some of the things which affect their eating habits in a negative way. Firstly, we're going to cover stress. Now, it's not a big surprise these days that we're all stressed or that not all of us, but a lot of us are under the influence of stress. Life now is so fast, that it's so many things we need to keep up with is different bills and taxes and busy we're working nine to five, sometimes not just five days a week, maybe six days a week or seven days a week, working overtime just to make ends meet, for example. And it's not even if you're in poverty, but even if you're wealthy, there's so many stresses.

You may be thinking like you could lose your wealth. So whatever it is, or we've got stress, we're thinking about our family's health, we're thinking about our children's health, our own health, thinking my loose people, whatever it is, our jobs are so busy. We've got managers that want more of us all the time and working hours getting longer. And also when we're in work, we're getting more pressure, less bricks. And actually, when we're on those breaks, and we're not doing productive things, we're spending more time in front of electrical equipment, like computers, mobile phones, laptops, Wi Fi, these things can all have a stressful effect on our system, our body and our mind. In turn, that can affect our eating habits.

So when we've got all of these stressful things happen externally, then they can prompt us to go for things that maybe we wouldn't go for if we weren't under stress. So what we want to be doing is When we feel in under stress, and especially when we're feeling under stress and growing food, we want to be thinking ourselves. Let's take some deep breaths here. Do I really want this? Or am I just go in for a little bit of comfort, the foods that we're going for, they may be things that come to us when we were younger. For example, when we were younger, if we cried, we may have got some sweets from our parents.

Or if we were in a temper, we may have gotten fat in nutrition. So then in the here, and now, when we get stressed, what we're doing is we go into the things that maybe our parents or grandparents give us in order to make us feel happy at the time, but of course, there's only a temporary happiness. And then especially with regards to our health, it's gonna have a knock on effect on our health, which then in turn is going to start making us feel worse in the long run. Short term gain, long term pain, so we want to be going for possibly Short term pain, long term gain. That is the way that we wouldn't be aiming for So, but it doesn't even have to be short in pain because when we start to find foods and things that we've got at hand ready for when we're feeling nasty, the healthier options rather than just go into like the machines where we get a chocolate crisps the salty fat is usually salty, fatty, sugary foods that we're going to be going from and the stress.

It's a body's way of our body's way of trying to calm the mind because when we take those foods on it does give us a temporary elation is like a drug to be fair. These foods are so processed and it's been proven now that sugar, actually, when we take on sugars, it triggers the same receptors in the brain as cocaine. So being mindful of the types of foods that we're going for when we're under stress and actually trying not to eat too tall and stressed That is what we want to be aiming for. But initially, you may need to just have something instead of the crisps chocolates and sweets that you've been going for. That's just a couple of tips and, and some reasons as well why we may be going in that direction. Another thing that can affect our eating habits is previous conditioning.

We've touched a little bit on like sweets, chocolates and things that we may go to them and under stress. But there's also conditioning as to what we thought was something good or we related to good feeling when we were younger. So when we were younger, we may have been given something like crisps or sweets, when we were going out with our friends or our family, and we've related that to good times. So instantly when we want to feel better about ourselves, we go for things like chocolates crisps, because it takes Back to those good times. Now, okay, it may do that again short term, but then in the long term is going to be having effect on our health. So what we want to be doing is looking at our histories and in our past and seeing what are the same patterns that we're playing out right now in our lives, which we will play out years ago when we were kids.

And we often find that there's a lot of things that we're doing now, subconsciously, we're not even aware of it, that's having a negative effect on our health and well being. It's good idea to have a look into that either the therapist or even through journaling or just being a little bit more observant in our own lives. And we can see that actually yeah, I'm going for that thing because when it's popcorn, we used to go with a family to go to a popcorn cinema or whatever it is that those those faces that we go for. Another look back and thinking what you know, when did I get introduced? I may have been grandparents used to give it to you and used to feel so good because it was a gift from your grandparents. But now of course you're doing that and giving it to that because you just want to feel good about that feeling where your grandparents, you don't have to have that food in order to feel good about that.

Just think about them. So when we've realized where these things have come from, it's much easier to get rid of them. And if we can be hyper aware about ourselves in the present, then we can start to release previous conditioning, which is having an effect on us in here. Now. Another important factor to take into consideration when we're eating is our environment. When we're eating in a negative environment, and especially when there's a lot of noise going on, the TV's on in the background, the laptops on there's the Wi Fi is on the kids are screaming and shouting etc.

Were eaten at that time. And actually we're not in a state of mind in a peaceful state of mind and the food going in is Not going to be digested as good as when we're in a peaceful state of mind, the sound is to a minimum, or we're in good company having good, a good chat, for example, then that's the best time to eat. And actually, it's good if if all those things are happening to wait until those things have calmed down, or to calm them down intentionally first, and then make an intention right now we're going to eat. So let's give the time focus attention to what we're eating. And the studies has been proven that when you when we give focus to what we're eating, then it also helps us to digest the food better because our eyes are seeing what we're going to have first and then when it's taken into the mouth, the digestive saliva within the mouth, starts to work on the food then, then we need to start to weigh in properly.

Now many of us don't chew our food properly, we should be children, much more than we are and then so whenever is going into the stomach is already broken down. And it's much easier for the stomach to digest. So when you're in a frantic environment, or when you're not feeling so good is not a really good time to eat. Because all of those emotions are going into the food and we're ingesting that food. And it can cause actually more stress than we when we were first in. This can go down the same as when we're cooking and preparing food.

We'll touch on that a little bit later. But cooking and preparing food is really important for the environment. Also nice and clean, nice and tidy and nice and peaceful. And then all of those loving thoughts go into the food. Those are the tips for having a nice clean environment when you eat a nice peaceful environment. Also, what anything Do you ever eat when you're hungry, or when you're upset, or when you're emotional?

I'm sure many of us do. And it's it can be detrimental to our health. When we're eating when we're feeling upset or angry, then all these thoughts and emotions are going into the food, we're ingesting the food. And that's having a negative effect on our digestion. It's good to wait for those emotions, or speak about those emotions, get those emotions out, before we start to eat our food. Then, when the time comes to eat, we can be nice and peaceful.

If we can focus on the food, rather than just trying to scarf it down, and trying to calm our minds down by eating, many of us eat compulsively, especially when we're emotional. And that's probably the worst time that we can actually eat. Because we usually stuffed it down and eat as fast as we can because we're looking for the comfort that we got when we were younger. But if we can just wait for a little bit and think right, why am I eating now? am I eating because I'm angry or meeting because I think Just want I need my body needs food and I'm going to focus on each bite that I'm taking rather than just trying to scarf it down, then it can have a much better effect on our digestion.