Seeking Comfort in Food Without Wrecking your Health
How to enjoy the nostalgic nurture of comfort food and still eat healthy
It’s been a tough year. Many of us turn to food to soothe our spirits especially during this holiday season. Specifically, calorie laden, fat, sugar, salt and carbo heavy foods. These gut bombs give us momentary solace and then upset our stomachs, pack on the pounds and generally makes us sorry we ate them later.
It’s natural to search for relief from stress in small and big ways. How do we ease the tension and anxiety without making ourselves feel worse? Food seems to be a natural. And it can be if we adjust our behavior and the ingredients in our comfort foods, giving our physical, sentimental and emotional selves, relief while nurturing our bodies with nutrients. It’s doable when you keep a few points in mind.
1. Pause before you reach.
Impulse buying and eating of fast foods, takeaways, salted and high fat/sugar snacks and heavy use of ready-made sauces and mixes in cooking is closely correlated to when a person is stressed, feeling pressured and/or hungry. The National Institute of Health has shown that we do not make the best decisions when we are preoccupied, tense or famished. Recognizing this, pause what you are doing when you sense rising anxiety…
