3 False Narratives About Food
Once upon a time, there was a girl who lived in a small village, where people simply loved to gossip. The girl was very set on taking care of the things that were important to her. Her home, her loved ones, and her health. However, when she went to get advice from the towns people on how to take care of her body, everyone had something different to say. So she decided to take their advice. All of their advice.
And you know what happened? Her health turned to absolute crap, that’s what happened.
What would you say if I told you that breakfast is NOT actually the most important meal of the day? Would you feel your worldview slightly twisted if I insisted that cheating on your food choices is not authentically fun?
Here’s the deal. We live in a world that is filled to the brim with misleading, false, and flat-out fake health news. And I have something to share.
We’ve been fed a heaping helping of false thoughts about nutrition and food. Buying into the errors in thinking that have become ingrained into us tees us up for setback after setback when it comes to weight loss.
You see, the things we think become the things we do. And I don’t mean that in a Yoda meets Gandhi kind of way. I mean it in the “change your thinking, change your actions” kind of way. And those actions can have major impacts on our weight loss and our lives.
Myths surrounding food are kind of like a cheap bottomless vegas buffet…it seems to never end and you probably shouldn’t be consuming any of it. So to help you weed out the good from the bad, I’m going to explain three of them. But first, let’s talk about thoughts, feelings, actions, and the absolutely integral role they play in nutrition and weight loss.
Thought Patterns Impact Our Actions
You are already equipped with the most powerful tool available to affect change. If you want to change any behavior, you have to change the way you think about it. Your thoughts are incredibly powerful. Here’s how.
We humans have roughly 6000 thoughts every single day. Every one of them has an opportunity to become habitual. Sure, we have thoughts that randomly pop up and pass right by but there are others that we think so frequently that they become thought patterns.
Thought patterns are behind all of those feelings we have about food automatically. And those habitual thoughts lead to urges and of course, urges are what cause us to make poor choices when it comes to food.
Thoughts > Feelings > Habitual Thoughts > Urges > Bad Choices
Thought Errors Lead to Unwanted Actions
If you want to change a behavior around food, such as overeating, you have to first become aware of the thought patterns you have about eating. Once you have a sense of awareness about the way you think, you can change your mind. Instead of falling into patterned thinking that leads to unwanted behaviors, you can intentionally create thoughts that lead to actions you desire, such as eating a satisfying, but not damaging, portion.
Here’s where fact vs. fiction is everything.
Diet culture has conditioned us with some really misleading information that has been ingrained in our minds and hearts for generations. These ways of thinking have created what I call “Thought Errors,” and changing your mind about them is a key element to sustainable weight loss success.
3 False Narratives Around Food
There are tons of examples of misleading, false, and damaging thought patterns around food. “Thought Errors” are unique to every person but there are some super common ones that I hear over and over again.
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Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
This phrase is so well known that you’d be hard-pressed to find an American of any age that hasn’t been told it their entire life. And clearly, as a general rule, we love us a morning meal. Market research reveals that over 100 billion breakfast meals and about 50 billion morning snacks were eaten up by Americans in 2020 alone. That’s billion, with a big ol’ B.
But here’s something you may not know. The phrase isn’t steeped in sound nutrition advice or anything of the sort. It’s just a marketing slogan, popularized by the Kellogg company to sell breakfast cereals. That kinda leaves a bad taste in the mouth, doesn’t it?
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All foods in moderation.
This Thought Error tells us that we can eat any kind of food we want, so long as we only eat it in moderation. But there’s an inherent problem to this that boils down to our individuality.
One person may define moderation as red meat once a week while another considers that to be a once a month kind of thing. We all have different ideas about what moderation means.
On top of that, there are many foods that some people find completely tolerable and that other people cannot eat without serious consequences. Again, this comes down to our uniqueness. A food that gives your body energy may give another person bloat and digestive upset. And no one wants that, even in moderation.
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Cheating is fun!
This faulty bit of fake food news can be found in every corner of diet culture. In fact, cheat days are actually built into many of the popular weight loss programs around, fad and mainstay alike. It tells you that it is okay to follow your plans and goals, except when you don’t want to.
We are misled to believe that it’s perfectly fine to throw your hard work to the curb one day a week or just this one time. It says you can let loose and have some fun! But here’s the flip side of that coin. Withdrawal from problematic food is real and eating the food that your body is addicted to, even ONE time, is a straight path to starting all over again. And that is many things, but fun is not one of them.
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