Here’s why appreciating food–from the heart–when you eat, can be health-enhancing.
—By Deborah Kesten
“Because food is what it is, it is of utmost importance that we receive it with deep gratitude,
because we consume life. Whether it’s cabbages or cows, it’s life that we consume…
How can we not be grateful for the life that sustains us?”
— Zen master John Daido Loori
Research that behavioral scientist Larry Scherwitz, PhD, and I did with more than 5200 people, revealed that cultivating the ability to appreciate food–from the heart–and to eat for pleasure with feel-good feelings, is the antidote to overcoming what Larry and I identified as the new-normal overeating style we all Food Fretting
Food Fretting is a new-normal way of thinking about food and eating. And it is how most of us have learned to relate to food and eating in the last 50+ years. It is not how humankind related to food for millennia.
Are You a Food Fretter?
Are you a food fretter? Here’s what it looks like. Do you see yourself in any of the following examples of Food Fretting?
Example #1 of Food Fretting. “I was good today,” you may think when you’ve managed to avoid unhealthful foods, stick to your diet, undereat, or eat what you believe is the “best” and healthiest food, or what you think you should eat.
Example #2 of Food Fretting. “When my food cravings become powerful and I eat foods that are ‘bad,’ I feel so guilty” is typical self-think for many food fretters.
Example #3 of Food Fretting. “She shouldn’t eat that chocolate cake. Doesn’t she have any willpower?” you might think as you watch someone eat what she ‘shouldn’t.’”
An obsession about food. Anxiety about the “best” way to eat. Counting calories. Dieting. Feeling gluttonous, bad, and guilty when you overeat. Food cravings. Judging others about their food choices. Feeling righteous when you eat what you think you should.
The Food Fretting overeating style is a pattern of thoughts, feelings, and food-related actions that have one thing in common: obsessing about food and eating. These complex and dynamic elements of Food Fretting may be a key reason overeaters are often filled with mostly negative thoughts and feelings about food and eating. And themselves.
Then there’s this: Food Fretting “think” has become normal in today’s food culture.
Food Fretting: A New Normal Overeating Style
In other words, if you think the food fretter’s relationship to food, eating, dieting, and weight loss is normal—you’re right. In America, 75 percent of women have one or more of the 10 elements of food fretters, meaning that they have obsessive thoughts, feelings, or behaviors related to food or their bodies; 91 percent of college women have attempted to control their weight through dieting; 22 percent diet “often” or “always”; and half of 9 to 10-year-old girls are dieting.
The goal of food fretters, though, isn’t always weight loss. Rather, many simply have a preoccupation about the “best” way to eat, to the point of obsession. Elements of this new-normal overeating style have become so common that the term orthorexia has been coined to describe it. The word comes from the Greek orthos, “correct or right,” plus orexis, “appetite.”
The Food Fretting overeating style may include the concept of orthorexia, but it differs in that Food Fretting identifies a specific family of obsessive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that are linked to increased odds of overeating, overweight, and obesity. These thoughts, feelings, and behaviors include counting calories; feeling anxiety about the “best” way to eat; having food cravings; feeling gluttonous, bad, and guilty when overeating; dieting; judging others about what and how they eat; obsessing about food; and feeling righteous when you eat what you should.
Here’s the takeaway. All 10 Food Fretting thoughts and behaviors Larry and I identified–under the umbrella of obsessing about food–are intimately interrelated with one another. For instance, if food fretters judge others about what they eat, they are also likely to feel bad when they themselves overeat, diet, have food cravings, and so on.
The bottom line: The intricate network of food-fretting elements is strongly related to overeating and weight gain. But…if you reduce even a few food-fretting thoughts and behaviors Larry and I identified, you’re also likely to lessen other elements of the Food Fretting overeating style.
And doing this helps lower your desire to overeat and increases your odds of weight loss.
Food Fretting Rx: Cultivate an ‘Attitude of Gratitude–From the Heart
Here’s the light at the end of the food-fretting tunnel: My research on Whole Person Integrative Eating has revealed it’s possible to reduce obsessing about food, ongoing dieting, and other Food Fretting behaviors–and lessen odds of overeating and weight gain by replacing the new-normal, in-your-head, thought-filled relationship to food and eating with an appreciative, eating-from-your-heart, nourishing connection to food and to the extraordinary experience of eating.
I know this, because research participants in our study on Whole Person Integrative Eating lessened their Food Fretting “think” and in turn ate less and lost weight by taking the time to replace an in-your-head Food Fretting relationship to food and eating with the pleasure-filled, nourishing Whole Person Integrative Eating guideline: to be grateful for food.
Here is the Whole Person Integrative Eating (WPIE) antidote to the Food Fretting overeating style. It is the WPIE guideline for cultivating gratitude each time you eat.
Food Fretting Rx:APPRECIATE FOOD
Be grateful for food and its origins…from the heart.
In a moment, I’m going to tell you some of the health benefits of eating with gratitude–in addition to upping the odds of eating less and weighing less. Without dieting. But first, I want to share a profound thought for you to consider. It’s a spiritual truth that, if you keep it in mind, may help you infuse meals with heartfelt gratitude. I’m sharing this insight because it has helped me, personally, cultivate an attitude of gratitude when I eat.
Food is Life, It Sustains Us
Most of us are familiar with the phrase, “Food is fuel, the body is a machine.”
This thinking–equating the body with a machine and food with fuel–emerged 100 years ago in 1924 during the age of industrialization. It was during this time that chemist Wilbur Olin Atwater translated scientific discoveries into food-is-fuel, body-is-a-machine nutrition advice.
Flash-forward to today. Based on breakthrough scientific discoveries in the 21st century, we now know that food is much more than calories and energy, and that the body is much more miraculous than a manmade machine.
Here is my vision of the relationship between food and our body for your consideration…
Plant-based food (fruit, veggies, whole grains, beans and peas, and nuts and seeds) contain the mystery of life. So, too, do animal-based foods (fish, poultry, meat, and dairy). And so, too, do we human beings. At the same time, plant-based food, animal-based food, and human beings all need the same elements to thrive, such as air, earth, light from the sun, and water.
Here’s where the deep change in thinking about food and our body comes in: Thriving–and living–indeed life itself–depends on our becoming one with food and it with us. In other words, the relationship between food, eating, and the body is the mystery of life itself.
To me, this means our relationship with food is much more meaningful and profound than a fuel-machine link. Instead, I view food as nourishment–and life–in the deepest sense of the word. And this makes it second nature for me to appreciate the gift that is food.
Here’s some science behind an ‘appreciative heart’ and health.
Heart Intelligence and Your Health
Since 1991, the opposite of a self-involved heart—an appreciative, loving heart—has been the focus of research at HeartMath. Says founder Doc Lew Childre and executive consultant Howard Martin: “ . . . when heart intelligence (a term describing the concept that the heart is an intelligent system with the ability to balance our emotional and mental systems) is engaged [with positive emotions], it can lower blood pressure, improve nervous system and hormonal balance, facilitate brain function,” and more.
As a matter of fact, HeartMath researchers have also discovered that the heart’s magnetic field (the magnetic influence of electrical currents) radiates outside the body and can affect other people. This means that when your heart is filled with loving gratitude, those feelings affect your body’s electromagnetic field, causing it to extend three or more feet from the body.
For me, such findings also bring up the possibility that a “heartfelt” electromagnetic field, infused with gratitude, may somehow be infused into the meal before you.
What else? Bringing an appreciative consciousness to meals also brings up the possibility that if you flavor your meals with other-oriented appreciation, spice them with heartfelt blessings, and infuse both yourself and the food before you with gratitude, you are choosing the Whole Person Integrative Eating antidote to Food Fretting, meaning, you are “Appreciating food and its origins—from the heart,” instead of the in-your-head Food Fretting overeating style and its family members of dieting and obsessing about food and weight and the “best” way to eat.
In other words, when you cherish food and all aspects of the eating experience, you may also find that the healing, magical mystery of gratefulness will work through you and enhance physical and mental well-being. And–based on Larry’s and my research on Whole Person Integrative Eating–it may also lead to eating less and weighing less. Without dieting. And there’s this: For me, eating with an appreciative heart leads to enjoying and savoring my meals; actually, to delighting in the whole dining experience.
Attitudes of Gratitude: De-Food Fretting Strategies
There’s a lot you can do to overcome Food Fretting and food-related anxieties, self-recrimination, judgment, and guilt. And instead, enjoy your meals.
Here are 3 ideas for you to consider as a start to letting go of some new-normal Food Fretting ‘think’:
#1. Stop dieting. One consequence of ongoing dieting can be increased obsession about food, eating, and weight. As a matter of fact, more and more research is linking traditional dieting with increased risk of weight gain. And a well-known study of four popular diets showed that, over time, there was virtually no weight loss–regardless of the diet. You’ve heard it before: Diets don’t work!
#2. Don’t count calories compulsively. Traditional diets that ask you to restrict calories and to eat by the numbers (I call counting calories, fat grams, and so on, “eating by number”) don’t work for the long term. Counting calories by itself is not a problem; a compulsive and obsessive attitude about calories is.
Instead, consider this: Instead of staying lost in a maze of measurements, nutrients, and numbers, focus on fresh, whole foods, delicious flavors, the profound pleasure of eating, and the delight you take in dining with others. In other words, bring heartfelt appreciation to all aspects of the dining experience.
#3. Change your perspective. And consider this: from the perspective of the Whole Person Integrative Eating dietary lifestyle, food in itself is not “sinful,” “good,” “bad,” “right,” or “wrong”—unless you’re projecting moral attributes onto it and onto yourself! Nor, in my opinion, is food something to be counted, feared, and analyzed.
In other words, I’m suggesting that, instead of viewing food through the lens of today’s new normal of judgment, relate to it as an expression of the ancient meaning of the word diet, through the lens of Whole Person Integrative Eating: as a gift that can enhance your physical, emotional, spiritual, and social well-being each time you eat.
The Takeaway
Here’s the bottom line: Ultimately, the key to successfully overcoming the Food Fretting overeating style– and often being filled with obsessive, judgment-filled, Food Fretting thoughts about the “best” way to eat, dieting, calorie counting, and anxiety-related overeating–is to create a positive, pleasure-filled relationship to food and eating by giving food nonjudgmental, heartfelt attention.
Bringing an “appreciation consciousness” to the experience of food and eating, and ‘gladdening the heart’–as Buddhists say–with gratitude each time you eat may help you replace Food Fretting with the experience of actually enjoying food . . . and reducing your odds of overeating and overweight.
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Disclaimer: This transcript is for informational purposes only. This transcript is not intended to be a substitute for professional health or weight loss advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your health professional or another qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding your condition or well-being