Peculiarities of eating behavior and emotional hunger

Human – this is a bio-psycho-socio-spiritual model (biological nature and physical body, psychological processes and psyche, society and immediate environment, philosophy, faith and culture). Man cannot exist without one of these elements. Features of eating behavior are directly related to this model.

If there is an imbalance somewhere - in the body, psychological state, society, philosophical and spiritual views, an imbalance can occur in eating habits.

Sometimes it turns out that the extra pounds are located exclusively in the head, and not in the body - this person is “full at heart.” Having a normal weight, he lives like an overweight person, that is, he does not feel and behave like a slim person, but constantly lives in prohibitions and excessive attention to nutrition. The consequence of all this can be eating disorders.

Types of Eating Disorders

In Russia, more than 5 million people suffer from these disorders, 90% of them are not aware of the problem of their disease and do not understand how important it is to see a specialist. Below I would like to give examples and definitions of some eating disorders. There are two types of eating disorders: specific and nonspecific.

Specific eating disorders include:

Anorexia nervosa is the deliberate restriction of food in order to lose weight. Most often, people suffering from anorexia nervosa elevate control over their eating behavior into a cult and do not take into account control over their emotions.

Bulimia nervosa is the compulsive consumption of large amounts of food, which leads to impulsive actions in the form of vomiting, defecation, taking laxatives, and excessive sports activities.

Compulsive overeating is the obsessive consumption of large amounts of food, acquired as a result of diets and long hunger strikes.

In addition, there are nonspecific eating disorders:

Nonspecific bulimia – in which there is impulsive behavior in the form of vomiting, defecation, taking laxatives, excessive sports, but there is no compulsive consumption of large amounts of food.

Nonspecific anorexia – in which symptoms of anorexia are observed while maintaining normal weight.

Avoidance behavior is a deliberate restriction of oneself and one’s diet, for example, by excluding certain foods, and, as a result, there is a lack of nutrients in the body.

Compulsive overeating is excessive consumption of food for non-food purposes (emotional eating), for example, eating large amounts of sweets due to stress.

Food hoarding syndrome (“clean plate syndrome”) - most often this occurs in people who were abandoned by their parents or did not receive enough attention, or in people whose generations died of starvation. Each of us is susceptible to this nonspecific disorder, as it is transmitted genetically.

Orthorexia nervosa is the elevation of proper nutrition to a cult through an obsessive desire for a healthy lifestyle, which leads to deliberate restrictions on one’s food choices and behavior patterns.

Selective disorders - avoidance of certain foods, inability to tolerate the sight/smell/color of a product.

Nonspecific types of eating disorders are not critical, but at the same time they affect the psyche and the person as a whole.

If you have food restrictions for medical reasons and have to closely monitor your diet, this does not mean that you suffer from an eating disorder. There is a question of obsession and how much the focus on food affects other areas of life.

In addition to the above, there are two rarer types of eating disorders:

Drankorexia (“alcohol diet”) – switching attention from food to alcohol in order to reduce or control weight.

Pregorexia is an eating disorder in pregnant women characterized by restrictive dieting and excessive exercise in order to maintain weight during and after pregnancy.

How eating behavior is formed

The development of eating behavior begins in infancy. It is worth considering all the components of a child’s diet: from the meal schedule to the conditions for a good appetite. It is important to monitor any attempts to refuse lunch for no reason.

The first stage of establishing habits occurs during breastfeeding. It is important to ensure that the baby eats in a timely manner and does not refuse feeding. The most important features of eating behavior are formed between the ages of one and three years, when acquaintance with “adult” food begins.

During this period, it is important to establish the correct perception of food. For example, you should not overindulge in snacks and sweets; do not try to “feed” the child by distracting him with cartoons. You need to be wary of systematically refusing to eat if this is not due to excitement after games or during illness.

Eating behavior is often influenced by taste preferences. For example, people with low bitter sensitivity may find it easier to eat vegetables or other healthy foods. If you love sour foods, it’s easy to diversify your diet with plenty of fruits and citrus fruits. Regular self-abuse leads to aversion to food or other consequences, so it is important to adjust dishes depending on taste preferences. Often, eating disorders begin with an unmotivated restriction of one's diet due to lack of benefit. For example, maximum avoidance of solid foods, preference exclusively for fiber. Disorder can also be provoked by unsightly, sloppy serving of dishes that do not outwardly evoke appetite.

Signs of eating disorders

Most often, food addictions are characterized by:

obsessive thoughts;
perfectionism (including in completing tasks from trainers and curators);
maximalism (people rush to extremes, “all or nothing” - especially bulimics);
increased sensitivity to praise and blame;
avoiding any harmful influence;
neurotic reactions and impulsivity.

Often addictions are passed on behaviorally, so if there was any type of addiction in the family and it was not resolved, the next generations will be prone to addiction.

Whatever society they end up in, they will develop such dependence. Hence the stories when the grandfather drank, the father drank and the son drinks, or the grandfather drank, the father is a workaholic, and the son is a gambler or uses drugs (workaholism, gambling addiction, drug addiction, garage addiction, fishing alcoholism, sexaholism - also addictions, but from other areas of life) and etc.

In the modern world, a sign of eating disorders can also be a desire for fashion, looking like some kind of idol, whose life is built on self-restraint. And at the same time, there is now a trend towards truth - in the media there are stories of people who were previously the ideal of self-restraint, and now talk about their struggle with an eating disorder and call for healthy eating habits.

People with eating disorders most often experience internal conflicts that they are unable to cope with without food (or, most likely, do not know other ways), they have low self-esteem, most often they are in a mild depression, and are fixated on appearance and are scrupulous about food and exercise.

People suffering from eating disorders have a very weak “I”, no sense of body image, no correlation between psychology and their body, they are overly critical of themselves, and are prone to misunderstanding the size of their own body.

They may weigh 53 kg and it will seem like a lot to them, even if it is normal for them. Here we are talking about shifting the focus from emotional experiences to being in control of your body. The dominant is on weight, and not on worrying and fixing something in your life.

People suffering from anorexia, bulimia, and compulsive overeating disorder “chew” their experiences in the literal and figurative sense.

To understand whether you are dealing with an addiction or just weight control, you need to ask yourself the question: “Am thoughts about food and my figure controlling me?”

If such thoughts occupy a large part of your thought processes, and eating becomes more than a process necessary for you to live, then we are talking about the development of addiction.

Content

Orthorexia
Anorexia
Bulimia
Compulsive overeating

Restrictive eating disorders, or REDs, are eating disorders in which a person places restrictions on:

what he eats (for example, excludes flour, fried, sweet, fatty foods);
how much (for example, he forbids himself to eat from ordinary plates, weighs food, eats no more than 1200 or 500 kcal);
how (for example, he forbids himself to eat while sitting, does physical exercise after or before meals, drinks a lot of water before meals);
when (eats before lunch or a certain time, for example, 18:00);
where (for example, eats only at home);
with whom (for example, eats alone, is afraid to eat with someone, “in public”).

The main types of ORPD include orthorexia, anorexia, bulimia and compulsive overeating.

Reasons for the development of food addictions

There are several reasons for gaining excess weight:

1. Biological is everything that has to do with the physiology of your body. For example, weight gain can be influenced by childbirth, heredity, a sedentary lifestyle, and surgery, but in the context of eating disorders, weight gain is a consequence of dieting, severe restrictions, and fasting.

2. Psychological – this is everything that is connected with your psyche. For example, psychological trauma, experiences rooted in childhood and germinating into reality. This can be stress, a feeling of boredom, resentment, loneliness, a feeling of rejection by society or some kind of inconsistency with society, experiencing various remorse or the most destructive feelings - shame and guilt. Most often, it is because of these feelings that people begin to gain weight and begin to replace normal eating habits with unhealthy ones.

3. Social – this is everything that is connected with the society that surrounds you, your immediate environment (family, loved ones). The family is an integral system; it plays a very important role in the formation of personality. It is in the family that we learn certain ways of behaving, thinking and feeling, with which we then go out into society.

If in childhood there were quarrels, injuries received in the family, rejection of emotions, then the child will react to all this in a way that will help him defend himself and adapt; these could also be incorrect eating habits or some other forms of addiction (alcohol, drug addiction, shopaholism, etc.) All this can further affect how a person behaves in society: whether he has friends, how he presents himself, etc.

4. Spiritual – the most complex reason arising from all of the above. Depending on how the body, the psyche is structured and in what society a person is located, he will choose a certain philosophy, religion and other spiritual levels, on which his eating habits also depend. This means that every culture has its own traditions, including food preferences, with which a person either has to fight or get along.

Hunger and Appetite

In order to prevent food addictions from becoming your life companions, it is important to understand two concepts - hunger and appetite.

Hunger is a physiological need of the body; hunger is located in the area of the diaphragm. Behind it is a healthy desire to eat food in order to live.

It should be noted that there are many indicators that do not relate to the feeling of hunger, and there are only three indicators of true hunger:

Bodily sign (emptiness in the stomach).
Temporary (3-3.5 hours from the last meal).
Behavioral (low food selectivity).

The hypothalamus produces signals that indicate hunger every 3-3.5 hours, and if hunger is not satisfied during this time, it begins to accumulate, and subsequently symptoms such as loss of concentration, irritability, loss of strength, weakness, dizziness and etc.

This condition is called accumulated hunger - this is physiological hunger, which consists in the fact that a person has missed a meal and, as a result, begins to feel physically ill.

Here it is important to say something else about the feeling of thirst. Thirst is a physiological sensation that serves as a signal that the body requires water. Between meals, you often feel hungry. But if the interval between them is not yet 3-3.5 hours, then most likely you are actually thirsty.

If you still want to eat after you've quenched your thirst, then either you've been eating unsatisfying foods to satisfy your hunger, or you're most likely experiencing emotional hunger or appetite.

Appetite is a psychological need; it lives in the head. Behind appetite there are a large number of feelings and emotions. That is why appetite can also be called emotional hunger, which is important to satisfy not through food.

Appetite, like emotions, can be provoked. Appetite provocateurs can be advertising, the smell of food, memories (past emotions, pleasant memories, often from childhood), emotional expectations from food, etc. And at such moments a person may think that he is hungry (wants to “feed his emotions” ), but, in fact, he does not experience physiological hunger (“I am hungry”).

Appetite is a reaction to feelings that have not found a legal, environmentally friendly outlet.

The most important feelings that a person eats up are feelings of guilt, shame, fatigue, loneliness, boredom, anxiety, and anger.

There are three rules for recognizing your feelings and, as a result, separating physiological hunger from emotional hunger:

Be aware of how you feel now.
Verbalize how you feel (name your feelings).
Let the feeling out.

Jamming will occur if at least one of these three points is not met.

It is also important to define the concept of stress. Stress is a term that initially did not even relate to psychology, but came from physics, although now you can often hear: “There is too much stress in my life.”

Behind stress there are many feelings and emotions, but the word “stress” helps to veil them. A person can experience a lot of emotions, but there are no positive or negative emotions, there are only pleasant and unpleasant, constructive or destructive.

It is important for a person to experience both, since repressing feelings entails their expression in destructive ways, including eating disorders.

Most often, appetite occurs after unpleasant emotions. If there are not enough pleasant emotions, then we get them for ourselves in the simplest way - through food.

However, there are other ways to satisfy emotional hunger, which are called non-food ways.

Ways to satisfy emotional hunger in non-food ways:

Fatigue can only be relieved by rest (bath, breaks from work - here you need to turn to your Inner Child and understand what he wants), not food. It is important to recognize your fatigue and not hide it.

Loneliness can be realized through real communication or communication on social networks, calling a friend, going to the theater, etc. It is also important to maintain a balance here (that is, we are not talking about dependence on social networks).

Boredom can be realized through various hobbies, activities, and again, contact with loved ones or just people you know.

The main feelings that provoke appetite (not the physiological need for food) are shame and guilt.

These feelings are very deeply rooted and are often of a social nature, that is, they are instilled in us from childhood in order to lead us to certain standards. Guilt can be true, or it can be “racketeering” (fake), instilled in a person from the outside in order to control him. Shame also has a fine line: should you be ashamed of your actions? That is, you need to understand whether it is really shameful or not. There are norms and rules, but there is shame imposed from childhood for things that are not shameful.

There is also
a feeling of anxiety. Anxiety about something can be eliminated by calling somewhere or learning about something we are worried about. Anxiety is chaos and it is important to bring it into structure. If feelings and emotions are structured at this moment, anxiety begins to subside. This feeling is also relieved by warmth - you can take a bath, light candles, hug with a loved one.
Anger is a feeling that brings both positive and negative results. Thanks to anger, a person decides to take care of himself (he is angry at his eating habits and wants to take care of his eating behavior), and this is the positive side of anger (anger is like “fuel” that gives strength to change). And anger on the negative side is rage (accumulated anger).

If anger is expressed in a legal, environmentally friendly way, at the stage of irritation at a given situation, then it will not destroy either the bearer or other people, and will not turn from irritation into rage. An overweight person experiences anger, he is emotionally tense, because he spends his energy suppressing this feeling, instead of giving it a way out and using it for his own benefit.

In order to use anger to your advantage, you can use the following formula for expressing this feeling:

“When you...” (indicate what annoys you, makes you angry).
“I feel...” (label your feeling – for example, anger).
“Let’s agree on...” (here you offer a compromise in the current situation).”

This communication formula is called confrontation and allows you to avoid getting personal. It describes another person's behavior and allows you to show that it hurts you.

Difference between hunger and appetite

So, as you already understand, in order to feel good, it is necessary to distinguish physiological hunger from emotional hunger. To do this, you need to ask yourself a few questions:

When? (When did I eat? Has it been more than 3-3.5 hours?)
What? (What exactly did I eat?)
Where? (Where do I feel hungry, in my head (appetite) or in my stomach (hunger), in the solar plexus?)

You cannot deceive the body and delay hunger - it can only be satisfied with food and nothing else.

The next five questions are asked after answering the first three if you have recognized appetite rather than hunger or accumulated hunger:

What did I do?/What did I not want to do at that moment?
What was I thinking?/What didn’t I want to think about?
What did I feel?/What did I not want to feel?
What do I need at this moment in time? What is my need, need?
What can I give myself now (instead of food)?

These five questions help a person get out of the food trance that is appetite, since it prevents a person from noticing how he eats too much or eats the wrong thing (“I went to the bakery, and then everything was like a fog...” ).

Before we move on to practice, let's summarize some results.

Every gram of fat means suppressed emotions. If a person lives as a slim person and thinks as a slim person, regardless of weight, he does not obsess over food, does not focus on his appearance, he does this on a whim and at the request of health, tracking, understanding and accepting his emotions and feelings.

What is eating behavior in general and what is eating disorder?

Eating behavior today is usually called a set of habits associated with food intake. Eating behavior can be normal or pathological (to use medical terminology - deviant).

Normal eating behavior means eating to satisfy hunger and satisfy nutritional needs. As a result of adequate eating behavior, the body's energy balance is formed.

Pathological eating behavior leads to the fact that a person gives food additional properties. It can become a means for relieving psycho-emotional stress, self-affirmation, compensation for unmet needs, or for communication, maintaining various rituals.

Exercises

When you are working on yourself, it is important that you have outside support: parents and loved ones who can stand by your side and help you fight the disease or achieve your goal. Many people may not have this form of support, and then you can look for it from the outside - from your coach, supervisor or psychotherapist. And the best option is to combine all these methods.

It is necessary to take care of yourself, working not only with eating habits, but also with your emotional background. The exercises below will help you with this.

Exercise “Circle of Pleasures”

Often a person eats away his negative emotions, which indicate that there is little pleasure in a person’s life.

Write a list of pleasures for yourself. The list must contain at least 33 items. They can be divided into subgroups: food, recreation, sports, beauty salon, hobbies, communication, sex (this includes, among other things, flirting, hugging, any communication with the opposite sex, that is, any contact even at the visual level).

Keep a few rules in mind when writing this exercise:

Your pleasures can depend only on your actions, and not on the actions of another person (for example: giving and receiving gifts, in your case, giving gifts can bring pleasure).

It is important to enjoy the process and preparation, not the result (for example: going to the theater. Preparing for this event can be a great pleasure, but performing in a theater can be disappointing).

In your “Circle of Pleasures” you need to write pleasures:

1. Which are already in my life. 2. They may appear now. 3. Show up at my ideal weight.

It is important not only to write down this circle of pleasures, but also to return to it every week in order to track the dynamics of changes, to see how many of these pleasures are present in your life, and which ones you have forgotten about.

This exercise allows you to reduce the sector of pleasure from food, but it must be reduced by increasing other sectors, otherwise after some time the circle of pleasures will automatically be filled with food again.

Exercise “How do I feel now?”

Ask yourself a couple of questions:

1. “How am I feeling emotionally right now?” When asking this question, it is important to stop in the flow of thoughts and actions. 2. “What do I feel physically now?” When asking this question, it is important to focus on yourself here and now.

This exercise allows us to determine that when we feel appetite, we actually concentrate on the emotions that we experienced in the past, and not here and now. By separating past experience from the situation here and now, you can recognize your true feelings, needs, and satisfy them properly.

Exercise “Diary of Feelings”

Keep a diary of feelings for yourself: during the day, record your desires, sensations, emotions and feelings.

Appetite is an irresistible desire to find an outlet for the emotion that you are experiencing at the moment, and, initially, the word “desire” in this context has nothing to do with food.

Therefore, if you have an irresistible desire to eat something, it is important to write down what feelings accompany this desire.

Exercise “Contact with food”

Take a small piece of any dessert:

1. Try touching this dessert with your hands and observe how you feel. 2. Smell it. 3. Hold it on your tongue until the taste is completely lost. 4. Observe the aftertaste.

With full and conscious contact with food, surprising observations can be discovered. For example, if you do this with chocolate, it will taste bitter and fatty.

Overweight people often have a weak connection with their body and impaired sensation and contact with food. This manifests itself in the fact that they eat unconsciously, quickly swallowing food. Therefore, it is important to chew food thoroughly, find contact with it, and through this behavior, contact with your own body.

Exercise “Plots of beauty”

Go to the mirror without clothes and find 6 areas of beauty on your body: 3 above the neck and 3 below the neck. This will allow you to be more in touch with your body.

A fat person lives in criticism, so it is important to allow yourself to remove the focus of attention from the criticized areas of the body and admire those that you really like, even if just a little.

Exercise “Tricky fat”

Answer the questions:

What was good about overeating and being overweight?
What does being slim give me?

These questions can reveal hidden messages, since the phrase “weight problems” suggests the presence of other problems that are affected by weight.

Paradoxical as it may seem, being overweight often brings positive things to overweight people. Inside a person’s personality there is harmony, which recommends taking care of yourself and your habits, and there is “cunning fat”, which justifies every kilogram and says “no big deal.” Slenderness speaks from a position of love, and “sly fat” speaks from a position of pity.

Let’s imagine a case: a child has diathesis and cannot eat citrus fruits. He comes to his grandmother, and she gives him an orange (“How can this be, the child is deprived of pleasure!”). Parents who forbid their child to eat citrus fruits speak (metaphorically) from the position of harmony and love, and the grandmother - from the position of “sly fat” and pity. Who is on the side of health here?!

How life stages influence human eating behavior

Dietitian Alex Johnston from the University of Aberdeen, UK, argues that our appetite and eating behavior depend on life stages, which she roughly divided into decades, starting from the moment of birth.

Each stage of life affects our eating style and is characterized by its own characteristics in the perception of food, the nutrition process and the level of responsibility in these matters. Knowing these specific qualities, understanding them and working with them can give each of us new opportunities to control our appetite and develop proper eating behavior.

The result of our efforts will be achieving well-being and improving the quality of our lives.

Formation of eating behavior in children under 10 years of age (age 0-10)

Formation of eating behavior in children under 10 years old (age 0-10) photo

At this tender age, the well-being of a child directly depends on the people around him. During this period, our needs, coordinated by the knowledge and wisdom of loved ones, their personal food preferences, will play a direct role in our perception of the process of eating. However, in the opposite case, their ignorance and impulsiveness will also be reflected in our eating style. Thus, it is up to them whether we become fertile ground for developing healthy eating habits.

Eating behavior that develops in early childhood will subsequently greatly influence our lives. For example, there is a good chance that an overweight child will grow up to become an overweight adult.

Examples of improper education of children under 10 years of age regarding food:

Force feeding
Forming the habit of finishing everything on a clean plate
Fruits and vegetables are not food
It's impossible to eat without bread
Reward with sweets (only after the “main meal”)
Calming with “candy.” (why not a carrot?)))

On the contrary, if we start introducing our child to vegetables rather than cakes, then the likelihood of poor eating behavior will be significantly reduced. At least we give him a choice.

Nurturing a nutritional culture at this age consists of several points:

The right choice of food;
Portion control;
Sweet control

Practical advice: Instead of candy, have a plate of fresh fruits and vegetables in a visible place in your kitchen.

Eating behavior of adolescents (10-20 years old)

Adolescence is characterized by a lot of questions that interest the growing, maturing organism, to which it often receives quite contradictory answers. Parents say one thing, friends say something different. And then there’s the hormonal surge, the first acne, the first love...

Thanks to youthful maximalism, all events are experienced violently and emotionally. Appetite and eating behavior at this age are influenced by several aspects:

Children begin to experiment with their appearance, nutrition, and relationships. They begin to respond to public demands in these matters, noting that to succeed in all areas you need to have the “right thin physique.” This leads to refusal to eat, despite hunger.
On the contrary, the growing body demands its own. The hormonal background prepares the child for puberty. To meet physiological needs, a child needs adequate nutrition. In fact, he may have an increased appetite, which he tries not to “notice.” A conflict arises between desires and reality.
Another scourge of this age is children’s passion for nutritional substitutes: chips, nuts, fast food, soda .

We must remember that at this age the foundation for the future is laid. Unfortunately, if a child does not have the right guidance, he may choose unhealthy eating behaviors with unhealthy consequences. Especially during this period, you need to pay attention to girls who strive for a “model” figure, refusing the necessary products.

Correct eating behavior is formed thanks to the following key points:

The desire to understand the child, his needs, requirements;
Complete nutrition, rich in all essential nutrients in several meals;
Conversations about the basics of proper nutrition

Practical Tip: Due to increased appetite during this period of life, provide your child with healthy snacks as needed.

Practical tip: Due to increased appetite during this period of life, provide your child with healthy snacks when necessary.

Eating problems that arise in 20-30 years

A healthy diet based on knowledge solves eating behavior problems.

Eating behavior during this period is largely determined by the events that occur in our lives at a given age. Enrolling in an educational institution, getting married, or having children can lead to weight gain. This happens for various reasons.

Let's look at some examples:

Admission to an educational institution. The daughter of my good friends, who went to college after high school, gained about 20 kg of excess weight within a few months. The model-looking girl became a very well-fed person, in whom it was difficult to recognize the once sweet child. Why did it happen? Entering an educational institution provoked an increase in stress in the child due to increased responsibility to his family and society. In addition, the lack of regular nutrition probably had an effect. These events could cause an increase in appetite, which as a result could not but affect the body.
Pregnancy and parenthood also leave their mark on eating habits. For example, we all know, some from our own experience, some from the experience of our loved ones, how hormonal levels change a woman’s appetite and taste preferences. Having a child is a different story with many challenges. Our whole life is resubordinated to a new mission. Daily routine, habits, diet and diet change. Lack of sleep, breastfeeding, lack of proper rest - all this leads to even greater changes in metabolic processes, which cannot but affect weight. During this period, our waistline is wrapped in a life preserver of extra pounds. Anything that accumulates during this period of time is very difficult to lose.
Marriage is the cause of eating disorders. This option is also possible. Moreover, this is not uncommon in our life. For example, food in the family is a sign of love. Mom prepares goodies to pamper the family. The more love, the more goodies and vice versa.

As you can see, we suffer from poor nutrition for various reasons. But there is only one way out of the current situation: a healthy diet, which is based not on our feelings (including appetite), but on the knowledge gained in this area.

For example, different foods send different signals to the brain. Foods high in fat do not send the brain a feeling of fullness. And foods high in protein, water, and fiber can give us that feeling of fullness that can stop us from eating unnecessary calories.

Eating habits at 30-40 years old

Try to take home-cooked food with you to work.

80% of people change their eating habits when entering adult working life. stress plays an important role , which is reinforced by individual character traits. For example, perfectionism and conscientiousness may cause increased stress reactions. Under such conditions, food can become a kind of “lightning rod” for us. In principle, this is psychologically explainable. In this unhealthy way we try to improve our quality of life . Think about where we felt absolutely safe? Right in mom's arms, absorbing delicious mother's milk. This was the maximum level of comfort that we have ever had in our lives. Since then, we have always been looking for it, especially when we find ourselves in various stressful situations.

The second provoking moment of this period can be an established family life. We gradually stop taking care of ourselves, believing that next to us is ours, and only ours, person. Due to taste preferences at this age, an irresistible desire to eat high-calorie foods may appear.

During this period of life, reducing stress levels should be one of our goal-setting tasks. In addition, you need to pay attention to the principles of proper nutrition, since one of its effects is a positive effect on the mental processes of the brain.
Try to take home-cooked food with you to work. After all, experience shows that if it is not there, then a person will eat whatever the nearby store sends him.

Features of eating behavior at 40-50 years old

This period gives us still good chances to heal the body to maintain optimal health and active longevity.

This age is characterized by relative calm and established habits. Most often we don’t want to change anything. Unfortunately, sometimes we don’t even understand what is right and useful for us if we have not tried to delve into these issues throughout our lives. We are still quite healthy in both mind and body.

But official medicine warns us that this is a rather unpredictable period of life, since diseases are often present in our body asymptomatically. It is at this age, according to WHO, that the mortality rate associated with unhealthy diet, lack of physical activity, smoking and alcohol consumption increases. Despite the warnings, by changing our habits, we can still significantly improve our health. For good reason, prudence should prevail over our “I want” and “I don’t want.”

This period gives us still good chances to heal the body to maintain optimal health and active longevity.

Brief characteristics of nutrition at 50-60 years old

This age of a person is characterized by the fact that processes associated with aging begin to appear more and more clearly in the body. One of the processes concerns a gradual decrease in muscle mass (0.5-1% per year). This process is called sarcopenia. Therefore, as we age, it is also important for us to change our taste preferences. A healthy, varied diet and physical activity are important to reduce the effects of aging.

It is recommended to pay attention to foods high in protein.

Changes in appetite and satiety with aging

Awareness in nutrition is the key to health and improving the quality of life at this age

This period of life is accompanied by further consequences of aging. There are problems with swallowing, attenuation of the physiological functionality of the sensory organs, as a result of which taste sensations are dulled. The lack of dentition is a particular inconvenience. All these problems can ultimately lead to poor appetite, which in turn can lead to involuntary weight loss and physical weakness.

Therefore, a conscious attitude towards food becomes a direct factor in maintaining quality of life at this age.

Conclusions. Human eating behavior is not something established. And nutrition ultimately reflects our social and cultural experiences. Each subsequent meal, in addition to the pleasure received, should ideally bring us closer to the goal of achieving optimal health at any period of our lives, allowing us to enjoy not only the taste, but also the positive effects obtained as a result of proper nutrition.

Be healthy at any age.

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Discussion: there is 1 comment

Olga Pyrova:
August 17, 2021 at 09:31 pm
Interesting and educational content. We often don’t think about what and where we eat. We are all in a hurry, we are in a hurry, we don’t have time, we chew sandwiches on the go. And only with age do you begin to understand this, when there is little health left.
Answer

Summary

So, as you already understand, being slim is not only about physical training and proper nutrition.

Slimness is a balance between all personality structures - biological, psychological, social and spiritual.

And in order for slimness to accompany us throughout our lives, it is important to follow not only behavioral rules (lead a healthy lifestyle), but also to put our inner world, our thinking and feelings in order. As the parable of the same name says: “What is inside me is outside.”

Author: Olga Kuznetsova, clinical psychologist, consulting psychologist in the modality of Transactional Analysis, specialist in the field of family psychology, nutritional psychology and health psychology