Food Psychology

I love avocados!  If you have been paying attention to the news and listening to the nutrition experts, you know that avocados are really good for you.  They are jam packed with Omega 3’s and 6’s and although they are high in fat, beneficial  monounsaturated fats.  All that positive press made me happy and I was eating at least one avocado a day.  

You can imagine my surprise, then, when I discovered that avocados, according to Dr. Peter J. D’Adamo in his book Eat Right 4 Your Type,  are not a “beneficial food” for folks like me who are Type O blood type.  In fact, they are on the Eat Right 4 Your Type  ”Type O Avoid List” as a food that is unfriendly to Type O’s digestive tract.  But, could I give them up?  Yes, I reasoned, I could in order to be without digestive distress.  But would I give them up?   Would I be willing to let go of that delicious, creamy, nutty flavor that I had come to love?  That was the question!  And, if I was willing to let them go, when would I do it? 

For those of you who know the Sedona Method, the practice of ”letting go”, perhaps you recognize the 3 questions that precede the “letting go” process.    So, since I was having digestive difficulties, I gave them up for 3-4 days to see if it made a difference.  And it did!  Within 3-4 days I was feeling signifantly less digestive discomfort.  Then,  after letting go of several other foods on the Avoid List, by the end of 2 weeks I would say I was 98% improved.  I only re-experience mild symptoms when I start eating those foods which according to Dr. D’Adamo’s research and experience inflame and irritate Type O’s bodies (those darn Avoid foods again!). 

What does this have to do with food psychology?  Everything!  When we are confronted with a possible answer to our difficulties, especially when it relates to our eating pleasure, we have to be willing to have an open mind to be able to change a behavior that is currently rewarding.  As I said in the beginning of this post, I love avocados  and I did not want to give them up.  To me eating an avocado is like having dessert and it was hard for me to believe that avocados might be contributing to my digestive distress.  But I did want to get better, didn’t I?  That is the question that I was confronted with and I did respect Dr. D’Adamo’s expertise in the field.  So, I owed it to myself to consider that avocadoes could be the source of my undoing and if I wanted to feel better, it was worth dumping them in favor of feeling good!  The only thing I had to lose was pain and a few days of eating pleasure.  So I did it and I am so glad I did.  Pain free is better than a few moments reward of that smooth, velvety, nutty flavor of a ripe avocado (I told you I love them!).  Anyway Dr. D’Adamo says that once your body has healed after an inflammatory condition, you can always give an offending food another try and if you can tolerate it, eat it occasionally.  And I just might do that.  But right now I am content to let avocadoes go

Most experts in applied psychology will tell you that you become what you think about.  Thoughts are things and are very powerful.  New research in the field of quantum physics and neuropsychology bear this out.  Thoughts can be either constructive or destructive, positive or negative, pro-active or demoralizing, etc. and the impact of those thoughts on our brains can actually be documented by brain (SPECT) imaging as affirmed by studies conducted at the National Institute of Mental Health. and by Dr. Daniel Amen, the famous neuropsychiatrist in his book Change Your Brain, Change Your Body and others:   ”It is true. Bad, mad, sad, hopeless, or helpless thoughts release chemicals that make you feel bad….These awful, miserable, negative thoughts make your brain and body work less efficiently…(sic) happy, positive, hopeful and loving thoughts release chemicals that make you feel good.” 

So, what does this mean for us and how does this apply to how we think about food and how we nourish ourselves?  Here are some of the questions we might ask ourselves.  How do we think about food?  Are we mindful about what we eat, how we eat, where we eat?  Do we attend to what is “eating us”, those thoughts, both fleeting and nagging, that keep us trapped in behavior that sabotages our health?    Is food a source of nourishment for our body, mind and spirit or is it something we just do, “eat to live” so to speak.  Do we fall into the habit of playing “fortune teller” when we think about losing weight by saying something like, “You will never lose weight!  You are just big boned and destined to be heavy.” 

Remember to challenge your faulty thinking and not to believe the constant background chatter of what Zen Buddists call the  “monkey mind”.  Take charge and know that it is mindless chatter, not to be believed, only to be aware of and then let go!  Once you do that, you are on the road to healing and wholeness.  Be persistent with good mental health practices.  As the I Ching instructs, “Correct persistence brings good fortune.”