Live to Eat or Eat to Live

Written by Branda Polk

Have you ever thought about the reasons you eat? People eat for a myriad of reasons including stress, loneliness, time of day, food availability, comfort, habit, or hunger. Of all the reasons to eat, only hunger is a reliable guide for optimal health and proper weight management. Hunger signals that the body's fuel supply is low and needs replenishing. When you eat in response to hunger, you eat to live instead of living to eat.

Unlike many impoverished cultures around the world, a wide variety of food is readily available and accessible in the American culture. We can get almost anything we desire to eat at anytime during the day. Because of this availability, hunger is rarely the main reason we choose to eat. Most often our reasons for eating are in the mind and not in the stomach. When the focus is on living to eat instead of eating to live, food can become an unhealthy obsession or even an idol. To break the cycle of food focus, learn to recognize when your body is hungry and then eat healthful foods to fuel your body. 

Hunger is an instinctual feeling that we recognize from birth. However, if overeating or eating for other reasons has become a regular lifestyle choice, then recognizing the signs of hunger may be more difficult. Signs of hunger include but are not limited to:

• A rumbling or gnawing feeling in your stomach.
• Low blood sugar signaled by slight dizziness or a drop in energy level.
• An empty feeling in the stomach

According to the American Dietetic Association, we need to ask ourselves three questions before eating to help the body recognize hunger and eat to fulfill a nutritional need instead of an emotional or mental desire:

1. Am I really hungry? If you are not sure, wait 20 minutes and ask yourself again.
2. When was the last time I ate? If it's less than three hours, it may not be real hunger.
3. Could a small snack tide me over until the next meal? Try and have ready-to-eat fruit or vegetables on hand.

Using body awareness and self-evaluation questions can help you stay in tune with your body and feed it according to need and not desire or craving. We need food to survive but we don't need it in excess. Jesus made this point very clear in Luke 12:23, "Life is more than food and the body more than clothes." Learn to focus your lifestyle away from your next meal and treat food like the sustaining substance God created it to be.  Avoid living to eat and start eating to live.

Branda Polk, B.S. Exercise Science, is a certified personal trainer, wellness coach, conference speaker and health writer in Lebanon, Tennessee. Sign up for Branda's newsletter, Wellness Connection, to receive encouragement and coaching in the areas of nutrition, exercise, and stress relief. Follow Branda on Twitter.

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