Why are comfort foods so appealing?
Certain foods in winter promise solace as much as they do fuel. They can trigger childhood memories of a happy family enjoying time together safe from the cold winter weather outside.
Comfort eating can be used as relief from troubled times in life. Certainly, when researchers at the University of Leuven in Belgium, studied the MRI scans of healthy participants, they saw the brain’s comfort with the ingesting of fatty substances.
Participants in the study listened to sad or neutral music and were asked to rate their mood before the MRI scans and three times during the brain scan. The participants were infused via a feeding tube with either a saline or a fatty substance.
“Fatty acids provide the positive benefits for enhancing moods and brain function which improve our thinking, feelings, and behavior [and] are becoming recognized for their mood-stabilizing and antidepressant effects as well as satiety,” says Treena Wynes, a wellness consultant in Saskatoon, Canada.
A bad day is not permission to eat poorly
Comfort eating is not the tyranny to healthy eating endeavours. Modern social protocols have “allowed” us to find comfort in highly processed foods that “ trick” our physiology into momentary comfort.
However, whether we “deserve” to eat a tub of ice cream because we are upset or stressed is irrelevant to our body.
The body will continue to process energy from food eaten into either fat for storage or use its nutritional value for growth, repair and replenishment of its healthy function.
In an article published in Health Psychology 2014, Kelly Brownell, an obesity researcher at Duke University said: “People have this belief that high-calorie foods are the path out of difficult feelings.”
High calorie comfort foods used in the study did help boost participants’ moods, but no more than other foods or no food at all.
Therefore, steering yourself toward whole foods to nourish the body, will also feed the soul, particularly in winter.
Finding resilience in exercise
Looking for resilience in the consumption of highly processed food is misguided. It is exercise that stimulates the release of true feel good chemicals.
These chemicals (hormones) are called endorphins, and they interact with the receptors in our brain to reduce our perception of pain and heighten our sense of pleasure.
Also, exercise strengthens our heart, increases our energy levels, lowers our stress levels, improves muscle tone and strength, builds bones, reduces body fat, it makes us feel and look happy and healthy.
Particularly in winter, regular exercise will boost immunity by improving lymphatic and cardiovascular circulation and help combat the onset of tendencies towards SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder).
Getting out of a warm bed to exercise is painful.
Unfortunately, our body is programmed to feel alive with movement and will crave the chemical rush of exercise endorphins. Without exercise, our body will begin to depress, withdraw and deteriorate.
Consuming processed comfort foods and sitting on a cosy couch will serve as a momentary feel good fix.
Regrettably, the feel good of not exercising will not be a physically sustainable long-term solution to happiness or good health.
Continuing to exercise through a cold winter with your Shape-Up friends will offer the benefits of a supportive and understanding group.
If we are in it together, it will be easier to wake up and workout towards better health this winter!
I leave you this week with words by Oprah Winfrey, who recently admitted in an interview with weight watchers, to having been controlled by the love of potatoes for 40 years.
She said that of all her achievements, her greatest was to open a 140g bag of crinkle cut chips, count 10 chips, savour and eat each one and then to have put the bag away.
“Where there is no struggle, there is no strength.” Oprah Winfrey
Live well and eat well
Anna
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