Comfort Foods and Food Addictions

I realize that I have started posting once a week now instead of twice like I had originally planned. Maybe in the near future I will actually post twice a week! We shall see.

In this post I'll be talking a bit about comfort foods and food addictions.

What exactly is comfort food? It is food that when consumed, relieves negative feeling/emotions or increases positive feeling/emotions. Needless to say, if you're down in the dumps and need a pick-me-up, you generally turn to some sort of type of food that will help you feel better.

My comfort foods are usually something off the wall and enough for people to stare at me blankly or wondering if I have some sort of mental issue. Whenever I'm feeling depressed, I like to eat things such as peanut butter (especially the honey roasted creamy kind) or ice cream. These are fairly normal. However I also like food with carbs in it such as mashed potatoes if there are any located in the house. There is also sour things such as pickles, the pickle juice, olives, what have you. I also tend to attack sodas like there is no tomorrow.

One of my goals is to try and change these comfort foods into healthier choices, and to try other methods to cheer me up before resorting to food. Food also tends to be there to fend off boredom and as we all know, this isn't a good idea.

So I will instead try to change my comfort foods into things such as baby carrots (preferably without anything to dip it in like the all holy ranch dressing that tastes good with just about everything), apples, raisins, or drink flavored water. Turn those used to be not healthy comfort foods into a healthier, more satisfying snack. This will be hard because mentally, you want to eat something that tastes good to you. I have to mentally train myself that eating healthier snacks will taste just as great as well as being the better choice for my body. Easy, no but healthier, yes.

I will admit that I am rather addicted to food. When I get bored, I usually find myself spending 2-3 hours each day wandering around the kitchen at the very least looking at the food we have and wishing we had more. I don't always eat anything, but it tends to be on my mind a lot and I hate it. I have better things to think about. I will also admit that I used to nibble on food here and there in the past, but I have broken that habit by simply opening a pantry door, looking only in the spots where I know there are no food of interest, and then walking away. I will most likely post a follow up on food addictions in the near future for something more in depth of how I'm dealing with it.

So to sum things up for this post: I will need to find better choices of comfort food that are healthier for me and won't add on unnecessary weight. I will need to choose food and drinks based on what sort of vitamins and nutrients it will give me while keeping in mind of the calorie intake. Keeping in mind the serving sizes and limit myself based on those to keep up with how many calories I am consuming in comfort foods alone. I also plan to evaluate this week (starting today, Monday) on just how many times I want to turn to comfort food. This will determine how I will find other methods to cope with my emotions.

What are your comfort foods? Do you turn to sweets or convenient foods? If you find yourself nibbling on candy or other 'sugar coated' foods more than once a day, toss those out and focus on fruits and cereals that have lower sugar amounts to help switch over to better for you choices. :) See how much better it affects you!