Written by: Amy Bondar, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Purpose is one of the most important and powerful nutrients. The body, mind, and soul are influenced by having a purpose. Physically, purpose creates energy and vitality. Mentally, it stimulates and satisfies. Living a purposeful life ultimately nourishes the soul.
Our relationship with food, health, and weight is undoubtedly influenced by how purposeful our lives are. Lack of fulfillment, mission, and purpose in one’s life can contribute to unwanted eating behaviors such as overeating, food cravings, and binge eating. It can contribute to weight challenges and chronic dieting, as well as fatigue. Ultimately when we do what we love and live inspiring meaningful and fulfilling lives, we have a healthier relationship with food, our bodies, and ourselves.
One of the most inspiring ways to eat and elevate our relationship with food is to align what we are eating with our life’s purpose. Ultimately we want to eat to fuel our mission.
Exploring Unwanted Eating Behaviors
When we don’t wake up every day doing what we love and repress our gifts and calling, they can be expressed through unwanted eating behaviors. Many people use food for fulfillment because they are not fulfilled otherwise. They lack pleasure, satisfaction, energy, and vitality, so food becomes the substitute. If we do what we love, we feel nourished. If life is not nourishing, then food fills that void. This is why a fulfilling life purpose is one of the greatest contributing factors to achieving optimum wellness. Purpose ultimately feeds and nourishes the body, mind, and soul.
One of the reasons people overeat is because they experience grave dissatisfaction in their work. It creates a physiological and psychological stress response when doing something you do not love, which can trigger overeating, food cravings, and binge eating. When we have pleasure and purpose in our lives, our bodies are in a parasympathetic dominant state, where our appetite naturally regulates, and the intense desire to overeat evaporates. When doing what we love, we are soulfully nourished, which gives a feeling of pleasure. We no longer use food for this purpose; rather, food is used to give us the energy to support our mission and purpose in life.
The foods we binge on or turn to when emotional or stress eating offer us insight and a doorway into what is truly at the root of our cravings. On a physical level, we may experience cravings due to lack of eating rhythm throughout the day or having an imbalanced macronutrient profile. For example, a deficiency in protein and essential fats and excess consumption of carbohydrates can trigger cravings. In many cases tweaking and rebalancing these macronutrients can help these cravings to subside.
There are times we crave foods simply because we love them, and we want to experience the joy and pleasure of eating them. I refer to these as soulful cravings. They occur occasionally and are much more controlled. We may desire food or drink because we truly love the taste, smell, experience, and pleasure it provides. These soulful cravings do not create imbalance or ill-effect in the body. They do not create guilt, shame, and self-attack. They simply provide joy.
Understanding Our Food Cravings
For many people, however, food cravings are more complex, and understanding and overcoming them lie within the mental and emotional fields. Behind every persistent food, craving resides an emotion. The foods we crave or binge on releasing specific neurotransmitters that make us feel pleasure, contentment, and fulfillment. These are the same neurotransmitters that are released when living a meaningful and purposeful life. For example, when fulfilled, serotonin levels are increased, but when we lack pleasure from our lives, serotonin decreases, and we may seek it out in the form of serotonin-rich foods such as sweets and refined carbohydrates. Lack of fulfillment, personal drive, and feeling incomplete can naturally lower neurotransmitters. When these pleasure-creating neurotransmitters are low, it is common for people to crave food or feel the need to elevate their mood and energy with specific foods.
For example, according to Doreen Virtue, PhD. in Constant Craving, a probable meaning for why people have persistent and constant cravings for coffee (that are emotional in nature) is due to an “energy drain from engaging in activities that are meaningless or intimidating.” Virtue also writes that feeling burnout, resentment, or disappointment with your job can also trigger cravings for coffee. It is no surprise why so many people frequent coffee shops and fill up their coffee mugs throughout the day. If you love what you do and are inspired by what you do every day, you will have an incredible amount of energy. You will not feel the need to stimulate your energy artificially. Your true source of energy will come from within. By tapping into your own inner knowing and your soul’s true calling, you become awakened to what you are here to do on this planet. That is true energy! When you find your fulfillment, the intense cravings for coffee and other commonly craved foods (which are unique to each individual) will naturally and effortlessly dissipate.
Even the textures and tastes of foods can alter our mood and energy. Virtue explains that spicy foods are often craved when more excitement is needed in our lives. Nuts and nut butters are often desired when we need more fun and play. Dairy cravings often help ease depression. Anger, anxiety, and stress can often be alleviated by salty and crunchy foods. Bread, pasta, and rice often provide comfort, calm, and peace of mind. If work is dull and boring if life is work and no play, if you feel depressed or stressed because you hate your job and feel empty and unsatisfied in life, then it makes sense as to why you seek out specific foods to make you feel better. As Marc David, my mentor and founder of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating, said, “the body yearns for aliveness through sweet things, tasty things, and whatever stimulates and excites the senses to a heightened experience of life.” When you do what you love and are inspired by your life and your mission, you naturally feel alive, stimulated, excited, and have a heightened sense of joy and pleasure. In this state, the desire or need to binge or overeat is eliminated because the body, mind, and soul are nourished by your purpose.
Awaken your Purpose
To understand and overcome overeating, food cravings, and binge eating, it is imperative to explore the emotional field and see what is truly at the root of these behaviors. These symptoms are our body-wisdom talking to us. They are attempting to reveal a message to let us know we are potentially off our soul’s path and that we are not doing what we are meant to be doing. A disconnection from this informing field may be why someone unconsciously reaches into the refrigerator over and over again to fill a hole that is not physical in nature. This disconnect from our calling may also be why someone continually struggles with weight. Their untapped potential energy may block and stifle their metabolic potential and leave them feeling unfulfilled. This can put them on a path of unhealthy eating and chronic dieting, which ultimately leaves them in a vicious and debilitating cycle. If we are disconnected from living a fulfilling and purposeful life, symptoms like fatigue will take over and weaken our body, mind, and soul.
Making these emotional and soulful connections to unwanted eating behaviors can be one of the most eye-opening and transformational experiences for my clients. It can be the key that opens the door to making necessary shifts in their lives which will ultimately make the important changes in physiology and transform their relationship with food, body, and self. When our soul is nourished, we eat to nourish. When we do what we love, the body can find its rightful weight. When we are fulfilled, we have unbounded energy, and our food is consciously eaten to help us support our mission.
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Amy Bondar, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Amy Bondar, Nutritional Therapist, Certified Eating Psychology Coach, Speaker and Author changes lives! Amy brings two decades of experience in the field of nutrition and mind-body coaching and believes that nourishing our body with the power of food, resolving stresses that are blocking our physiology and hindering our full potential and living a life with purpose are the essential ingredients to optimizing our health. Amy offers virtual consults and lectures to clients around the world and will inspire, educate and guide you to transform your relationship with food, body and self.
