Dealing With Trigger Foods

We know how emotions can cause us to crave certain foods, but did you know that those roles can be reversed? Sometimes, eating specific foods can cause us to feel all sorts of feelings, and it’s on us to figure out which ones bring us joy and which ones cause us misery.

Every person is different, and while something may work for me, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll work for you. Turning the attention inward and focusing on our own emotional reactions is a hard task, but a very relevant one. It can be the key to healing, both for our physical and mental body.

In an ideal world, we would all only eat the cleanest foods, and they’d make us super happy, ready to tackle every obstacle that gets in our way, dismissing feelings of pain, anger, and sadness with just a slice of banana bread. But let’s be real, we don’t live in an ideal world, we live in the real world, where we go for hot chocolate and cinnamon buns to sweeten our mornings, and pizza and ice cream to wipe away our evening tears. It’s usually those types of foods that trigger unwanted consequences.

Have you thought about how the memories attached to certain foods can hinder your healing? What if you used to have that chocolate and cinnamon bun mix as a part of your Sunday morning routine with your ex? Or what if pizza and ice cream was your regular Friday night Netflix-and chill cheat day? What if, after that temporary serotonin we get from the sugar rush, it brings back all the memories of what “we used to be.” How are we supposed to let go? How are we supposed to free ourselves from our past and turn over a new leaf? Suddenly, we realize that even though we thought that specific food made us happy (because we enjoyed eating it), it actually triggered emotions we didn’t want to feel and makes us feel sad, depressed, and causes us to reminisce about the past.

Finding these types of connections on a day-to-day basis are amazing discoveries that’ll turn into a big tool to help you move forward...and make you turn your eating habits around - maybe even get you to #cleanse and reset (check my latest blog post where I talk exactly about that)! And although it can be tough to admit that to ourselves, the only time we’re actually going to feel good after a meal, is if we don’t drag our memories into it.

Xx,

Karla