Is Your Food Calling to You? What’s it Saying?

Does your food call your name?

Do the cookies in the cupboard softly whisper, “come get me!” Is the ice cream hollering to you? What about the pizza parlor? Does it transmit images of hot, fresh pizza in your mind? Do you get strange vibes from the pizza parlor telling you to call to order a large pepperoni?image

It’s not just talking food that gets us in trouble with too many calories. Some of us have trouble controlling our machinery. Cars have been known to swerve into Dunkin Donuts and McDonald’s. Hapless drivers are at a loss to explain how their cars queue up in a drive thru line and take possession of the driver who sits bewildered behind the wheel while her mouth, temporarily taken over by the car, makes a unplanned order of fat and sugar!

It’s funny to say that food calls our name, makes us eat it against our will, but there is nothing funny about how it affects our power to change our relationship with food. Kidding isn’t always harmless even when it seems obvious that we are being silly. Of course, literally food isn’t talking but mentally we are acknowledging that we have no power or ability to make choices that support our weight-related goals when we’re in proximity of highly palatable foods.

A strategy is to remove those foods from our immediate environments to “protect us from them.” The strategy fails to deliver the salvation from overindulgence consistently. We can’t spend our lives running away from food. It’s everywhere.

The joke needs to stop. Food doesn’t talk. It doesn’t call out to us. We give it its voice. We can take its voice away or we can change how it talks to us, if we prefer. What matters is we take back our power and authoritity as a human being to manage inanimate objects!

Yes, there are cookies in the cabinet, ice cream in the fridge, pizza just a phone call away, and yes, sometimes we will want to eat those things. Yes, we can eat them and we can eat them on our terms!

We can eat them when we decide it’s a good time to do so. We can decide how big or small our serving will be. We can decide that we are satisfied. We don’t need to eat the cookies or ice cream until there isn’t any left. We will enjoy our treats more to know that we can choose when and how much and leave some, or a lot, for another time!

Please don’t shake your head and think it’s not something you can do! You believe the silly proclamations of experts trying to convince you you’re addicted. You’ve tried the food plans “guaranteed to end cravings” and your cravings only got stronger proving to you that you are unable to control yourself with certain foods.

The only thing you’ve proven to yourself is limiting beliefs take away your power (and wasted your time and money on the “expert’s” advice.) Challenge the beliefs! Take back your power! Discover your strength and learn how flexing your “power over food muscles” make the, stronger!image

If you must anthropomorphize your food, make food your quiet and loyal servant! You speak, food listens and obeys!

Jackie Conn

About Jackie Conn

Jackie Conn is married and has four grown daughters and four grandchildren. She is a Weight Watchers success story. She's a weight loss expert with 25 years of experience guiding women and men to their weight-related goals. Her articles on weight management have been published in health, family and women's magazines. She has been a regular guest on Channel 5 WABI news, FOX network morning program Good Day Maine and 207 on WCSH.