We’re going to talk about boredom eating, or eating when you’re bored. We’ve all done it. We’ve all done it, and I’m sure you’ve done it too. Sitting there feeling sorry for yourself, or not being happy, or nothing to do, or your friends are all having a good time, and you’re sitting there all sad and sorry. You go to the refrigerator or you go to the pantry, you might find something nice to eat … might be a nice piece of chocolate cake, or some cookies, or something like that for you to really enjoy. Notice the word, how I said too “enjoy.” That’s because people often equate food with joy.
If you’re sitting there, look carefully at your emotional state. If you really want that cookie or that nice treat. Something you may not remember, but I’ve said many times in previous videos … when people say that they like the taste of something, they usually mean it tastes sweet. I’ve not usually found someone to have some tomatoes with vinegar on it. “Oh, I like the taste of this.” No one says that. But if you give someone a nice piece of chocolate cake, or a cookie full of sugar, “Ooh, I like the taste of that.”
So, the sweetness … The sweetness stirs a lot of emotion up in people. People often love sweet stuff. Look at your emotional state, as I’m trying to say this. That’s point number one. The emotional state. Try not to always equate food with joy. Food is also just nourishment to fill us up. It doesn’t always have to make us feel good, and make us feel like we’ve got fluffy ducks in a nice environment. We’re sitting in a bathtub with fluffy ducks all around us. Food doesn’t have to make you feel like that.
But if you’re unhappy, if you’re really happy, if you’re pissed off, if you’ve got a powerful emotional state, that’s not a good time for you to start eating food or to jump into food. If you’ve broken up with your wife, or with your boyfriend … again, not a great time to think, “Well, I’m just going to go and grab these bag of potato chips and eat those.” The emotional state often will have a key role in pushing you into shunting you into a refrigerator, or shunting you into a pantry, or something like that.
So, think about the circumstances regarding the development of the emotional state. Did you have a breakup? Did you just win $20 million in a lotto? If something happened to you, that can be a reason why you’re jumping into food. You’re getting bored. You’re eating for boredom, or excitement, or whatever. I shouldn’t have called this video perhaps boredom, but why are you eating inappropriately? But many people are bored. They sit there and they do nothing.
Change your habits is point number two. If you’re bored sitting there, and all you’ve got is the television with 59,000 channels of crap to watch and a refrigerator full of food, you might need to change your habits. You may need to do different things. If you want stuff different in your life, you’ve got to do stuff. It makes sense, doesn’t it? Your habits need changing. Maybe you need to get out more. Maybe you need to spend more time with friends. Maybe you need to walk more. Maybe you need to buy a dog. Something like that.
Think about what you can do to change. Change your habits and you change your life. Remember the saying I often quote. “People don’t decide on their future. They decide on the habits, and the habits will decide the future for that person.” All right. So, good habits or bad habits, it’s up to you.
Third point, you got to eat the right food. People who are bored and who make the wrong dietary choices often will just jump on snacks that are very high in carb. They could be cookies, or crackers, or potato chips, or they could be peanuts, or something like that. It could be a cake, but often it’s a carbohydrate kind of a food. Well, it’s not really a good snack to eat when you’re bored.
If you surround yourself with good food … you grow a lot of good food like I do, for example … well, that’s what you’re going to eat. If I grew hamburgers off trees, and I had cans of Coke sprouting out the ground … I had maybe pizzas popping out of pot plants or something, whatever. I’d probably eat that kind of stuff, wouldn’t I? If I could grow pizzas, I’d probably eat them. But I don’t grow pizzas. I grow blueberries, and avocados, and things like that.
Point I’m making is if you’ve got good food around you, if you’ve got people around you that eat good food, that encourage you to eat good food, and you encourage others to eat good food … it’s likely that that’s the kind of food choices you’re going to eat when you’re bored. If you haven’t got crap in the house to eat when you’re bored, you’re not going to eat crap. If you’ve got good food in the house, you’re likely going to eat the good food. So, whatever is in your environment is likely what you’re going to consume. That’s the point I’m making. Okay.
So, boredom … the fourth point also tells me that you’re lacking passion. People are passionate, not bored people. They’re not boring people, and they don’t get bored. They’ve got plenty to do. Many people my age 60 plus, I asked them what they’re doing in life, and they’re bored. I say, “What the hell? There’s so much to do in life. There’s so many more years to live and things to do.” But people often who are bored who eat not really well have got nothing to do. They’ve got no aim in life, a bit like a boat without a rudder. It’s got no clear direction to go anywhere.
These people often don’t plan. They wake up from day to day. They don’t know what they’re doing. Their life’s pretty pointless or aimless. What kind of a life is that? So, developing a passion in something … Now for me, it’s gardening, or it could be a guitar playing. For you, it may be flower arranging. It may be a dress making. It may be shotgun targets or something. I don’t know what you guys get into out there. Again, the point I’m making is if you’ve got a passion, it’s great. But if you haven’t got a passion, develop a passion. Develop an interest in something that you can put your mind and soul into. Could even be a relationship. It could be a pet. It could be anything.
But when you do that, you’ll find you’re taking the eye off the refrigerator. You won’t be so bored anymore, because you’ve got an outlet in life. And often good to develop friendships or relationships regarding that passion, which is really good thing for you to do. You’ll find that that will get you away from the crappy food, and often the wrong kind of food choices. Try and think about those four points I discussed regarding to boredom and food, because you don’t have to eat crappy food or make the wrong choices. If you think about things, you don’t have to at all.
