{"id":5060,"date":"2023-01-09T17:57:02","date_gmt":"2023-01-09T23:57:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/?p=5060"},"modified":"2023-01-09T17:57:04","modified_gmt":"2023-01-09T23:57:04","slug":"fear-and-hunger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/fear-and-hunger\/","title":{"rendered":"Fear and Hunger"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Fear and Hunger is a horror\ndungeon crawl role-playing video game. I\u2019ve seen it described as wallowing in pain,\ndecay, and death \u2013 something to be survived, not enjoyed. Why would anyone play\nit? It sounds terrible. And yet it has players who come back again and again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes humans have an appetite\nfor the horrible. And sometimes we gravitate toward things that feel familiar.\nIn families that deny food to certain members or can\u2019t provide for everyone,\nlife experience may tangle fear and hunger to the degree that when either is\nout of balance, we feel as though we\u2019re wallowing in pain that may threaten\ndeath. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If hunger triggers fear, you may eat when you\u2019re not hungry in order to avoid the opportunity to feel frightened. If fear triggers hunger, you may choose fried food to help calm yourself down. Or you may have other nuanced appetite alterations without knowing why. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"fear\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s easy to forget how\ninterconnected our emotional and physical needs are when we rarely even acknowledge\nhow connected our physical parts are. We tend to forget that a foot injury may\nmake our hip hurt. We often fail to examine the effect of family discord on our\nappetite or ability to tolerate certain food. Whether or not we acknowledge it,\nthose relationships exist and affect the choices we make.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We all know the term stress\neating, but rarely do we pause long enough to explore ways to shift, reframe,\nor eliminate our stressors. Instead, we try a shortcut we call willpower to\navoid stress eating. And why wouldn\u2019t we? Western medicine has taught us to prioritize\ntreating symptoms rather than underlying disease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so, we come back to the game\nagain and again \u2013 fear and hunger, hunger and fear. Or fear that prevents us\nfrom feeling hunger. It\u2019s a merry-go-round. And it becomes apparent about this\ntime every year when resolutions dissolve into stupid ideas in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every journey begins with one step. What\u2019s the first step off the fear and hunger merry-go-round?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scheduling<\/strong>. Narrow your\nmeal and snack times to small windows each day during which you eat. Over time,\nyour body will adjust to this schedule. This can help you avoid the excess acid\nproduction that can cause ulcers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If that step is difficult for\nyou, begin with something different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Disrupting.<\/strong> Change\nsomething, anything. If you like salty food, eat sweet food. If you like bananas,\neat apples. If you like cereal for breakfast, eat yogurt. It\u2019s easier to connect\nwith our senses when we get out of a rut because we have to pay attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once you\u2019ve changed something,\nchange something else. Carefully evaluate how you feel during and after each\nchange.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Feeling it.<\/strong> One way to dissipate a level of fear is to stick with it until it\u2019s gone. This requires some courage and practice. In the beginning, you may feel nauseated. You may have to distract yourself quickly. But eventually, you will be able to feel your way past fear. That can change your experience of food and eating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Describing it to yourself.<\/strong> Yes, I\u2019m suggesting you talk to yourself. Describe how your mouth feels when you chew a carrot. Describe how your stomach feels after you eat. Describe each sensation you become aware of. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once you\u2019re familiar with the\nsensations, see if any of them are attached to a specific emotion. Add the\nemotion to your description. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reframing.<\/strong> Becoming familiar with physical sensations and their attached emotions will put you in a position to experiment. See if you can reframe the emotion attached to a certain sensation. If not, it\u2019s okay. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you can, practice attaching a\ndifferent meaning to a familiar sensation. That pain I feel in my solar plexus\nis the same pain I felt yesterday when I wondered if this was what they mean by\nchest pains that precede a heart attack. I felt really scared. Now I wonder\nwhether I will feel it every time I eat in a hurry like I did both days?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These steps are not the only ones you can take to begin to disentangle fear and hunger (or other sensations and emotions). Anything that works for you is fine. You get to make the rules of the game. You also get to change them as you go to make them more effective. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As you slowly explore, experience, and reframe, you will gain more and more ability to make and stick to choices that improve your eating and your life. Bye-bye fear and hunger!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Fear and Hunger is a horror dungeon crawl role-playing video game. I\u2019ve seen it described as wallowing in pain, decay, and death \u2013 something to be survived, not enjoyed. Why would anyone play it? It sounds terrible. And yet it has players who come back again and again. Sometimes humans have an appetite for the … Continue reading “Fear and Hunger”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2538],"tags":[3360,3361,1882,3358,3359],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5060"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5060"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5068,"href":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5060\/revisions\/5068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}