It’s interesting to think that our overall healthiness can be boiled down to our subconscious ideologies about things, if you can believe that these ideologies impact our habits, traditions, and lifestyle, which is pretty much a direct determining factor of our health.

My mother was telling me about a book she read which looked at our emotional relationships with food, and how that affects our eating habits. Not chemical, e.g chocolate releases endorphines which makes us happy. But things like how eating broccoli as a kid is always portrayed in media as the stereotypical unpleasant food to eat, and so we avoid broccoli as it has a negative connotation in our mind.

But I want to focus on something a bit simpler that had crossed my mind. As of late I’ve been trying the whole ‘6 meals a day’ thing, and the positive effects have been felt wholly. So I asked myself, why do I not eat like this all the time? What had prevented me from doing this before?

I realized that my perception of meals - and thus eating - was that it was an event. And that may not seem relevant, but I think there are major psychological implications of this.

To help exaggerate the point, as we go along consider the differences between having a snack and having a meal. I think you can consider the ‘6 meals a day’ ideas as really just having 6 larger snacks.

So, if I look at my family and how I grew up thinking about it/experiencing it, a ‘meal’ is an event. You plan things before it, you plan things after it, but it stays. It has an explicit time slot. It involves significant preparation, social interaction, and proper etiquette.

So now, when I think of having ‘6 meals a day’, you can see how it becomes daunting. So what I think happens is that when I consider it, I subconsciously think to all those things I just mentioned, and the idea gains a negative aura, and I don’t event attempt the habit.

Alternatively, if you think of a snack, what comes up? Well, I think quick as opposed to lengthy, small as opposed to large an filling, in between events or during an event as opposed to being an event in itself.

So you can hopefully see why, to me, having six larger snacks could be psychologically more appealing than six small meals.

I think it’s also important to point out what triggered me to change. I noticed that a very effective co-worker would regularly eat his lunch while working, or while we were meeting. I had always had a negative perception of that: it meant in my mind that he could not fit his MEAL into his schedule, implying he was busy/rushed.

But then I as I spent time with him as he was eating, I noticed he was totally OK with the fact that he was eating while doing other things. And then I had realized that he probably had different psychological ties to what a meal meant. His expectation of a meal was probably comparable to my expectation of a snack: something you to in between or during events: a meal to him was casual, as opposed to formal. That’s it right there: the difference between a casual association to a meal and a formal association to a meal.

I then subconsciously realized that if he could have a different view, then I could change mine. So when those negative connotations appeared, I just said ‘well, I’ll rewrite that’ and got on with it.

I think the overall take away is to consider the psychological ties you have to your eating habits e.g. What kind of meals you eat. Then, if you wish to change them, realize that you can. Finding inspiration in the form of people with other habits is helpful, or just going with your gut.

Hopefully you learned from my epiphany.