This is the last article you can comment on
for this month.
Does feeling guilty about what you eat lead
to better eating habits or just make you feel bad? Is this more of a problem with women than with men? Is food guilt
as common in Slovakia as it seems to be in New Zealand?
Firstly, it is well-known that people nowadays want to be fit and eat healthy, since society obtrudes us those ideas. To have membership in a gym and take photos there is becoming very “cool”. However, how many of those people who pretend to exercise actually want to work out? Not as many as we would expect. Naturally, it is all the same with diets, being as slim as possible and “eating” water instead of nutritious food. Since everyone fails from time to time and indulges his instinctive tastes, the guilty feeling can overwhelm him.
ReplyDeleteI think if people managed their lives according their own opinions and not the opinions offered by society, they would achieve all the goals they determined because it was their ambition and the feeling of guilty would disappear. Thus, I consider Delaney Mes’s opinion that we should do what makes us (and not society) happy very accurate. If a woman enjoys every bite of her salad, she will not crave for sweet doughnuts because she does not want to eat them, not just to avoid them for the period of time. On the other side, a woman, who wants to lose weight or to eat the same healthy food as their friends even if she does not like it, will crave for doughnuts or crisps every time she sees them in shop. Once she succumbs this longing and the guilt with the hatred of herself never leave her. But where is the point of hating myself? Should I kill myself because I can confess I choose to eat ice cream instead of broccoli? Probably not.
Moreover, I mentioned women tend to be affected by their friends, for example in eating habits, since I think women are more likely to suffer from dissatisfaction with their weight or figure than men. Women consider their look more important and therefore we can observe many mental problems, especially with young girls, who are pushed by society to be beautiful, but primarily, slim. This problem is not anymore just about feeling guilty or being sick of people who want to drown in the sea of sugar and at the same time to be fit, but humankind must fight with mental diseases as a consequence of the force of society, where our own opinions and happiness are not important anymore.
I agree with Lucka’s opinion on the topic in every single way. Especially with the part when she is talking about why people exercise. I think that the people should exercise because they want to do it and not because the public obtrudes them this idea and says it is cool. Furthermore, I personally cannot avoid the temptation to eat whenever I feel a bit hungry or whenever I want to kill time by eating something small and it does not matter whether it is a pack of chips or a bowl of grapes. I prefer the healthier choice, not because I want to lose weight but because it is tastier for me. As Lucka and Delaney agreed, each person has different taste; hence we should not feel guilty about what we eat. Moreover, I agree that women take more care of themselves than the men but the women are also more critical to themselves than men, which is total nonsense. Why the women should be slim and well-built while the men often have beer belly and they do not care about it. Maybe, we should learn something from them and try to be less critical and more relaxed when it comes to the figure and the diet.
DeleteNowadays, living healthy lifestyle is getting more and more popular. As Delaney mentioned, we are bombarded from all sides. Advertisers, marketers, internet. There are a lot of people who give in this 21st century trend, but how many of these people really want to live healthy?
ReplyDeleteI am sure that someone who wants to live healthy lifestyle (and it is his own decision not influenced by anybody) does not need to 'give himself a bit of break in the meantime' as Delaney mentioned. Living healthy lifestyle is what you do for the rest of your life, not just something you do for a couple of weeks to lose weight before a special occasion you want to look better at. It is not self-tormenting. You don’t eat something not because of guilt but because you don’t like it anymore. It is the way of life you LOVE to live, which means you do not need to 'give yourself a break' so there is no opportunity for you to feel guilty.
But still, there are people who feel guilty about food, so who are these people?
The very commonly known problem within the society is that eating sweets is a sin. If you are a part of this group I have great news for you. You CAN eat sweets. There are tonnes of healthy cake recipes on the Internet. So why does Delaney or anyone need to eat unhealthy biscuits, croissants and doughnuts in restaurants or cafes? Isn’t it just because of laziness to google the recipe and take your time to bake it at home? Then feeling guilty makes sense.
Another part of people who feel guilty about food are those extreme ones. Most of us know it is a perverse need to feel guilty after eating salad with olive oil or any nutritionally balanced meal. Our body needs the energy to survive, moreover if you exercise, and the only way how we can obtain it is getting proteins, lipids and also carbohydrates from food.
But still, in the world full of focus on physical appearance we can’t forget that there is a very important necessity - to love ourselves and know our price even if we don’t look like a fitness girl from a magazine. Our character is still more important.
This comment is by Dominik Bolerac
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I think people should eat what they want and it should not be dictated by the society trends. I really agree on what Delaney Mes wrote in the article; we can listen those speeches everyday. Listening to someone saying, “Yesterday I was in the gym and I had a circle training…” while eating Nutella or drinking coke really annoys me. People should have total freedom of what they want to eat because it is very limiting us if we cannot eat something because the society forbids it. It should be only up to person what he/she decides to eat. If there is a kind of person that goes to fitness, have six pack or whatever else, than he/she knows the best what he/she can it and what cannot. Why should we eat only healthy food if we do not want to? For instance, if I want to eat delicious doughnut I will eat it and nobody can prevent me from eating that. Unless we are making miles steps to the obesity, there is no reason not to eat the food we want.
Secondly, the obesity disease is very dangerous. According to research of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention there are more than one third of people in the United States of America. It can cause very serious problems during life cycle, even death. Do we really want to die because of food? I do not say that it should be forbidden to go to McDonald’s or KFC, but not everyday. Although they claim that “this is fresh salad” or “this is not unhealthy”, there is always something that endangers our body. Even worse is that the adults do not only go there alone, but also with their children. Supporting them in eating this food can destroy them. Much more essential and efficient would be if we cooked meals at home. We always can put in the meal what we want, and try to make it as healthy as possible. I do not say that we must not go to “restaurants” like those. From time to time, it would be ok, yet, definitely not every single day.
Last but not least, in my opinion, the best is a compromise between a man who eats what he wants and a person who exercises. It is impossible not to be effected by the society, but I prefer eating what I want and at the same time, exercising. I and also other people with this opinion might not have six pack and biceps and so on, but we try to be as fit as possible and also exercise while having freedom of eating. This fits me, personally, the best. On the other hand, there might be someone who thinks this is really bad idea, but this is person’s opinion and everyone has freedom of deciding how to act and what to eat. But think of this – Yummy, this chocolate doughnut is so tasty, yummy. No one can resist.
Truly, I agree with Dominik's opinion that people should do what makes them happy. Therefore the compromise between healthy lifestyle and obesity is, I suppose, generally ideal for majority of people. But what I think might be a problem is the question: what makes them really happy?
DeleteI disagree with status quo, but we cannot pretend it is not there. The truth is that society forces us (especially young women) to look perfect. Consequently, even though they would love to eat that donough, they do not, because they would gain 0,01kg. Despite it is stupid from them, not eating that donough makes them happier for longer time and even more, than that one minute of eating. The satisfaction, the proudness of their body - these are the things that are for some people worth little suffering. To condlude it, in my opinion people should be more themselves and not care that much about what others think, but I admit I understand why some people feel guilty after eating unhealthy food.
Firstly, I would like to stress one important fact mentioned on the article, which stands for having the freedom to choose what you eat, and not to be tied up with some feelings of guilt. I believe that the question of our diet is an individual decision and we should not be judged for it either by the society or anyone else. But on the other side, we should have some information about the food, to be aware of the impacts that it has. To put it simply, if a person wants to be thin and fit, he should bear in mind that his dream figure would not be achieved by maintaining unbalanced diet. After all, only we are responsible for our body appearance, not our friends or family, nor the thin woman in that advertisement on fat-free doughnuts. Furthermore, as mentioned in the article, the lobby of health industry nowadays is pretty strong. The companies often provide us with misleading information, and the truth is that behind this all stands nothing more than money. Therefore, we should be resistant to the white lies in ads, and also to the pressure from the side of media and others. In my opinion, it is important not to believe everything what we hear, and to be educated enough to filter the information. Only by having a complex knowledge we can be confident about what we eat and some reactions of the society won’t bother us anymore.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, let’s look a few steps ahead to the future. To be clear, I agree with the statement that one doughnut, for example, does not represent an imbalance in our diet plan. On the contrary, it can even satisfy somebody’s needs at that moment, which is great, because people should not be slaves of their diet. However, what happens if you stop feeling guilty of what you eat in general? In my opinion, a person without any restrictions on his diet is highly probable to jump into unhealthy diet, because the feeling of guilt helps the prevention from eating junk food again. If you would eat as many donuts as you wish, it seems to me that the amount would surely increase at some time. And here comes the problem, when you reach the state of feeling guilty, regretting not only that one doughnut, but also all the others that came after it, accompanied with the changes of your appearance, weight, eventually your health… And suddenly, you realize that this guilt cannot be fixed as easily as that one doughnut at the beginning. That is why I think we should maintain at least some control of our menu and next time, maybe, think of a healthier alternative that can also fulfill our desires.