You talk to yourself all the time, about all topics. Your mind incessantly jumps from branch to branch like a monkey in the tree of thoughts. Your mind can be trained – yet it has natural inclinations. When it comes to food, your mind travels to astounding and fascinating places. And those are the places we’ll adventure to here. These approaches are mostly subconscious, not conscious, so here’s a chance to pay attention to things that may have been hidden under the surfaces of your mind.

The Caveman Approach to Food

This is the person holding a fork and a knife upright with a napkin bib, slurping his lips, saying “Food. Good. I want some. Gimme. ” This is, of course, the primitive approach, the way some people still go forward when they see food of any kind. “I want it. It’s for me. I’m eating it right now.”

The Visual Experience

Does your mouth water when you see pictures of food or when you look at a beautifully prepared meal or sumptuously beautiful fruits.  This type of reaction is primarily visual. Here, the eyes are connected to the appetite.

The Sensual Garden of Delights

This way of talking to yourself might say, “That would satisfy me, feel good in my mouth and belly –crunch, slurp, chew, sip, taste.”

Food for Comfort

If you’re driven by this approach to food, your mind might be subconsciously saying: “If I eat that , I’ll feel better. If I put that in my mouth, it’ll be my  pacifier, my binky. I’ll feel good, and I feel so bad. It’ll make me feel secure and maybe even happy.”

Authority –Driven Food Choices

If you have someone in your life who has a powerful affect on your thinking, you might say, “That’s  what the food guru says to do. That’s what the guy on the infomercial says is the best. That’s what my husband (or wife) tells me I need to do.” Or if the  whole gang is doing it, you might say to yourself, “Well, they’re eating that cake, pie, etc –and so am I!”

Tradition as an Approach

If you’re driven by the “ancestors,” you might be saying to yourself, “I’ve always eaten that – and so have my mom and their people from Transylvania, and I want to be a part of a long line of such eaters. That’s the  way we’ve always done it, and that’s the way I want to do it now.”

Food for Health

In this approach, you note what the food is doing for your body and well-being. “That would make me live ten years longer. That’s good for my waistline. That would help me lose      weight. I get energized when I eat that. I can live to see my grandchildren grow up.”

Food for Beauty

Here you choose foods that will amplify your beauty. “I can walk the runway if I eat like that. I’ll look like those people in the movies. I’ll keep my skin clear. I’ll be as lovely as I can be.”

Food as a Drug

We all know that some foods can be addictive – as any sugarholic will readily tell you. You might be saying to yourself, “I need more energy. I’ll eat that. I’ll drink that. I need to get my soda fix. I need, I want, I must have. ” More and more people are becoming addicted to foods that companies, sad to say, create expressly for this purpose.

The Aversion Approach

People who know that they need to stay away from particular foods (like sugar, for instance) might say to themselves, “That sugar is gross. It’s made in factories, and it’s sickeningly sweet. It hurts my body, makes my blood sugar go up and down. It makes the food companies rich and causes addiction to the people in our country. It causes havoc in my body, and I don’t want that.” Though it sounds negative, it really works for some people to keep them food-focused.

The Positive Suggestion Way

If you have an aversion to aversion and want to accentuate the positive, you can always give yourself some positive suggestions. We’ve looked at some already. Some more are “I make wise choices. I AM a person who knows exactly what to do and  who eats wholesome healthy delicious and healthy foods.” You can make up your own suggestions now.

The Spiritual View

If you operate on this wave length, you know that your food choices raise your vibration and affect your meditations and your life. “I’m choosing this food because it makes me feel light and strong, and it makes my aura bright. I’m choosing this food because it honors the food sources of the earth and because it sustains the planet.”

So What’s the Significance of  All This?

You can take a look at your own relationship with food and your subconscious thoughts, and you can look with awareness at what you decide to put into your mouth and your body. Then you can decide if you feel comfortable with it – and if you do, that’s great (be here now!) – and if you don’t, you can train yourself to think different thoughts and make other choices. You can, for example, find healthy foods to make you feel comfortable or loved or happy. You can choose wise food authorities.  You can approach this whole topic with awareness and wisdom. Why not? It affects your entire life.