Wednesday 2 January 2013

New Year resolutions: food for thought


Well, I rounded off 2012 with a bag of crisps if you recall. I'm starting 2013 with some thoughts on food too. So many New Year resolutions seem to revolve around food - what we eat, how much, when.... This is a photograph of some food I randomly found in my kitchen this lunchtime. To be honest, I haven't eaten any of these things today (yet).  I had bread, cheese and picked onions for lunch actually, but the fact is that some of these items shout "healthy and good" whilst others yell "full of sugar and probably bad..."

As a student years ago I ate a lot of junk food. That Mars-a-day campaign must have made the company a fortune, because I stuck with it for almost the whole three years. I also drank a lot of cola drinks (and others more alcoholic, but that's probably another post....) And I'm convinced that my mental health at the time suffered as a consequence. One way or another I definitely eat a lot more healthily these days, and feel a whole lot better for it. It's just that at Christmas (and birthdays, and holidays, and weekends...) temptation can be just that little bit too much...

Anyway, there are plenty of useful links out there right now to get us started on eating more healthily if that is the way we want to go. 
  • The Mental Health Foundation have a New Year Healthy Diet podcast which you can listen to on their site here.
  • The BBC website has a diet and fitness plan to follow here.
  • The Royal College of Psychiatrists' website has some excellent information on eating well here.
Finally, some people struggle with food addiction, compulsive or emotional eating, and I thought I would point anyone interested in the direction of a new Powys peer support group - Food for Thought - which meets early next week. You can find out more information and download a flyer on our website here. (And thank you for inspiring the title of this blog post!)

Happy New Year to you all, and we look forward to hearing your mental health food and diet-related views.

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