Reframing food as fuel.

There are a group of dieters out they are calling their packaged food-bars “fuel”. These bars are simply food but a dedicated group of loyal people call their food bars fuel. It sounds better than food doesn’t it?

They are absolutely correct in calling food fuel because food/fuel gives the energy our bodies need to not only move but to survive.

What I find interesting about calling it fuel is it changes perspective on what is being eaten.

Food satisfies us. Food can taste good or bad. Food is eaten at social events and food is needed to sustain life.

Call it breakfast, lunch, dinner, or a simply a snack. Eating several times a day is not only how our bodies are built but is also part of our culture.

At the end of the day food is fuel.

Eating mindlessly can be a habit and is not thinking of the food as fuel. It is just satisfying perhaps a sugar-craving or fulfilling an emotional need.

Food can also be a treat. After mindfully eating my healthy breakfast of a couple eggs sprinkled with turmeric and served mindfully with uncured preservative-free chicken bacon for fuel, the iron will be pumped in a short twenty minute workout and then I can treat myself to a delicious Italian ice place I found at the Jersey Shore.

I need to call the tasty treat fuel albeit it bad fuel. So if sugar-laden treats are bad fuel, I will be choosing a small brightly colored mango ice today rather than the large for a mere 50 cents more.

I will be aware of my choice for it is planned and not chosen recklessly. A splash of bad fuel in limited quantity shouldn’t do any real damage to my machine. It is still fuel.

The key is to keep the bad fuel to a few ounces to the gallon.

The purpose of this writing today is to point out what reframing can do.

My dieting friends are eating one meal a day and five fuelings. They are paying someone to repackage the name for food. At the end of the day the “fuel” they are eating is still food.

There is great benefit to eating “fuel” as I see my friends shedding unwanted pounds by eating this fuel. They are choosing high-quality 110 octane fuel made of the good stuff and their mindset is aware of what they are eating is not just food, it is energy to their bodies making it fuel.

Call it what it does for you. Food is fuel.

This can be applied to anything in life including relationships. Let’s reframe relationships as to what they do to our being.

Maybe a good relationship should be called joy and you say I am in a “joy” with somebody or if it is a bad relationship you call it what it does for you (like food being called fuel) and say I am in a “torture” with somebody.

It changes things to make good choices when we reframe the things that affect our well-being.

Either way the food (fuel) we choose or the people (joy or torture) we choose to be in our lives is a choice.

Choose wisely. Choose good fuel.