No. In fact some people’s comfort food of choice can be relatively healthy, for example: roast dinner, tomato or chicken soup, baked beans on toast, cup of herbal tea.
Men typically favour meals as comfort foods while women typically reach for a favourite snack. Guesses as to why this is amongst researches hypothesize that men may associate a favourite meal with being nurtured or having food prepared for them, such as mum, grandparent, dad, their wife. Women may favour snacks because they are “less hassle”, “already prepared” and they symbolize “time out” or “a treat” without having to “prepare” or “clean up much”.
My advice on comfort food is: let yourself have some. But don’t “stock up” on it. If you have it handy, you will naturally seek it out. Rather have healthy food you also love on hand, and develop new positive associations and preferences for healthy favourite recipes of meals and easy to prepare delicious snacks.
Rather make yourself “work harder” for the comfort food, if you have to go out on a “mission” to find some or you have to prepare something from scratch, it requires more effort and a little bit less appeal. This way you can make your comfort food work for you!
And remember it is possible to create NEW associations, new comforts.
Always go back to the need: why am I reaching for this/wanting this comfort food? What is the underlying need? Are there more sustainable ways of getting this need met? Are there other ways I can soothe, comfort, stimulate or distract yourself?
Big hug x
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