Slowing down. This is the first fundamental
rule I’m following.
What I’ve never had for many years is control
over food. I could control myself, decide to open the fridge or not,
but it was still just tackling the me that was running towards the
fridge, attracted like a moth to the light. What I’m doing is
grabbing the reins of the relationship with food.
I don’t want to be the needy doormat that walks the Hunger’s chihuahua, holds her bags while she’s out shopping and chauffeurs her around at a snap of her fingers. Slowing down managed this: getting me back in control.
I don’t want to be the needy doormat that walks the Hunger’s chihuahua, holds her bags while she’s out shopping and chauffeurs her around at a snap of her fingers. Slowing down managed this: getting me back in control.
Slowing down is more a matter of mind than pure mechanic. Counting to twenty jaw movements before swallowing didn’t work when I did it as a pure gesture, because I realised I just ended up chewing at light speed, nullifying the power of that action. It was my thoughts that I needed to slow down.
S l o w i n g d o w n.
Now, when I eat, I eat slowly. I take a bite, put down the fork, and even if I don’t chew two hundred times, I still do it slowly. I allow food to melt, getting every drop of flavour out of what I’m not just nourishing myself with, but from what I’m savouring. Little by little, you get used to it. And weird things start to happen…
Like that some foods, normally known as Gorging Food, snacks and the like, when I savour them slowly and I listen to all the notes… they don’t taste that good, after all. It happened with a cookie. It had a delicious, strong chocolate perfume, but taking small bits and letting it literally melt on my tongue, I noticed a fake aftertaste, something that sounded wrong in a cookie. I don’t think it would have happened with the ones my mother bakes…
If we allow ourselves time to feel, and to let ourselves be absorbed by what we are eating, what happens is that we learn what we really like, and what we like because it satisfies needs that are not nutritional. Needs that we’re hiding deep into some remote corner of our heart or our mind. Need to fill a void, maybe. Like the funny, yet tragic, situation of those who end up gorging themselves to fill the abyss of sadness derived from the fact of… well, gorging themselves.
There are other considerations about this rule, and I’m discovering them all first hand. But I’ll talk about this some more. There’s no rush.
Moon [-3.1]
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