DAY 5

Day 5 Thursday, December 16, 2010

If I could describe in one word: ease.  Last night I went to bed almost sick of food.  I really didn’t even want to think about food anymore.  I don’t know if that has ever happened to me.  Today, though, there is just an ease with food.  Through breakfast, lunch and dinner I just sit down, eat, then I stop when it is time.  It’s that simple.  I might have gone a bite or two over at dinner, but there was still plenty of food left on my plate.  I still find it harder to eat consciously on weekdays.  Lunch being the hardest-since it is at my desk.  Even breakfast is hard to slow down as I’m getting ready for the day.  Dinner, I definitely developed the most presence.  I taste the squash soup; I feel how I have to press down with my spoon at little harder when it touches the soup; I see the reflections of the light in the soup.  I taste and enjoy the fat of the cheese as I eat it.  I stop leaving 1/3 of the soup and some bread and cheese.  The bread I throw out & the cheese and soup go back in the frig.  I’m going to have to start cutting my recipes in half.

I’ve been debating the concept of eating emotionally.  The problem isn’t that we eat emotionally: it is that the emotions we experience with food are all negative.  Let me know if you have even experienced: guilt, deprivation, lust, desire, disgust, anxiety, stress, isolation, compulsion, even elitism, or self righteousness?  The first seven are self explanatory in our culture.  The last two are what you experience when you eliminate that evil food group and are now superior to others still eating: sugar, gluten, dairy.   The emotions are all negative.  What about joy, satisfaction, connectedness, self awareness, pleasure, comfort, peace, ease?  Food is all of the things.  When you allow yourself to experience these emotions while you are eating, all the other negative feelings fall to the sidelines.  There is no need for deprivation, because you eat when you are hungry.  There is no need for guilt because you should eat when you are hungry.   There’s no lust because there is no deprivation.  When you eat for pleasure, joy and satisfaction there is no stress and anxiety.  You don’t have to worry about how to lose weight, be healthy, when to eat, how much to eat.  Your body tells you.  Your body is an amazingly complex organism: more complex than the science behind it.  It knows exactly what & how much to eat.  All we have to do is listen.  It doesn’t worry so much whether the calories are from carbohydrates, fat or protein; it can convert them all into glucose.  It can tell you how much to eat, and if you really listen, what to eat.

I get my vegetables from the farmer’s market so I eat them in season.  It has been an interesting process.  In the summer in Texas it is too hot for lettuce, so I don’t eat it.  Instead I eat tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers & tomatoes.  I went this entire summer without missing lettuce at all.  Then, one day it hit me.  I wanted green leafy vegetables-badly.  The next day I went to the farmer’s market, & there they were, waiting for me to eat them.  I became a lettuce glutton for the next few weeks.  Eating them at almost every meal.   During the winter, when most of the vegetables are root vegetables, I love sauerkraut.  I have it everyday.  Then, when to

the summer comes & all the cucumbers and tomatoes come back into season, I barely eat any sauerkraut at all.   My point is that our bodies are in lined with the earth.  I believe that human beings are supposed to eat seasonally.  We are supposed to eat certain foods when it is hot, and others when it is cold.  The first winter that I ate seasonally I really wanted a tomato.  The second, I didn’t miss it at all.  All the soups that can be made with root vegetables and sauerkraut with my meat satisfy me.  I don’t need the fresh tomatoes.

Here is another thing that happens when you eat seasonally.  Absence makes the heart go founder.  I remember living up in Boston when the cucumbers came in season.  I was so excited.  I called up my mom and said, “Mom, Guess what! The cucumbers are in season!”  My mom, with a condescending tone said, “That’s . . .  great . . .  Carrie.”  Most people don’t get too excited about cucumbers, but when you go without, you learn to appreciate it when it is available.  Suddenly, fruits and vegetables become comfort foods.  You associate asparagus with Easter, strawberries with fourth of July, sweet potatoes with Thanksgiving.  Everything has its season.  When you eat in season, your experience with food becomes more gratifying, because you know it won’t always be there.  The thing is though, once it is gone, there is something new to eat, when the tomatoes fade away, the squash comes in.  When the squash fades, in comes the carrots and parsnips and celery root.  When those fade, in comes the asparagus and artichokes.  Most people don’t get too excited about parsnips and celery root.  Those people, though, have never turned them into soups.  I love cooking soups and making broths in the winter.  They usually have to cook for several hours, or even days.  The heat from the stove keeps me warm, & I can often turn of the heat & rely solely on the stove for my heat.  Not to mention-they are delicious!

The same way that paying attention to the seasons can tell us what to eat, paying attention to our bodies can tell us how much to eat.  Just as the earth already knows what we should be eating, our bodies know how much we should be eating.  The paradox is that letting go of control of our food is the only way to truly control it.  It was only after I let my body, not my brain dictate how much I eat, that I was able to control what I ate.  It was only after I let the earth decide what I eat, that I was able to find joy and pleasure in what I was eating.