Still on
intoxication – food, what does it do to me?
The assignment
My
self-assignment for this week was: I will look more closely at my relationship
with food, look at the process of it affecting my mood, try to arrive at a
fuller appreciation of what food does to me and whether this is healthy (in a
very broad sense) and see where there are opportunities for change.
Paying attention
I keep on
forgetting to pay attention, or rather remembering when I am already halfway my
meal, and then telling myself I will start at the next bite.
It is
easier to pay full attention if I carefully smell each bite before I put it in
my mouth. But of course this is something I forget too. Will work on this one.
Coffee
Coffee does
seem to be more of a problem than I thought – when I went without for a day I
got quite a bad headache. I will try to go without coffee for a few days when I
can find a few days when I can handle the headache.
I can't get no satisfaction
When I'm
eating during meals, I don't have problems with stopping when I should. But when
I'm eating inbetween meals, I find this much harder. I'll have just one sandwich.
And then I want another. And another. The food that is supposed to fill me up
only makes me want more.
Some of the
inbetween meals eating is because I feel hungry (4 pm, 10 pm), some is because
of availability (seeing something nice during shopping).
What is part of the meal?
I also
noticed that while I do include cooking and shopping for food in a meal
(although I have not yet tried to be mindful during cooking – takes
mental note) I do not include laying the table or cleaning up.
When I pay
more attention during washing up, I see that I'm bent over a bit when I do
this. Bending the knees is better, but I have to pay attention to that as
otherwise I'm just going back to my usual posture. Putting the bowl on
something else works even better. Now I will see what a better posture will
change.
Next
Next week I will continue
on the question: what is my relationship with food and drink? I will pay more
attention to senses (esp. smell) and to posture, see if that makes it easier to
pay attention.
