Perhaps the way to make a lasting change is to be the change, be the path you want to be walking on, let the road rise to meet you at ten am because you’ve already been on that road since five am yesterday.
If I want to eat, less, better, differently, then I really must needs WANT to change the way I eat right now. Already. Today. Just a moment ago when I made the decision. Changing a habit, and there is nothing more engrained in us than our food habits, is as difficult as boring a hole through a mountainside. And the thing is, my brain will just give up and nudge me back to the years-old groaning-under-its-own-weight food trough, if I for one second stop bearing down on the drill.
But maybe I can construct a machine that will do the boring for me while I go on about the business of living and next thing I know we’ll all be on the other side of the mountain.
If I were running this by food coach I suppose we would talk about the fact that I often yearn to eat a different way, to eat different things in different ways, like holding on to a mug of soup and drinking it which I’ve done a couple of times and it is so soothing and wonderful and I would like for that to be part of my life. But my brain, stuck in the old ways, will say “Ooo! Soggy! Yuck! No bread? How will you swallow that soup how will you chase it down. No! We want crackers and stews. We have never wanted soup.” And my brain will offer me bread and butter and sugary things that I really don’t want. Really I absolutely do not want them.
I would tell food coach that there is a real difference between craving something and actually wanting to live with the choices that you make, wanting to live with the food that you put into your mouth and how it makes your brain and your body feel. I would tell her that I am on that cusp, that moment of decision. Likely I’ll be on it forever and ever, but I can also move off of this spot and leave just one finger behind, safely marking the spot for me, like you do in chess. But don’t lose track and lift your finger, else check mate.
Over the last year, I have made lots of changes and they have all been pinned to one major change and that change is Mindfulness. Without mindfulness I would not be meditating every day, without mindfulness I would not have realized all of the things that my brain has been doing all these years, almost as though it is a part of me but also distinctly not a part of me. I now know that emotions are stories my brain tells me about my life and I actually have a lot of leeway and control about how I’m going to experience these emotions. But watching, paying attention, is the key. Before this last year I would have never believed that choosing my reactions to my emotions is an option; in fact, I would have been offended by the very notion that it is an option, which of course, it very much is.
But back to food. I want to drink soup out of beautiful mugs, preferably with two handles. I want to eat with spoons, maybe long slender Scandinavian sporks. I want to find new things to love that are crunchy–maybe seeds and nuts, and discover new textures to love alongside my beloved crunch. I want to move past my fear of whole classes of foods. I want to follow reasonable cravings to their logical conclusions–EATING!
I want to simplify what I eat and not worry so much about what I’m eating because I’ll have a system in place that makes my choices automatic and practically effortless*. Which is not to say that I won’t be cooking my ass off because I will be, but some things need to be easy like adding kale to my diet. I’m going to buy frozen kale and I’m going to put it in boiling water and blanch it and add it to soups and rice dishes and I’m going to eat all the kale I want and I am going to eat all the canned veggies and fruits I want. Because good. And frozen because I am tired of throwing out spoiled produce. Also because good.
Making the change to new/different things is very, very difficult, but it won’t be much of a hop. I’m not talking about becoming a carnivore writ large or anything gross like that. I am talking about switching from a whole sleeve of crackers to a pita, from 2-4 large pieces of buttered bread to homemade croutons, from a stack of gone-in-a-minute cookies to a hard chocolate candy to savor over a half hour. I’m talking about allowing myself the joy of swallowing soup and slurping up all sorts of things I have always been afraid of.
But how to do this? How to change my brain, trick it into shutting up about cookies and fast food and blah blah cigarettes and cake cake cake, and teaching it to crave, instead, congee with kale thrown in or a brothy soup with cheese thrown in. How to get there?
Everybody is trying to do this–find the magic bullet, potion, pill, the miracle say-I-do-forever Super Food. But what if there is another way to approach eating by circumventing the animal crave-crave gimme-gimme brain?
I have learned to save money by setting up withdrawals from my checking to be dumped into savings without even writing them into the budget because when I try budgeting them in I fret over them and end up not saving at all. To do the thing OBLIQUELY is key. I think this could be the case with food. I have been thinking and saying this for years and it is time, while the iron is hot while the idea of new bowls and sporks might just seal the deal I say be the change you want to make. I also say be on the lookout for just-another-brain-trap-to-trip-you-up I will have much to discuss when I see food coach at the end of this month.
Yes I can change what I eat and how much I end up eating while also still eating the things I love. Yes I can figure out how to love new things and maybe allow myself to admit that a lot of the foods I “LOVE” I don’t even really like very much anymore.
Habits. Habits die so hard. But it doesn’t have to feel that way.
~r.
*I’ve heard a little about the French and their “food education” for children. If I had been raised with such an education, perhaps I wouldn’t have erected so many walls between me and brothy soup and exotic vegetables.
