I'm Christian. Much more today than I was in the years I was a youth group leader in church.
Us Christians have a tradition of saying grace and thanking the Lord for the food he's blessed us with. He gave it to us not just for our nourishment, but also for our enjoyment.
So often we nourish, but we forget to enjoy. And when we forget to enjoy, we end up seeking more enjoyment, which inevitably leads to overnourishment.
Have you ever grabbed a candy bar and eaten it while watching a show? Did you really enjoy the candy bar? Have you experienced finishing it without even really tasting it, or enjoying the experience of eating it?
We eat while watching TV. We eat while working (ok sometimes this one can be hard to get around). We eat while checking out social media. Sometimes we eat around our loved ones and we forget the experience is also about the SHARED experience of enjoying the food we're blessed with.
We need to learn to enjoy our food. Really, really enjoy it. I believe he designed it that way.
I decided that unless absolutely necessary, I wasn't going to be multitasking while I was eating. I wanted to be present and in the moment and really taste everything I was blessed with.
We all know that eating too fast leads to overeating. There's all the stuff about your brain needing time to send signals to your body.
I think there's another component which is much more subtle. If we neglect to address the enjoyment part of experiencing food, we will keep trying to compensate even after we've had enough.
The next time you sit down with a meal you may have cooked yourself, even if it's a lower calorie dense one, take the time to savour it. You might actually find that the experience of slowly tasting it reveals much more of its beauty to you.
The next time you sit down at a celebratory meal, focus on the company and also on enjoying the actual food you're eating together. Bite by bite. Chew by chew. You may find that given the pleasurable sensory overload you will actually get by eating this way, you will be satisfied with much less than you used to require. And you'll be at a level of fullness where you can still be socially present, instead of having a distended belly and having to constantly excuse yourself because you're worried about the noxious fumes you're fighting to keep inside you.
Learning to do this one thing has been enormous for me because it has allowed me to truly derive so much more enjoyment out of less quantity.
Tomorrow will be another day, with new opportunities to enjoy.
To partake in the joy of the experience of food, versus the mechanical pleasure of simply eating. I believe that was part of our original design.
Say your grace. Be thankful. And completely enjoy all he has blessed us with.