Present Moment Eating

The hopelessness I described in my previous post has affected how I eat recently. I didn't binge or purge or even overeat to the point of uncomfortable fullness. I just ate past satisfaction, to the point of "I'm full, so I'd better stop eating before I feel uncomfortable." I noticed two kinds of thinking influenced my choice to keep eating past satisfaction.

First, I rebelled against guidelines about stopping at 'enough'. Previously I practiced leaving and/or throwing away a bite or 2 at every meal. That exercise freed me from guilt about throwing food away and taught me that my physical comfort was more important than not 'wasting food'. However, I suspect I began to use that exercise as a 'rule', i.e., I 'must leave food at every meal', rather than I 'am free to leave food when I feel satisfied'. Of course, rebelling against self-imposed rules can feel like distraction or even comfort when I feel depressed. As Geneen Roth said in "Breaking Free from Emotional Eating":

"When you want to escape a feeling, you will often do so by breaking a restriction you have imposed upon yourself. When you are in pain and want release, any kind of release will do, even when the release (not leaving food on my plate) and feeling you want release from (hopelessness about physical recovery) are unrelated."

I recall hearing myself say that I didn't care about that 'leaving food' guideline. I just wanted to enjoy as much as I wanted. Fortunately I didn't serve myself large portions. I've learned from throwing away food (and regretting 'waste') to serve myself smaller portions. However rebelling against a guideline about leaving food seemed to comfort me with thoughts of 'I got away with that'. Nevertheless, that 'rebellion' revealed that I was had made the guideline into a 'rule'. Obeying that 'rule' prevented me from eating in the present moment by being sensitive to how much my body needed at that specific time.

Secondly, during the past 2 days I have eaten desserts, which I planned to eat, despite already feeling satisfied by other foods in the meal. When I binged regularly (about once a month), I often ate all the dessert foods that I usually declined to eat after filling meals. I didn't 'save room' for those desserts at meals. Sometimes I just enjoyed the meal foods so much, that I didn't want the dessert. Often I rationalized that I needed 'healthier' foods, rather than the dessert food. So I eliminated my binge habit by consciously 'saving room' or otherwise planning to eat all those dessert or sweet favorites with meals. Sometimes those foods were the main meal (like pancakes with syrup or cranberry bread with almond butter). Sometimes those foods were small dessert after a small meal. So eventually those 'sweet dessert' foods became just foods in my mind.

When I recently suffered uncomfortable side effects from treatment for mold, I never considered bingeing or eating forbidden foods to comfort myself. I enjoy those special foods too much to want to eat them mindlessly during a guilt-ridden binge or when I'm not really hungry enough to taste them. Above all, I no longer have any 'forbidden' foods. Unless I have food allergy reactions, all foods are 'permissible', even though some are more 'beneficial' (1 Corinthians 6:12 says: "Everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial.")

Nevertheless, in the process of making all foods permissible, by planning to have small desserts with smaller meals (where I left 'room' for desserts), I created another 'rule' in mind: I 'must' eat desserts at every meal to prevent binges. That rule prevented me from responding to my hunger/satisfaction cues in the moment. In the "Tao of Eating", author Linda Harper says:

"Eating what you really want also includes not eating what you really do not want ... If you planned to have dessert but find yourself too full, pass it up. Or you may eat a few bites of your dessert and leave the rest."

Again eating in the moment allows me freedom from any guidelines or even rules I create from guidelines. Guidelines can motivate me to try new behaviors which I previously feared or resisted. However, when obeying those guidelines make me ignore my hunger/satisfaction cues or cravings for specific foods, I'm not eating in the present moment. I'm eating according to what my head dictates, rather than what my body needs.

For me, the most important guidelines are: eat when I'm physically hungry, foods which satisfy hunger, and stop when I'm satisfied. Any other methods, like focussing on the tastes and textures of foods, eating slowly, eating without distractions, can allow me to enjoy the food enough that I feel psychologically as well as physically satisfied when I stop eating. However, the underlying premise of 'normal eating' is eat when you're hungry. If I only eat when I'm hungry, I will naturally stop when I'm no longer hungry. Although guidelines can show me behaviors which help me stop eating when I'm no longer hungry, making those guidelines 'rules' can motivate me to eat beyond satisfaction and ignore my body cues.