Thursday, April 29, 2010

Food for Thought Thursdays: Sloooowwww Down



Janet here: For someone who pays so much attention to putting a meal on the table and nourishing people — physically and emotionally and spiritually — with food, you'd think I'd take more time to eat. But I don't: I wolf my food down and am usually fiddling with my utensils while everyone else is just getting down to it.

I also recently noticed — thanks in part to this blog and how it has me thinking about food and eating all the time — that I eat breakfast standing up most days of the week or while driving in my car to work, and that I eat all my weekday lunches working in front of the computer or, on weekends, standing up at the kitchen counter. In other words, while I want everyone I cook for to sit back, relax and enjoy every bite, I don't actually allow myself to do the same.

It was kind of a big epiphany, especially since a lot of what I've been working on personally in the past few years has been self-care and love. It was one of those moments when you stop and think Really? This is what I'm doing?

Of course, in some ways I'm not surprised that food would be one of the last frontiers of self-discovery. Eating has always been fraught with emotional issues, starting with the days when I was called Janet the Planet in elementary school. But I thought I was "fixed," that everything was "fine" now.

Instead, I realized that my speed eating is just another way to not really allow myself to fully nourish myself, to really enjoy the food as it's meant to be enjoyed. It's time for a change, one bite at a time. I can't wait.

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