I’ve always found Thanksgiving problematic. In my younger years, when I was bouncing back and forth between diets, it was pretty miserable to have this one day where you’re expected to overeat. And so while everyone around me ate more than I needed, without being judged, I couldn’t help remembering that every other day of the year, if I overate, I did get judged. It all felt rather hypocritical, and something like torture. And it’s not a lot better from a mindful eating perspective. I can’t even tell you how many times I heard or read that everyone should just eat what they want on Thanksgiving without paying attention or worrying about the food. Except I keep wondering, what exactly is the
With Thanksgiving around the corner, it’s natural to be thinking about both food and gratitude. But some recent events have made this more personal. A couple of weeks ago, two friends of mine were unexpectedly in the hospital. And food became problematic for both of them. One struggled with limited choices. As someone who’s sensitive to gluten, the hospital was good about giving him gluten-free foods – but it severely limited the options. They couldn’t even give him oatmeal, since they couldn’t guarantee that it was gluten-free. His wife brought him some snacks to supplement, and finally after 4 days someone gave him some more options. But he was definitely glad to get back to his normal foo
Last week I got a jump start on resolutions by talking about what change you might be hungry for, and what that would mean in your life. Now I want to look at the opposite, of why you might not make that change. Specifically, what’s the status quo doing for you? Because staying where you’re at isn’t always about lack of motivation. It might be that you’re getting some benefit from the current situation that you haven’t really focused on, and changing that can be scary. Photo by Alexandra Gorn on Unsplash And since a common resolution for people is to lose weight, I’m going to use that as my example. With that in mind, the question would be, what is weight doing for you? 1. Buffers rejection
When I recently read the book On Trails: An Explorationby Robert Moor < https://www.robertmoor.com>, I didn’t expect to find anything of relevance for mindful eating. It’s a book about trails, after all. And yet, one of the primary reasons animals of all sorts make trails is to find food. As biologist Emma Despland pointed out, once caterpillars have depleted an area of food, hunger makes a few of them restless enough to seek new trails. As she said, “The leaders tend to be the hungry ones.” (p. 69) That got me thinking about how restless many of us get this time of year. With January 1 now less than two months away, you might be thinking about what you’re not satisfied with, the things maki
