Food obsessed!
This week to start off the year with a sweaty bang (keep your minds out of the gutter!) I am participating in an Ashtanga intensive with my amazing teacher Mark Tongi. As is usual practice for me a lot of ‘stuff’ is coming up, which is part of the reason we yogis partake in intensives, it makes us uncomfortable, and for many reasons we crave this process.
One of the big things that is coming up for me is food….and my total obsession surrounding it. Now I knew I loved food, I love eating, but I really didn’t know how MUCH. As a society we are consumed by our eating habits. We love to look at food (um instagram making anyone else hungry?!) we love to talk about it, think about it, plan it, deprive ourselves of it, prepare it and clean up after ourselves. We eat when we are happy, we eat to celebrate (the amount of food consumed on the planet over Christmas is quite distressing) we eat when we are sad, bored, lonely and tired, but shouldn’t we just eat when we are hungry?
Yesterday after a long challenging yoga practice in the morning I was starving, I ate ALL DAY, albeit healthy foods and because it is hot at the moment lots of raw, but still my poor digestion was on overload and when I went to bed I was in agony with a sore belly. As I was laying in bed, thinking about what I had eaten and wondering why I was so bloated I realised it wasn’t WHAT but HOW MUCH I had eaten. I then went on to think about how much water I had drunk and I realised I’d only had 1 bottle, 1ltr. Had I mistaken my feelings of thirst for hunger? A rookies mistake? I make a point of telling people that the body will give out the same signs for thirst and hunger, that we should stop and listen to what our body is telling us before standing in front of the cupboard/fridge and mindlessly eating, instead of heeding my own advice I gave in. It got me thinking that despite all the hours I dedicate to yoga, the constant striving for being present and all the information on health I have learnt over the years I have lost my ability to tune into one of my most basic primal human functions, hunger. The only reason we should eat is because we are hungry, um duh?! If only it were that easy! Food is everywhere, and we are conditioned to eat because we can and it makes us feel good, most of the time. With the invention of 24/7 supermarkets, fast food and fridges here in the west we never have to go hungry again. But maybe we should go hungry so as to learn what it actually feels like? Perhaps we should give our digestions a rest, if even for a day, and focus our energies on other things…..
So here I am writing again after a long break, because I have all this time on my hands as I’m having a small rest from eating (well lets not get carried away I’m not committing to anything yet!). This is not about loosing weight, it’s not even about detoxing, I’m simply spending a few days listening to my body and getting back in touch with my primal side, one juice at a time.