Almost all of us are foodies, we love food. We binge over it all the time. We celebrate our emotions with food. We know that we celebrate festivals with sweets, we celebrate summer with mangoes, we celebrate breakup with ice-cream, we celebrate birthdays with treats, etc.
You might easily find an incident in your life (May it be good or bad) that you celebrated it with food. By celebration, I don’t mean only the good situations. Most of the times we celebrate our bad days with binge eating, or eating random snacks or a chocolate cake. Basically, food becomes a medium to express our feelings and emotions.
While it might not be always wrong to express emotions with food but this clings us to food. We stick to food as a parasite, we fill ourselves full in a spiritual way to good mental health by food.
For example: Suppose you have ice-cream after your lunch/dinner and this is your regular routine because your sweet tooth doesn’t let you sit still after you’ve had your meal. Suppose one day you are out of stock for ice-cream and somehow you couldn’t find it in nearby store too. 85-90% of people will not feel like they completed their meal. Infact, the thought of having an incomplete meal will haunt them for the day. Let alone the fact that the person eats ice-cream every day!
This is just an example how food has become a ritual to us. In some way or the other, we all treat food as ritual.
Food shouldn’t be treated as a ritual at all, the reason being we no longer enjoy the food, we eat it because we have to eat it. Just because it’s 1:00 pm and it’s the family lunch time it doesn’t mean you have to have your lunch even if you are not hungry. Just because your small group of friends from school asked to meet up it doesn’t mean you are going to have that slice of that large-size pizza.
It is this addiction to the food, due to which people can’t lose weight, gain weight or change their body shape or face even worst health problems. This addiction is as good as the one of a drunkard addicted to alcohol, or even the mobile addiction that people carry with them. But the addiction of food is talked about the least.
Some people might argue here saying ‘Food is better to get addicted to rather than alcohol and mobile because there is no harm in food’. Well, excess of anything in the world has always led to destruction. From eating a lot of carrot and decolourize the skin colour to yellow, to binge over junk food and face obesity for it. I see both the events as equal.
The problem here being, not feeling full (both mentally and spiritually) after having food and hence wanting for more.
So these are 3 solutions that I experimented with. I personally don’t recommend any kind of diet but this is my spiritual way to look at ‘Food’!
1) Eat Variety:
Yes, backed by Ayurveda, a complete meal consists all six tastes in it. Namely Sour, Sweet, Salty, Pungent, Astringent and Bitter.
You heard it right, not all nutrition meal but an ‘All kinds of Tastes’ meal. Our body considers a meal as a complete one if it contains all the tastes named above. Hence, making this solution the best and the most interesting among all.
For example: When I have my regular ‘Roti-Sabzi’ combination, I make an effort to add a lemon with the curry for sourness or tomato as a salad , a green chilly/onion for pungent taste, a leafy vegetable for bitter taste.
This one gives immense satisfaction with the food. I personally felt very calm, composed and focused after my meals.
2) Add a ‘plus-one’:
This one backed by Ayurveda too. It simply implies that every meal should have a ‘plus-one’, that is-
Breakfast + ‘Curd’
Lunch + ‘Buttermilk’
Dinner + ‘Milk’
Usually having Plus-one’s back of the mind while eating makes us eat optimum and not more than required. Also, it feels like a little treat to yourself after the meal. These combinations are unique, as the plus-one’s are meant to be consumed at a particular time of the day only.
3) Serve yourself only once:
Sometimes we don’t realize the amount that we have consumed especially if we are being served hot repeatedly. So, this makes us stick by the food that we served ourselves and not want more and more of it.
This is the simplest solution to see food from a more rational point of view rather than getting addicted to it.
At the time you feel like you want to binge over food or eating at a restaurant or at the any of the break-up ice-cream, serve yourself your part and stick to eating only that part. In this way we show ourselves how self-controlled we are, which is good start for stopping a food addiction.
When I personally experimented this, I tried all these three solutions. I won’t exaggerate but I felt like heaven. The urge to eat continuously, repeatedly just vanished. But more than anything, I felt satisfied and replenished by the meal to my core. Plus, my craving for junk/unhealthy food just vanished, this was something I didn’t expect but it happened. I think the sole reason behind that being not feeling satisfied with the meal that we eat on daily basis.
I personally was a big food addict where my personal Instagram feed would be filled with pictures of junk food. Maximum of my time, I would spend thinking about how many types of food I should eat, how many street food should I cover in next month.
But when I started having a spiritual touch to everything in my life, I came across this valuable information which I wanted to share.
I found all these 3 solutions very effective both health-wise and spiritually. Also, one more point that I would like to add is that I knew sometimes it was not possible to follow these three solutions completely altogether. I had already prepared myself for times like these before experimenting. The thing is, I never hooked myself with these pattern of eating. I knew there might come a time when I couldn’t do it due to very genuine issues but I was chill with that process by not forcing myself towards that guilt. That is the exact reason why I was able to follow it for a longer time!
So to sum up, According to our drill:
What do we know? :
We know that food has become more of a ritual to us. We express ourselves with food. On a spiritual level, it is harmful to cling over food for making up to our emotions.
What can we do? :
When we talk about spirituality and food together, one word that pops up without any delay is ‘Ayurveda’. Three of the most effective solutions from Ayurveda for this being:
1) Eat-Variety.
2) Add a ‘Plus-one’.
3) Serve yourself only once.
What have we learnt? :
We have learnt how food is largely been treated as a ritual, this being the sole reason for obesity, health problems. Since, we are talking about spirituality, mental health and food, Food has a huge impact on us!
So it’s really important to see food not as a ritual but as a fuel!
That’s all for today! Let’s meet on next Monday with another segment on food!
Until then Do Like, Share and Follow!
Also, let me know your reviews, I will be more than happy to read them!
Many people talk abt to include more protein or any kinda stuffs bt the way you explained was a bit new . I would definitely try this and try new combinations otherwise again considering same thing may make it as a routine but I want to make it interesting.
ReplyDeleteIt's good to know you think about it differently and want to make it interesting. Good Luck with that Dear.
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