One of my clients recently said that he wants to eat certain kinds of food because they are exciting. He doesn’t want to eat boring healthy foods all the time because they aren’t exciting. There is a deep wisdom peaking out from him through these statements. He is revealing to himself that there is a need for excitement in his life. We all have that need at different times. On the other hand many of us eat certain foods because they are associated with feeling safe, or soothed or comforted. We all need to feel safe, soothed, and comforted at different times. Once we start to look at our relationship to food without judgement we discover that we are trying to satisfy different hungers at different times. The food is the vehicle and sometimes it’s the perfect vehicle, while other times it isn’t. If we let go of judgments, if we bring gentlelovingkindness to our process of self exploration we can discover so many things about ourselves that can lead to being ourselves with more ease and more self confidence.
How do we feed our hunger for excitement? In the most simple way, we can explore going off the beaten track, searching for excitement by experimenting, trying out a new way to prepare food. If healthy eating has been or has become boring then have a look at some new recipes and explore new ways to prepare food. This exercise isn’t about dieting better. It’s about trying something new with food. We might discover that healthy eating can be more exciting than the food that we always go to when we want to veer away from our healthy food plans. Trying a different way to prepare food can also become an act of courage. When we are willing to experiment, that takes courage. Courage in the kitchen can become courage elsewhere. Experimenting with food can become experimenting with new ways of thinking, new ways of behaving, new ways of relating with people, new ways of working.