You see the donut. It’s your favorite kind. It’s calling your name. It wants you to eat it. And you want to be the one to eat it. Your mouth starts to water as you imagine the delightfully crispy outside and the tender and delicious inside.
You know you shouldn’t, and so you start to turn around and walk away. But the image of the donut stays with you, like that last tune you heard on the radio you can’t get out of your head. And of course, the more more you think about not eating that donut, the more you want it. And the more you want it, the more necessary it becomes to your happiness. So you throw up your hands, say “I don’t have any willpower,” and turn around, go back, get it, and eat it. But you don’t really eat it. You stuff it in your mouth quickly, wash it down with coffee, hope no one saw you eat it, and then you head back to whatever you were doing.
But the story doesn’t end there. At this point, you start to berate yourself and belittle yourself and demean yourself and your willpower and your intelligence and your worth as a human being. You might even compare yourself to livestock or barnyard animals. As you punish yourself for going off your diet, you head back to the break room to see if there are any more donuts left.
Sometimes I think it isn’t the food that makes us fat. Sometimes I think it’s what we say to ourselvesafter we eat something. Sometimes I think it’s the self-chastisement and self-punishment that propels us to gain more weight rather than a simple calories in/calories out formula.
If you find yourself struggling with donuts (or French fries or candy bars or ice cream), here are a couple of things to consider.
First, take great pleasure in whatever it is you’re eating. Eat it with delight, and really savor it. Close your eyes and taste it. Smell it. Feel it. Listen to the sounds it makes as you chew it. Make your own sounds while you’re eating it! Really squeeze as much joy and delight and pleasure out of it as you can. If you need to sit down, sit. If you need to describe its flavor to someone, describe. If you need to eat it really, really slowly to mine it for all the satisfaction it can give you, eat it really, really slowly. But enjoy it.
And second, after you eat what you truly and deeply desire, celebrate that you met your needs. “That tasted so good--it was just what I wanted” is a great alternative to “Man, I blew my diet again.” “I love dark chocolate” is a much more pleasurable thought than “I bet the scale is gonna go up this week.”
Allow yourself to enjoy what you truly and deeply desire. And then celebrate that you were kind enough to yourself to honor your needs!
The answer to internal conflict around food? Kindness lavished upon yourself!
Up Next: What Do You Really Want?
