The other day at a local event, someone tried to educate me about a “conscious diet”. She described it as “eating something and then forgetting it… don’t keep eating that cake you had yesterday today and in the future.” I almost fell over laughing because to me, this is UNconscious eating at its worst.
What America has failed to grasp is that soul-satisfying eating has gone out the window only to be replaced by lame attempts to ignore food altogether. In other words,
Our Eating Has Become Completely UNconscious
In fact, this diet is so unconscious that it falls right back into the negative rut where guilt, extreme calorie-counting, and working out to the point of exhaustion lie.
Go just about anywhere else in the world, and you’ll not only find that people are eating real food, they are enjoying every minute of it! In Frenching Your Food, I describe how French women eat deliciously sinful meals and enjoy them without guilt. They spend half the day planning the next day’s food. They look forward to it and when they are done they are satisfied.
Contrast that with the North American view. We don’t even think about meal time until it is upon us. We prefer to eat out or use the microwave instead of the stove because we don’t want any traces of a mess left behind to clean. We obsess about removing every calorie and gram of fat. In the end, we consume items that are completely devoid of all nutrients and satisfaction, driving us to over eat, get angry or depressed and never have our hunger satiated.
Changing dietary habits definitely involves some level of mind conditioning, but I don’t feel that ignoring your body’s signals is a healthy habit to take on. Hospitals are full of people who have ignored their bodies’ signals. Aches and pains, blood sugar drops, constant or non-existent hunger, dry skin, poor eyesight and more can be powerful signals that your body is crying out for nurturing and nourishment.
A more useful and powerful approach to health and weight loss is to honor yourself and the food you eat. Savor your meals. Relish them. Delight in their simplicity as well as their complexity. Bring romance and joy back into the way you relate to the food in front of you. It is such a simple concept that can lead to the most profound changes in your body, your health and your life overall.
To learn how you can build and maintain a healthy and CONSCIOUS relationship with food, check out Frenching Your Food on Amazon.com.
