Tasting Versus Tasking

Lately my eating habits have come under scrutiny. As a general rule, I don’t do diets. This however, does not deter me from accumulating diet books. In fact, I have become an inveterate collector with a full blown penchant for picking up any story supporting weight loss. My recent reads include Health Bliss by Susan Smith Jones, PhD, Mindful Eating by Jan Chosen Bays, MD and The Writing Diet by the noted writing author, Julia Cameron. Julia poses pointed questions at the conclusion of each chapter designed to reveal ones culinary caveats.

Much to my dismay, I discovered way too many meals are ingested while multi tasking. It is not uncommon to see me munching in mid air as I flee from one household chore to the next. At the office, I’ve been known to prepare my lunch and place it next to my keyboard, gulping bites of food between bytes of code on my desktop. There I sit, shoveling my mouth full as if a meal were solely fuel to build a fire under my production schedule. It is as if my tasking has become more important than my tasting.

At the crux of this unconscious behavior is an incessant need to stay busy, borne of a tired tendency to overvalue what I do and undervalue who I am. Last month I received the following “Note from the Universe,” authored by Mike Dooley at TUT.com; “To some, on other planets, Debra Mae, you get more done in a single day than they do in an entire year. On this planet, however, getting things done has been confused with worthiness. I guess that pretty much answers the intelligent life question.”

Julia Cameron refers to poor eating patterns as “self destructive, self sabotage and an instrument of self loathing.” In Julia’s estimation, the key to intervention is self care. So today, I set out to set a healthy practice for how I fare with food. My goal is to recover the art of relishing my nourishment, to eat engaged in the God given sense of taste, fully present to the pleasure of the moment.

After all, eating well is one luxury I can afford.

Savor the moment…

Debra Mae