Wednesday, February 16, 2011
eat like a child
So I told you all last week about my friend Morgan. She is one of my best friends and one way we love to spend time together is exercising. We met up last Saturday and had such a great work out. We did 45 minutes on the elliptical and then did a 20 minute circuit (I wrote about those last week.). After ward, she invited me to lunch with her family at Panera (which happens to be in the parking lot of our gym. obviously, i would pick a gym with a bread restaurant in the parking lot. Morgan has 2 daughters-Nautica is 5 and Felicity is 11. I sat right next to her 5 year old at lunch. While I was devouring my veggie sandwich and salad Nautica was completely uninterested in her bagel and cream cheese. She wanted to pet a dog near by. She wanted to chat. She wanted her hair in a pony tail...she was not at all consumed by her food. Our lunch ended with her saying, "mom, is this enough? Can i just eat half?" and Morgan saying, "We can take the other half home for later." I was sitting there totally amazed at this interaction. How do we become obsessed with food? Kids seem to see eating as a chore. I wish so badly I could be so excited and distracted by the things around that eating is not the central part of my day. I know it is a mental change. I am going to try to not let food be central. To let people and relationships become more important to me than food. I want to eat like a child.
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I want to eat like a child too. I remember my parents used to make me feel guilty for not eating all of my food when we'd go out to restaurants, so over the years I started forcing myself to clean my plate. It became a habit, something I was doing to please them, and as I got older and my love of food grew I realized that I was still practicing that habit and it not longer had anything to do wit them.
ReplyDeleteI have to box up food as soon as I get it at a restuarant if the serving is more than I should eat, because I know once I start eating I will not have the will power to stop myself until it's all gone. I also struggle with wanting to eat just as much as Ross. He's a competative cyclist and naturally thin guy. I cannot keep up with him calorically. To compensate for this I have to trick myself. When we make pasta, I either have to add broccoli to my pasta sauce so I'm able to eat a bowl that looks as big as his but with less calories, or I have to cook spaghetti squash for me (35 calories per serving) and pasta for him (210 calories per serving). I enjoy both tricks because I feel like I'm eating as much as him but I don't feel guilty for it because I know it's good for me!