Today all I wanted to do was eat.  As a comfort eater, I fall into a vicious cycle of driving full speed to a traffic light, then slamming on the brakes and then a slow take off until I’m not concentrating on eating again and I’m at full speed again.  The strange thing is that a part of me knows why I want to eat; I just don’t want to face it.  Hence, the reason for comfort eating.  

Previously, I’d looked into the Ayurvedic food principles.  In Bell Bragg and Simon’s The Ayurvedic Cookbook, they list twelve guidelines.  Principle ten recommends we “experience all six tastes at every meal”.  Pursuantly, the conclusion of the principle is, “If all six are represented at each meal, it will be nutritionally balanced and you will feel satisfied after eating it” (p. 20).  The six tastes are: sweet, sour, salty, pungent, bitter and astringent (p. 20).

After reading the book, I tried Ayurvedic principles, and it did seem to work for a few weeks.  Being a sugar addict where sugar is my comfort food go to, my urges for sweet stopped.  However, it’s the kind of thing your family needs to be on board with too.  Of course, you can’t make other people change. All you can do is weather the storm of family traditions and forge some new ones.

Sadly, I’m still working on my kryptonite, but I am subtly changing.  Maybe I’ll try some of the Ayurvedic principles again and build on one or two. Then I might be able to break the comfort eating cycle.