Tuesday, 14 September 2021
Comfort Eating Context
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.
Today's Cards
The Cards - Comfort Eating Analysis
Carryover Cards
Three cards carried over from yesterday; Moment to Moment moved from Others’ Views to Now, Fighting remained in Goal, Abundance remained in Distant Past.
Cross
Firstly, I’m unsure where, to begin with, the Adventure card in the Distant Past since we’re talking about comfort eating. What is sure is that whenever I encounter certain forms of stress and it becomes The Burden, like in the Recent Past, I eat.
Secondly, in the Now, I’m influenced by the duality of mind illustrated by the Schizophrenia card. The constant struggle within the cycle and trying to break it means that ultimately, I’ve just got to let both go and surrender, so I travel from Moment to Moment.
Then my solution might be Sharing my food and my predicament. Maybe in Sharing my Goal, I can stop Fighting and being on edge, which begins the cycle.
Base
When it comes to my Feelings, The Rebel being self-assured and confident in a new approach. Maybe, I just need to stop worrying about it?
Pleasantly, Others’ Views are of Playfulness. In looking up the Osho book, it says, “the moment you start seeing life as non-serious, a playfulness, all the burden on you hear disappears” (p. 55). How wonderful!
Hopes & Fears tells a story of Change, particularly the fear of changing what I do around comfort eating. Change prompts all sorts of questions; will I be a different person? How would I be received if I changed my appearance? To my family? Or my friends?
Changing yourself shifts the current status quo. In a family of thin, people the fatter may have received a specific type of attention. If then, they become slim that attention shifts and then it’s a matter of learning to adjust to the new energy. The unknown brings with it fear.
On the other hand, is hope. It’s the longing to change, become the ideal you have in your mind and be happy with it.
Finally, we arrive at the Outcome and its card of The Dream. As I’ve discussed many times, The Dream is the romanticised view of a situation and is unrealistic or wilfully ignorant of the situation. Oh, fiddlesticks! Alas, it looks like comfort eating will remain a challenge 😟
References
- Osho, Osho Zen Tarot – The Transcendental Game of Zen, St Martin’s Press, ISBN 0-312-11733-7
- Tarot Layouts per month
SEO – Comfort eating dominated my thoughts today. The more I fought the urges to stuff sweets into my mouth, the harder it got to resist.
