Nutrition Considerations & Experiments

Every day, you eat something, and it becomes part of you in some way. Over years, you take on a certain bodily and psychological organization and shape that are in part affected by what you have been ingesting.

What you pay attention to comes to the foreground. If you pay attention to eating and all the surrounding experiences and concepts, you can transform your “relationship” to it—how you relate to the topic of nutrition changes, hence impacting your persona (a term whose etymology means “mask”).

Your eating behaviors are also impacted by your psychological states. One day you perceive a sense of safety and peace, and you may eat less in quantity and more unprocessed foods; another day you are identified with anxiety and fear of losing your job, and you may rush through eating lots of food with a sense of hurry and lack of awareness.

It is always possible to observe your behaviors and states, and practice releasing them—softening around them instead of fiercely resisting or avoiding them with tension (which most often works the opposite way than you’d wish, especially with psycho-emotional states).

Regarding eating, here are some things you can practice consistently or sometimes. I keep them short and do not write unnecessary explanations on purpose. You may notice they share a common characteristic: they somewhat veer from the (current) default behaviors influenced by social forces, and some of them may sound difficult or stupid. They are meant to be observed and reflected upon as a way of opening up new perspectives and making space for transformation.

Here’s the list:

• Appreciate the importance of eating, both in its practical survival aspect (you need food to live well) and in its metaphorical/social components (gathering around food is a common communal, positive event across so many cultures and for so many centuries).
• As you’re about to start eating a meal, appreciate its nourishing nature, the people who prepared it, and its nutritional (and beyond) benefits.
• While you eat, do not do anything else (do not watch television, do not browse social media, do not listen to a podcast, do not read, etc.)—“merely” eat.
• Eat in different positions than usual (sitting at a table, sitting on the floor, squatting down with your back against a flat wall, etc.) and observe whether this changes anything.
• Do not use sauces—they’re often a crutch against your anxiety about eating (you fear eating real food; you want to indulge in candy but beat yourself up about it and do not do it, so you compensate with sauces on your salads).
• Restrict eating to a window of 6–8 hours during the day, and do not eat for the rest of the time—notice what effects this produces.
• Prepare and cook the meals you eat.
• As you’re about to start eating, imagine (feel) the sensations and qualities the food will give you (for example, wisdom, strength, aliveness, calmness); then start eating.
• Before eating or preparing the food you will eat, do a meditation practice.

There are some people (a small percentage in my observations) who instead will benefit from different practices, almost opposite to the above, because they are somewhat obsessed with control, routine, and eating the same things in the same ways at the same time every day.

These people, who may also have a distorted self-image regarding their physical shape and health, dread the possibility of eating junk food, changing meal timing, ingredients, or portion sizes. Therefore, they can find some of these useful and important:

• Eat only when hungry, without watching what time it is. Can you sense hunger, really, or have you forgotten? You may be surprised by how difficult it is just to recognize hunger in its pure manifestation, despite you may have taken it for granted your whole adult life. You can always resensitize to it through attention.
• Eat out and, instead of ordering food, order whatever the chef/waiter recommends.
• Eat every meal out.
• Buy items you’ve never bought before at the supermarket, and change your usual meals with these new foods.
• Eat ice cream (not the one labeled as healthy or high protein—I mean ice-cream ice cream).

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