I was sitting in a lecture on Ayurveda last week, frantically taking notes and trying to absorb everything the speaker was saying. She started talking about breakfasts and how different doshas have different breakfast needs. For example, right now my kapha is out of balance and I should be alright actually skipping breakfast. People may die because of it, but apparently this is true. I had been eating steel cut oatmeal every morning prior to the private session I had with an Ayurvedic Practitioner who told me that in fact for my imbalance I should not be eating oats at all. Who knew?
I started thinking about our morning breakfast routine. Sometimes I ask the kids what they want ( I usually try to), sometimes I just end up make them something without their input - oatmeal with peaches, cinnamon and brown sugar, or pancakes and ham, or toast with cheese - something like that. Then if they're chatting, or generally farting around I end up giving them heck and telling them that they need to eat their breakfast or their brains won't work at school. So, even though they're telling me that they don't want any more I have been making them at least have a few bites to make me happy.
The key there is to make me happy. I have provided them with healthy choices of food they like and then I ride them to tell them how much of it I think they should eat. So I can be happy or satisfied they had enough.
99% of the time I send the kids a homemade lunch, so I know they're having a quality snack and lunch. I don't have to worry they're getting the toxic "food" they serve at the school. So, why am I forcing them to eat, eat, eat. Especially in a culture where we eat too much?
Today I decided to let them guide their own stomachs. Jenna had a toasted cheese sandwich and a hot cocoa (light on the sugar - I love that I can control the sugar in that) . I made her a half sandwich and she got cross at me that I had not made her a whole one. I said that she could eat that one and I would be more than happy to make her another one if she wanted it. She ate about 2/3 of the sandwich and was happy. Jacob picked pancakes and 2 slices of ham. He ate the pancakes and 1 of the slices of ham. The other he made a pacman with.
Again, at first I was going to tell Jacob to stop playing with his food. But I was in a different lecture last week where we did an exercise on mindful eating. We were given a container with almond slivers and raisins in it and were told to pick up one by one the items and feel, smell, truly inspect each piece. Then we put one piece in our mouths and rolled it around our mouths, absorbing how it felt on our tongues, against our mouths etc. Then we slowly chewed it, again really paying attention to what was happening with the tiny morsel as it was chewed and swallowed. We then got out our journals and wrote about how we had eaten this tiny piece of food and all those feelings that we had just experienced. We also shared this with the person next to us.
A pretty big to-do about just one little almond sliver and a raisin eh?
But it really hit home how much mindless eating I can do. If you gave me a tiny handful of almonds and raisins I could very easily throw them in my mouth and chomp them down without really even registering that I was eating them.
As we were having a group discussion after one lady said how interesting it was that from the time they are toddlers we tell our children not to play with their food, yet how much more we had gained from our eating experience by doing just that.
So, I let him play with his ham. I actually thought the pacman was pretty funny.
After all this thought and reflection guess what I did? I forgot to make Jacob's lunch and had to give him money to buy the crap they sell at school. I couldn't believe it. I always make their lunches. Ugh. Baby steps!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment