30-Day Challenges: Mindful Eating, Part 4

One night, alone in my apartment in Prague, I sat on the floor with a stack of tortillas, hummus, and vegan cream cheese with a bar of chocolate all splayed out on the floor in front of me. I had a little picnic with myself right there on the floor. 

That is something Brie would never do. Brie always cooks and prepares her food so mindfully, so spiritually. For her, eating and sharing a meal is a spiritual experience and a spiritual practice. She would never, or at least I have never seen her, just grab a tortilla and dip it into hummus. She would take the time to get out a plate, napkin and maybe even a place mat. She would get a knife out and spread the hummus evenly over the tortilla and maybe add some cheese and fried mushrooms.

But not me. I just grab whatever I can. For me, eating fast accesses an animalistic or primal self inside me. Tapping into my lizard brain is SO satisfying. I love not thinking about it, but just digging into my food without much thought. For me, it’s like I just want to be in my body and let my lizard brain take over. I want to forget my civilized self and embrace my primitive self. There is also something so satisfying about the fact that it’s not something I normally do in front of Brie—to stuff my face or eat on the floor.

When I’m around Brie I try to eat mindfully. I know that chewing with my mouth open bothers her, and I try not to talk with my mouth full either. We did a month of mindful eating while she was in Prague, which included some silent time at the beginning of each meal as well, not talking unless to comment on the food. It was wonderful. And yet, there I was that night, sitting on the floor and filled with the pleasure of eating fast.

Eating mindlessly is something I let myself do only one of the days of Brie's trip to Europe. It was the day on the train heading from Berlin and Prague when my tattoo infection was at its worst. I didn’t care. I ate all the chocolate, all the nuts, all the chips, and all the grapes in our little snack bag. I just needed to feel soothed and calm for a while. Brie could tell, saying to me as I devoured the snacks: “Sometimes we need chocolate to soothe ourselves, don’t we?” 

That was the day I allowed us to watch Netflix together, something I normally don’t like to do, because it feels like we’re connecting with the screen but not with each other. But I needed it that day on the train; my arm on fire, itching and burning, orange pus leaking out. Throughout the train ride, we kept spare shirts cool with our drinking water and kept putting the soaked shirts on my arm like a bandage to calm the nerves and swelling and heat that was emanating off my skin. 

When Brie isn’t around, I like to eat the way I “normally” do: fast and with abandon and with my mouth open. I actually get a ton of pleasure out of eating with my mouth open, partially because I think that it genuinely does make my food taste better (this is what Chinese people believe—that the air oxygenates the food to make it more flavorful and I think they’re right! Beer tasters would agree), and also because it just makes me feel more relaxed and in my own body and enjoying my own personal experience in and with my body.

This way of eating is totally normal for me. For me to re-train my eating habits that have been ingrained since childhood, this is definitely one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. There are lots of things in our brains that are plastic and can be re-trained. But I’ll tell you from personal experience that eating is something so primal, so closely connected to our mothers and our families that re-training myself how to eat is so hard-wired it really does feel like learning how to walk and talk all over again. 

So there I was that night in Prague, heart aching and needing to be soothed, and all I needed in that moment was some chocolate, tortillas and hummus. And all I wanted in that moment was to eat it mindlessly. I wanted to just get lost in my phone and stuff my face. And so I did just that. And it felt amazing.

Being mindful and spiritual is great. But sometimes we just need to be animals and lose ourself in bodily pleasure. It's a combination of factors from purity culture to dieting culture, weight-loss mania and disordered body image. It's the way we were raised, and the way we live. It's not bad or good. It just is. What I want for my life is to be mindful of what I'm doing. If it means being mindful while I'm eating fast, then I'm okay with it. But it also means trying new things and new ways of being, and I'd like my entire life to be an experiment of doing and trying different things. And that is what the 30-Day Challenges are all about.

30-Day Challenges: Mindful Eating, Part 3

It's not that I hate mindful eating. 

It's that I hate being restricted. And, I love losing control and being "bad." Judgment of being "bad" or "good" is also part of the shame that comes from purity culture.

There is something thrilling and enticing about being “bad” that just makes me want to do it more. It's the archetype origin story of human history: What were Adam and Eve doing if not rebelling? It's part of human nature. 

Experts say that the adrenaline rush that comes from rebellion is one part of heroin addiction. They say that the finding and obtaining of the drug--the chase--is almost more addicting than the drug itself. With studies being conducted in Switzerland of drug addicts having all the access they want to the stuff, the study results show that users found it easier to break the addiction when the thrill of the chase was taken away. 

Play hard to get, they say, and then you’ll really hook them. 

Binge eating provides a feeling of losing control. The loss of control is like a drug, it’s a sweet drug that allows me to totally lose my mind and turn off my brain. In that moment, I am only doing what my body is telling me to do. As someone who is often disembodied from myself as well as often “in my brain” for work and life, to turn off my brain and let my body move with abandon and without thinking is a release, surrender, and numbing all at the same time. It’s intoxicating. 

When this happens, I enjoy my food in huge big bites, swallowing so much and so fast that it actually hurts as it goes down my esophagus. All I want is to feel that comfort and dopamine rush that you get from eating and feeling full.

When I allow my body to take over, it naturally just tells me to eat as fast and as much as possible, to preserve as many calories as possible for the winter or until the next hunt. 

I follow some YouTubers who have had histories with eating disorders and experience “extreme hunger.” Some of them talked about how they had extreme hunger during and after having eating disorders. They talk about how there is a difference between extreme hunger and binge eating. 

They validate that it’s not normal to be thinking about food all the time. 

The first time I heard that, I thought to myself: "It’s not?" 

This was news to me. 

The YouTubers have documented how they actually got themselves back on a more even and healthy eating pattern by letting themselves eat as much as they wanted and gain weight, and eventually—over the course of one or two years—find their body’s healthy weight on its own. They call this "going all in" as a recovery from eating disorders. These videos are validating for me in my journey of listening to my body, eating as much as I want, and finding a body weight that is healthy for me. Listening to my intuition and my body is really new for me. Mindful eating is a part of this journey but I still struggle with it. But it's all part of learning more about myself, what my triggers are, and how I can listen to my body and get my body what it needs. 

Sometimes I am ignoring my body and hurting my stomach. But sometimes, it's because I actually am that hungry. My body actually does need the calories. Do I eat so much because I exercise so much? Or do I exercise so much because I eat so much? Probably a little bit of both. Either way, I am slowly learning to listen to my body and what it needs. 

30-Day Challenges: Mindful Eating, Part 2

 I wrote in my journal one day all of my reasons for mindful eating:

“My stomach has been hurting a lot recently. I want to slow down when I eat so I don't hurt my stomach. I want to taste, savor and enjoy my food as one of the great sensual and bodily pleasures in life. Eating is a great way to nurture myself and doing it mindfully makes it a whole body experience. Mindful eating helps me connect with my body in a way that translates to other parts of my life. Mindful eating helps me practice mindfulness and presence, which translates to writing, doing jiujitsu and learning foreign languages, as well as other activities.” 

Of course, mindful eating seems like an obvious thing to do and perhaps for some people this is the way they normally eat. So why is it so hard for me?

Because, for me, binge eating is also one of the great pleasures of life. 

(People define binge eating in different ways, of course, but for the purposes of this essay, I define binge eating as eating as quickly as possible in big, engulfing bites, not really paying attention to the flavors or textures but eating with the sole purpose of feeling the heady intoxication of being too full--also known as “food coma.”)

Macaroni and cheese is my favorite food of all time. I ate it with full pleasure and abandon even when I was vegan, as I declared finding and preparing vegan macaroni and cheese to be my new favorite hobby. I remember one night I was feeling particularly lonely. I prepared a huge bowl of vegan macaroni and cheese seasoned with buffalo sauce, with bits of vegetarian bacon sprinkled in it. I also had coconut milk chocolate ice cream with brownie chunks for dessert waiting for me in the freezer. As I sat down to eat, I knew I should be mindful while I ate it. I had just spent an hour making vegan macaroni and cheese from avocado and cashews, I should at least enjoy it, right?

But just rebelling against that feeling of “I should be mindful” made me feel instantly liberated. Instead of slowing down and enjoying my food, I said “fuck it” to myself and wolfed down the bowl. I could taste the cream, the fat, the spice, the chewy texture of the noodles, the cool splash of oat milk as it washed everything down. All of the sudden everything was right in the world. I was full at the end of it but I dug into the carton of ice cream with abandon anyway. 

Nothing had ever felt so good. I had a full stomach, and I reveled in the sleepiness and sedated feeling that came with the fullness and sugar that was washing over me like a weighted blanket. I didn’t clean up. I just left the dishes on the table and stumbled to my bed and curled up with Netflix, already dreaming and planning my next binge session. Would it be brunch at Walnut Cafe? Lunch at City O’ City? Or dinner at Native Foods? (Three of my favorite vegan restaurants at the time.)

"Surely I needed--no, I deserved--something for all my hard work and also my loneliness and pain! And that one would be the last one. Just one last treat," I thought to myself as I lay in bed.

These thoughts swirled as gassy bubbles started rising in my belly and heartburn set in. Self-hatred bubbled to the surface and in the back of my mind I wondered if I looked fat.

For me, eating is an obsession.

On top of that, the pleasure and rebelliousness of binge eating even tops the mindful eating experience...sometimes. It’s the feeling of doing something wrong or bad that makes binge eating even more desirable and tempting. Food is also the main source of comfort for me.

Sometimes I feel so alone, so detached, so futile. I have felt very existential. "What’s the point?" I ask myself all the time.

One day, I also felt empty and sad, depressed just like they describe: like a dark cloud descended above my consciousness and everything felt heavy, sticky, pointless and hopeless. So I walked through the grocery aisles of Sprouts and picked out four different kinds of boxed vegan mac and cheese. I had a craving for that processed taste and convenience, something to bring back the bodily pleasure and connections with my body through food, the feeling of being blanketed and held, which is provided through this easy and rich and sweet and salty and fatty combination. I piled them high in my cart and then I had something to love and something to look forward to, something to fill me up when I was feeling empty. 

30-Day Challenges: Mindful Eating, Part 1

Mindful eating is the one "30-day challenge" that I have never been able to successfully complete. 

I’ve tried a "30-Day Mindful Eating Challenge" on three separate occasions, and while I can last 7-8 days at a time, I cannot pull myself away from the urge to binge every once in a while. For me, a 30-day streak of mindful eating everyday feels more like a jail cell than a liberation. I feel too chained and restricted to stand it. I always end up breaking the streak at least a few times during the month. 

How do I define “mindful eating” for the purpose of a 30-day challenge? I define mindful eating in this context as only eating while sitting down (eating while driving does not count though!), and putting my fork down on the table between each bite (if eating a taco or hamburger or other such finger food, it means putting down what I’m eating between bites). 

If you’ve never tried it, try just putting your fork down after taking a bite of food, and then waiting to pick up the fork again only once you have swallowed all of the food in your mouth. 

It is SO difficult! 

The sitting-and-put-your-fork-down-between-bites trick really forces you to slow down and requires you to pay attention to the food in your mouth.

I love it and I hate it all at the same time.  

I love mindful eating for the obvious reasons: It helps me enjoy my food more. It helps me savor my meal time too, as I connect with my body and really feel the pleasures of food and eating. 

Mindful eating is not just about food and eating, though. Food itself is pleasurable most of the time. But when it comes to meals I really love, they are all about mindset and environment. For example, when I lived in Boulder and worked from home during COVID, I ate lunch while sitting in the grass in my front yard. Feeling the grass on my hand, the breeze on my skin, and the sun on my face, lunchtime was a moment in time for nobody else except for myself. My favorite meal was quinoa bowls. The quinoa was salty and flavored with vegetarian broth, and its nutty texture rolled around like tiny marbles in my mouth. On top of the quinoa were various toppings. The soft, chewy texture of the fried tofu, the smooth skin of the zucchini, the crunch of cashews, the tart pop of the pickles, the soft and earthy scent of the micro-greens I picked two seconds ago from my own garden, the zing of the kimchi; it all mixed it my mouth to a harmonious melody.

The thing that made the quinoa bowls the most memorable though? It was the chili paste that I poured on and mixed in, which burned in my mouth and made my eyes water. It made me sit right on the edge of being able to stand it, an uncomfortable but thrilling feeling of “it hurts so good.” Knowing that I was flirting with the edge of discomfort and sitting with it? That brought me right to the present, right inside my body, as my tongue and mouth said “you can’t ignore me now!” 

If I washed it down with smoothie or milk, I felt immediate relief and I would eagerly take the next bite and enjoy the spicy-sweet combination. 

But, if I resisted the urge and really sat with and embraced the spice for several minutes, endorphins were released and a wave of calm and satisfaction washed over me like getting a small tattoo. Eating spicy food like this makes you feel like all is right in the world, and that, at least in the moment, there is nothing you have left wanting. 

Being present and mindful to the food and attune to my surroundings and bodily sensations sounds like a very nice, pleasurable experience, doesn’t it? So why do I hate it so much? Why do I resist mindful eating so much? Why is it the only 30-day challenge that I’ve never been able to complete?