Eating Well With Limited Time
When I was a teacher, I struggled with eating because my time was limited.
Before I learned how to eat well, I viewed eating as an activity that included the whole process of making food. Cooking and preparing food take time. My thinking was this: if I do not have enough time to do everything exactly how I want in the kitchen, and make something that tastes like what I want to experience later, how am I supposed to eat?
Making smoothies in the evenings and on the weekends and freezing them helped. I had nourishment I could take with me. But that did not deal with the real issue. The real issue was I believed eating required a long stretch of time to sit, to eat, and to digest before I had to hurry.
What changed was how I thought about food. I stopped seeing eating as a long experience I wanted to have. I started seeing eating as nourishment my body requires. That change took time to become a pattern in my behavior, and my year in Tanzania had a lot to do with it.
In Tanzania, I started off cooking all my own food because that is what I was used to. As I traveled to different parts of the country, I cooked less and ate what other people prepared. Eating out was normal, and eating out meant something different from what I was used to. A place to buy food might be a covered area with a concrete, dirt, or sand floor and with a table and some chairs. In a big city like Dar es Salaam, it might be a tight place on a crowded street among people selling and buying.
Many of those places did not expect a person to sit for a long time. You ate your food and you left. Your body was hungry, and the purpose was to receive nourishment and energy to continue your day until you ate again.
This morning I had to be ready at a specific time to catch a bus, and I wanted to eat something first. I felt rushed eating my oatmeal and yogurt. I did not feel like I had time to relax my body and let the food digest, but I knew I could do that on the bus. It was not an exciting meal, but the flavor was nice and there was nourishment.
Somewhere along the way I learned to eat quickly enough to nourish myself until I would eat again. I do not like eating in a rush. But I can eat quickly when I need to, and I recognize that is okay.
Stacy 🌺
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I share my experiences and my perspective. Eating and healing look different for everyone. If you are struggling with food or your relationship with your body, please find support. You don’t have to do this alone.