Food and Control
Food gives us a sense of control over our own illusions. The key to allowing our food to work for our bodies’ use is to understand the choices we are making with our food.
First of all, the idea of control is an illusion in and of itself. As beings on this planet, we need to develop an ease of adaptation to changing circumstances. The more “controlling” we try to be to “make” things how we want them, the less actual control we have, and worse yet, we fall even further backwards because attempting to achieve “control” we lose the skill of “adaptation”.
Adaptation with the use of food is moving through the flow of the day, without preconvceived notions of how it “should” be, and listening intently to what our body needs when making our food choices. Nourishing our body according to what it needs for functioning, and then using our time wisely to take the time to enjoy the cultivating, preparation, and consuming the food we chose can actually make us feel like we have more of the “control” we were originally setting out to achieve. The reason is because we have shown that we have self control over our own choices and desires. Food is a daily vote we make towards the desires of our life, health and happiness. As much time as food occupies the time in our lives, it would make sense that it would be a powerful anecdote to the feelings of lack and loss of control.
When you’re feeling “out of control” the key is NOT to put more restrictions and infringements upon yourself, but to decide that you do have control over your own decisions and make healthy choices for yourself.
Without this sense of control and confidence in ourselves, food truly can have one in shackles and chains, repeating the same vicious cycles.
Largely, any trouble we have with food comes down to our “self-control” and our self will. When we choose to be conscious of our choices in our daily vote, we prove that we have control over ourselves, no one and nothing else. But when we “lose” self control and binge due to any of the concepts we’ve discussed so far, we prove to ourselves that we “can’t do it”, and that “life has control over us; we are victims and pawns”. Being healthy with food is more than making healthy choices in what we consume, it’s having healthy conscious decisions in how we FEEL about it, and in allowing food to work FOR us rather than AGAINST us.
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