The truth about junk/crap/rubbish/trash/insert expletive

What comes to your mind when you see this picture? Looks good, doesn't it? Looks like it would be really yummy to eat, don't you reckon? Hell, I do! As I'm still a large (if reducing) person, I think there'd be those who would tell me not to think for a minute there's anything nice about a Drumstick, that I should think of it as poison, junk, rubbish, garbage, crap, yada yada yada. In fact, in the past on my failed attempts to reform my eating patterns, I've tried to tell myself all that stuff! Did it work? Of course not! Let's be brutally honest here, folks. Drumsticks and, indeed, a lot of the food the world would have you believe is junk/rubbish/crap/trash/garbage are YUMMY! They are NICE! It is not a sin to think that or to say it because it's the truth. Hell, let's face it - would there be any fat people in the world today if such foods as this weren't actually pleasurable to eat? Of course not.

Of course, there is another side of the coin of my yummy Drumstick. Is it healthy? No, truthfully, it isn't. Nobody would suggest it was. Does it have too much saturated fat? Hell, yes. Is it nutritious? No, not especially (though I guess the milk in the ice-cream has some protein? ;) ). Is it the ideal way to use your daily food intake? Of course not.

The next thing we have to ask ourselves is, will the world ever be free of the less healthy foods? And the answer to that is no, it never will be. They ain't going anywhere. Why would people stop making something that spins such huge profits? So unless we are all planning on going and living on an island somewhere where there is only clean, unprocessed food to eat/catch, we need to find a way to live in harmony with food, ALL food.

And this is where my Drumstick comes into it. I ate a Drumstick tonight. Yes, I'm freely admitting this. :) It had 275 calories (I could have a full meal on those calories!) and waaaaay too much saturated fat. Do I feel bad about eating it? Not at all! I enjoyed it! And you know why? Because for possibly the first time in my life, I made a choice to eat a sometimes food, decided what I REALLY wanted, went and got it and ate it slooooooowly, savouring every mouthful. And it was delicious. The idea of this exercise stems from Dr Kausman's book, of course. I've felt for a long time that my binge-eating was extremely unsatisfying on many levels, but the most basic problem with it is that I didn't even enjoy the food. I went out of my way to seek out food I thought I wanted, shovelled waaaay too much of it down my gullet, felt ill for ages afterwards and ended up feeling even worse. I doubt I actually tasted any of it. I'm not proud to say this, but I will admit it - I've been known to polish off half a litre of ice-cream in one sitting. *blush* I doubt I would have enjoyed more than two mouthfuls of that lot because I was eating it...I don't know, almost to punish myself for being so worthless and weak? (and that may not make sense to people who don't binge, but that's really why I have done my worst bingeing). Dr Kausman claims that if you eat mindfully and consciously, you can get a hundred times more enjoyment out of a single Lindt ball than if you'd eaten a whole box of them. And I thought that sounded too good to be true, but guess what? I think my Drumstick experiment has proved it IS true! I've had my "sometimes" food and I enjoyed it, but it was quite a small amount. I don't feel sick. I don't feel guilty. And I don't need to have another for months now - I can just read my blog to remember how it tasted....hehe!

So that's today's new eating awareness revelation. I'm still excited - this book rocks! :) :) :) Ciao all!!!!