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Insight Out

Seeing beyond what is visible

Life is a candy store
And I want to taste it all!

By Mei Lan

I watched a TED talk on addictions last week.
The guy spoke about research that was done on rats. A rat was put in a cage and given 2 water bottles. One bottle had normal water, the other one had cocaine water. Pretty soon the rat started to enjoy the drug and eventually overdosed himself. This experiment was repeated and used often in drug treatment and addiction treatments.
Until someone – I forgot who, watch the TED talk if you are interested 😉 – realised that this rat was put in an empty cage. The poor thing was super bored and didn’t have anything else to do than take the drugs.
A second study was done with rats where they put them in a cage that was paradise for rats. They had cheese and other rats to play with etc. In this cage, paradise, hardly any rat was interested in the drug water and I think none of them overdosed.
I was sitting in the couch after a dinner where I (again) ate way too much. My stomach was aching and I knew I didn’t do my body any favour with that crappy food.

I am on a keto lifestyle. Put very simply; I don’t eat sugar and I don’t eat carbs. This has served me very well; I got rid of severe insomnia, lost 15 kilo’s and found my natural body weight, it has made me feel lighter and stronger than ever before and has cleared my head and brings me more focus and longer concentration periods.
I reconnected with my body in a loving way and I start to hear what my body communicates, what it needs. I highly recommend looking into it, by the way.
This lifestyle serves me and supports me to create the life I love to live.
And I swear, it isn’t easy at all. I slip back into food that isn’t serving my body at all often. So, why does this happen to me if I know so well that this is such a great diet for me and my body?
Why would I put up with bad night sleep or no sleep at all or musscle cramps or head aches and painful stomachs and maybe gaining weight again?

I LOVE good food and I LOVE chocolate and pizza’s and I have always had an emotional relationship to food.
When I used to feel down or had a bad day, food could always make the worst a little nicer.

When changing my diet drastically, I started to notice deep rooted patterns that I wasn’t aware off.

In the beginning I replaced eating with scrolling through Facebook or going nuts with messaging friends.
After a while I noticed how I was just replacing one with another.
So, I went for the emptiness. Every time I was sitting at home and walking to the kitchen, I paused and realised what I was doing. I’m not hungry, I just ate a great meal, so what do I crave food now?
Every single time something came up. Most of the time food was a way to avoid reality and create quick satisfaction or distract myself.

  • I am tired today,
  • I crossed my boundary in the last conversation i had
  • I feel guilty for something I didn’t do
  • I am postponing an annoying task and want to distract myself
  • …

And my favourite is “I deserve it now”
That simple statement comes often out of self love and I would totally recommend to treat yourself with food or something you like and of course I always deserve good things.
Yet, the “I deserve it” points to a deeper issue. Why do I deserve this now? The reasons that came up were often important indicators for me.
Such as:

  • I worked my ass off to please someone else
  • I had a very annoying phone call
  • I had a shitty day so I deserve chocolate now

After a couple of weeks my eating patterns and my cravings became the perfect communicators of what was missing or needed.
I created a moment of pause before every bite or every move towards the fridge, to ask myself the question: “What am I about to eat away?” or “What do I actually need instead?”
After the TED talk I wrote about earlier, I phrased it differently:
“What is missing in my rat cage?”
It started with simple things as sleeping enough, planning my days according to what I wanted and went on to only hanging out with inspiring uplifting people, not investing in people that drain my energy.
The more I spend time and energy on creating my life as a paradise place, the less I want to eat unhealthy stuff.

The other aspect of this pattern is that all of the reasons to unconsciously start eating – also avoiding something and compensate – are moments to not be with something.
I don’t want to be with the emotions of having crossed my boundary, I don’t want to be confronted with the sadness that the shitty day brings, I don’t want to be with the disappointment of not having created my life as a paradise yet.
And I have plenty of means available to avoid this feelings. I can scroll through Facebook while eating take away food and having a glass of wine and I would have a totally normal evening (says society). And I would successfully have avoided another emotion.
Yet, I truly believe and experience that life is only riche when I live it in totality. I love life the most when I taste all flavours in the candy store. This means I might have my favourite candy in one moment. In the next moment I can taste something new that is disgusting. And yet, it is all part of life and just another experience. The taste doesn’t stay for ever and it goes away pretty quickly.
This is the way I learnt to approach emotions as well. It are just feelings that come and go. So if I am courageous enough to just dive into any feeling, live it and feel it in totality, it eventually goes away and makes room for the next feeling.
This perspective gives me no reason to snack, to drink or to scroll through Facebook out of avoidance. I don’t want to avoid anything anymore, because I want to live life in totality. I want to taste every flavour in this candy store!
And when I eat, drink or scroll through Facebook, it is because I deliberately choose to and enjoy it! 😉

Looking at what I eat or how often I think about food, shows me how much I can grow and enhance my life even more.
Food became a red flag and an indicator for how to create my life more inspiring and touching.

Insights sparked? Moved or inspired?
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