A few weeks ago, my husband offered to go out for ice cream after dinner. He rarely wants dessert. In fact, I used to be the one sending him out for ice cream.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“Ummmm, nothing.”
“Really?” he said. “I’ll get your favorite. Coffee.”
Don’t you just love it when someone pushes food at you?
No! I don't want any!
(But, actually, I’m pretty impressed he knows my favorite, so I considered it a moment.)
“No, I don’t want anything. Thanks.”
And that was that. He went to get ice cream. He enjoyed his rare treat.
This week was my son’s 18th birthday. I made him a cake – homemade, chocolate, non-gluten. It was very good. We had some with friends on his birthday. Then, it sat in the kitchen for two days. When I realized it was starting to look a little wilted and no one wanted any more, I threw it out.
When events like these happen, it reminds me how my attitude about food has changed over the past few years, and continues to change. There was a time when I was begging my husband to go out of ice cream. Almost nightly! There was a time when no leftover dessert or birthday cake was safe from me. I thought I’d always live a foodcentric life and be addicted to food.
But I’ve moved on. It’s just food, after all.
I’m so over food.
There was a time when I thought I’d always be obsessed with food, and always be overweight and unhappy. In the moment, feeling such desperate emotions, it’s easy to think it’ll be the same forever.
But never make assumptions. With effort, things can change for the positive. And you might think you can imagine being over food, but it’s even better than you can imagine.
Interesting post. I am *not* over food but it certainly has changed. I am learning to *love* food rather than despise it. THAT is a key ingredient for me these days.
I’ve had so many twitter responses saying they “love” and even “adore” food, they don’t want to be over it. I suggest we reserve love for living beings and learn to respect food. That’s what I feel a lot of my journey has been. I respect the energy in food, which nourishes my body, but I try not to use it to soothe emotions or distract me. I enjoy food.
Never thought of that distinction Pat. I don’t want to love it I think that’s been my prob lem! I’ve had a love-hate relationship with food where I think of nothing else and then pretnend I hate it. It’s making me crazy.
Those disordered relationships can get the best of us, Mary. (Disordered = we expect things from the relationship that it ultimately cannot give us, like solace, soothing, partnership.) And we do develop relationships with inanimate things like food, but they are usually poor substitutes for relationships with nurturing people. Think of a disordered relationship with food as toxic and the toxic waste is the excess weight it leaves behind!