I have a tendency to chew fast… I shouldn’t, but I do.  Yep, that’s me, the one who inhales food.  Or, it was me… or well, maybe I’m working on it not being me anymore.  You miss stuff when you are in a hurry to eat… someone told me once that you are supposed to take 20 minutes to eat a meal, AND you are supposed to eat sitting down, not on the run, not standing in the kitchen, while the kids sit at the counter, but s-i-t-t-i-n-g down.  What do you miss you might ask?  I haven’t fully grasped it yet, but I think it has something to do with both experiencing the full flavors of your food, and more importantly the time spent actually sitting at the table with others, you know, the really meaningful part of experiencing a meal with someone else.  Connectedness.  Through connectedness with others, I believe you also experience oneness with God.  If you chew fast and inhale your food, I’m certain that you miss out on the experience of oneness and connectedness, enriching the deeper flavors of a meal.

I know where I picked up this ‘eating fast’ behavior.  I know exactly where and when it came from, and why I adopted it.  I can pinpoint the reasons why I felt I needed to do it, but… now the question arises, why do I still do it?  Answer:  habit.  Answer:  avoidance?  Answer:  ambivalence about what a meal actually can be.

Let’s explore this.  I started eating quickly when I was a pre-teen… and I did it for a couple reasons, one being that my parents were alcoholics, and if we were having a meal together, it was best for me if I didn’t have to stay at the table too long.  The alcohol effected them, and therefore it effected me.  They would argue, and I would get stuck in the middle, BUT… if I ate fast, then I had no reason to stay at the table!  Voila!  Great trick.  Such wisdom at my age, learning that to eat and run meant safety!  I really was brilliant.

The second reason why it helped me to eat fast, was because it was my job to clean the kitchen up.  My step-father always prepared lovely meals, but we didn’t have a working dishwasher, and so I was responsible for putting the leftover food away, and cleaning up after the meal.  If I ate faster, then I could get started cleaning faster, and if the kitchen was clean, then I could go hide in my room faster.  Voila!  Great trick.  Again, what a brilliant girl.  Eat and run.  Well, more like eat, clean, then run.  You get the idea. 

Exxxxxcept, that now, I don’t really need to eat fast. 

I have a lovely family of my own, and the dinner table for the most part is enjoyable, albeit the complaints of my young children regarding having to eat things that have batatoes on them (tomatoes or anything to do with tomatoes, like spaghetti sauce and the like), or eat things such as meat with heaven forbid- gravy on it.  Truthfully, once in a while eating fast comes in handy, especially when the kids were a smidgen younger and you have to eat on the go if you want sustenance.  All parents know exactly what I’m talking about, because when a meal starts with youngsters, you have to get up from the table no less than 100 times to get everything from more milk, more napkins, another fork because one got launched onto the floor, or a washcloth to clean up spilt milk, or you name it.  It is seriously one interruption after another.  But now… it’s really not that vital.  My kids are a bit older, so I have to get up less for other things,  but, eating fast is still habit.

After beginning a serious attitude on better health (I began shortly after Thanksgiving 2007, one of the biggest eating holidays of the year) I am now down -20 lbs.   I am assessing what has prompted me to need to lose weight to begin with, and among many many things I have discovered, not savoring my food would be in the top five.  Since my youngest is six years old now, I can no longer use the excuse that I have baby weight.  He’s no longer a baby.  The weight has stuck around for reasons.  Inactivity, comfort eating, avoidance of making changes, you name it. 

It’s hard to take things slowly that you used not to.  S-l-o-w-i-n-g yourself down takes focus.  It takes consciousness.  It take awareness.  And, it takes a desire to want to change.

Savor… pause… take in all that there is… and enjoy.  S-a-v-o-r.  I don’t have to be who I thought I was or who I needed to be when I was a teen.  What a gift.