Food for Pleasure

Eating a fairly regimented food plan is interesting. For example, it is very difficult to use food for pleasure on this plan. I mean, I enjoy the food I’m eating (okay, that protein last night was gross, but besides that) but if you stick with it a lot of your “comfort foods” or “guilty pleasures” are gone. No chips or candy or chocolate. No soda. No “treats”. It’s made me realize that I use food for pleasure all the time. I’m not just talking about binges or obvious stuff like going out for Mexican. I’m talking about every few hours – things like string cheese. Yeah, it’s not a horrible choice, but I didn’t realize how much I looked forward to snack not because I was hungry but because I was craving the taste of the cheese.

The weird thing about this cleanse is that I am full (the flax see oil really helps keep your satiety up for hours), yet I haven’t eaten any “pleasure food”. I’m sitting here right now not hungry, yet feeling like it surely must be time for a treat of something. I can tell this is a huge habit for me. Even my chocolate yogurt in the afternoon. Yes it’s healthy, and yes it’s perfectly normal to select food that you like – but I realize that I’ve been using food to get pleasure from life to a pretty large degree. Losing those options has forced me to look at what I enjoy, if that makes any sense at all. Anyway, just a random afternoon observation.