A couple of feedbacks from who has tried the
first rule reached me already, filling me with joy. I thus take this
morning of forced holiday to update my little blog summary with the
third rule.
Here’s the third, apparently odd, rule: Leaving [food]
Here’s the third, apparently odd, rule: Leaving [food]
Notice: start following this rule only after you’ve used the previous ones for at least a few day, or better a week. Concepts are applied better if rules are followed little by little, when the previous ones have been assimilated a bit.
1 • By leaving I mean exactly leaving food
during the meal. No matter the serving
you usually pour, after having eaten it very slowly you
must leave at least a bit on the plate.
2 • It’s not important if you leave half or
just a single remaining mushroom from a whole lasagne. What
matters is mostly the act of leaving some food,
because it means moving away from one of the concept that stalk us
from early childhood: that all food in the dish has to be finished,
no matter what.
Benefits/
3 • Body: Leaving food goes together with the
“slowing down” rule. It basically means listening
to our body, that after having eaten to a fill will tell us it’s
good and that we don’t need to ingest more.
This, especially at the beginning of this path, might mean not being
able to finish the servings we were used to eating. Learning to
leave food will help us listen to the “full” signal and not to
necessarily finish the course, if we’re no longer hungry.
4 • Mind: leaving something helps getting over
the concept that says we must always clean the plate. Finishing the
serving once we’re no longer hungry is a silly way to introduce
excess calories: it has no real benefits and doesn’t even satisfy
any wish. The unfinished meal is a
tangible sign of reclaiming our power over food.
5 • Spirit: let’s say it’s something to
gloat over. It doesn’t matter if we ate plenty or not:
the very moment we leave something in our dish, we are filled with
satisfaction, as opposed to when we
clean the plate to the last drop of sauce, which often leaves us
with a feeling of defeat, almost if eating all there was to eat
meant we’d left ourselves go. This would lead to feeling guilty
and accusing ourselves of poor will, which are the first steps to
become slaves of the food again. Even just a French bean on our
plate, on the contrary, confirms that we’ve won a battle –
albeit a small one.
Little personal suggestions/
6 • Leaving food doesn’t mean throwing it away, mind you. It’s not a waste competition. Most food can easily be put back in the fridge and consumed later. It even happened to me to give a popsicle a couple bites, just to realise I didn’t really want it, so – bitten as it was – I just put it back in the freezer into a little glass to eat it the following afternoon. Another option is to share with someone. At worst, if you have a dog, or a cat, they’ll probably be happy to receive what you don’t want anymore, as a special treat in their next supper.
7 • Most often, especially when eating out, it will happen to find ourselves at odds with larger servings than we actually want to eat. The fact that we’re paying often somehow forces us to eat everything, and this is wrong. That’s the reason why eating out is often more fattening than eating at home: this kind of moral obligation not to waste money.
If that’s the case, it helps if we have gluttonous friends to help us finish what we don’t want anymore. For instance I found out that I am lately finding hard to finish my weekly pizza alone; half or three quarters of it are usually enough. All it took was to find someone that shared my feelings, and since then we always take one to share. Sometimes it also happened that I took the remaining half home with me. Maybe this last solution might be awkward for someone; in this case, if nobody else is hungry, it’s still preferable to leave what we don’t want any more on the plate.
8 • Especially the first times, pour yourself the usual servings. It will be much easier, eating slowly, to see when you get to feel full, and you’ll realise how much you used to eat in excess. If you serve yourself smaller dishes, like you were following a diet, you’ll probably finish everything and maybe you’ll still be peckish at the end, feeling like you’re depriving yourself of something. Getting to the point where it’s your body that says “enough” is way healthier and safer method, also considering that realising how much you’re leaving makes you feel really good, and helps you get a clearer idea of the difference between your former scoffing habit and your new found control of the situation.
9 • After the first times, at least in my case, I’ve started being less strict about leaving something. Once I got used to the idea that I could leave something, it became less necessary to force myself to.
As it happened to me, you’ll probably have a clearer idea of what are the servings we really can eat, and as a consequence we’ll start making smaller ones, more adequate to what we feel. Similarly, when we eat out, to avoid to leave food, if we already know what is our approximate capacity, to avoid leaving food we’ll just end up asking for slightly smaller servings, or asking someone to share.
10 • I’ve always been told “Eat everything, you need it to grow up”, “Honour the cook and finish it all or she’ll be offended”, “We can’t leave that one serving” (as if she could feel lonely in the pan), and, queen between all, “Don’t leave anything on the plate, there are children starving!”.
That we finish or not our serving, sadly poor people will still be hungry, and gorging ourselves won’t help them nor us, it’s just a daft habit that has been crammed into our brain as children. This one, like many of the other sentences, often coming from our grandmothers, are a heritage of darker times when food was scarce and eating was a luxury unwise to shy away from. Now they’re simply superfluous if not destructive. Nobody will be offended if we don’t finish a course if we’re not hungry, because we’ll only need to say it was delicious but a bit too abundant; and no serving will complain if we leave it in the fridge half a day.
My suggestion therefore is not to waste or throw away, but to learn to manage in a more clever way what we have.
A concept has especially got my attention in this regard.
We often eat more than we want, so to avoid throwing food in the trash bin. Therefore, we put that same food in our mouth, even if we don’t need or want it. Basically, we’re treating ourselves as if we were the trash bin.
It’s something that made me think, and I think there’s truth to it. If we love and respect ourselves, the last thing we should do is to ruin this body we have. So, Peace and much Love,
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