Conscious Eating

  My son is currently meeting the Live below the Line Challenge, raising money for charity by living off $2 per day for 5 days. He has eaten a lot of porridge, rice and lentils and while not suffering too many hunger pangs, the big shift for him has been an awareness of how much he normally shovels in, often without thinking. 

  I noticed this morning that he left bits of rice in the colander and in the saucepan, which is fine because he knows come Saturday, he will have money in his pocket and a range of food to choose from in the pantry. But it reminded me how in his autobiography Mao’s Last Dancer, Li Cunxin told of his anger at such waste in the west. To his family, living in poverty in rural China, every single grain of rice was to be treasured.

  For a while now I have been trying to eat more consciously – savouring the flavours and textures and just being aware that I am blessed never to go hungry. Why did I take that for granted for so long? Why do we take so much of our lives for granted? Because we never stop to savour what we do have – we are too busy stressing about and energising what we think we don’t have. However one of the laws of the universe is an incredibly simple equation: like attracts like. The sad truth is that if we perceive ‘lack’ and ‘need’ in our lives then that is precisely the energy and emotion we attract.

  Conversely if we take time to count our blessings (cliche I know) and to celebrate how much we actually have going for us, we attract abundance in all its many forms. So instead of rushing through the next meal with the mind running the “Right what’s next……” scenario, stop and contemplate the sheer joy of knowing "Right now, in this moment my family and I have enough!"

PS: Check out this great recipe I tried recently for  Dahl  - the dish eaten by more people in the world than any other. Have it as a soup or thicker with rice or as a dip - cheap and delicious.