Let me begin by saying I’m pretty sure I’ve had about two doughnuts my whole entire life but I chose ‘doughnut of necessity’ as the title of this post for the sole reason that it has a lovely ring to it. Boom boom! Did you see what I did there? Ring? Doughnut? You know… Cor, I’m almost too funny.
Truth be told the title of this post came from a meditation class I attended a few weeks ago (thanks Scott). We were talking about necessary relapse when it comes to tackling addiction, the wisdom in experiencing and feeling the lows to truly appreciate the highs. Duality, man! It was far out. Maybe you had to be there…
So what the fuck does this have to do with anything?
Let’s say you want some toast. Beautifully tempting and tantalising, toasty toast. You want to feel the crispness between your teeth, the crunch, the bite, the melted buttery goodness. Toast. Toast. Toast. It’s all you can think about. You’re craving it. A desire unlike anything you’ve ever known. Oh, the euphoria of toast. The resplendent LUST for toast. You’re only one step away from a mental health sectioning for the damn love of it.
But your mind is saying NO. You can’t have the toast. You want the toast but you can’t have the toast. The toast is bad. The toast is wrong. Bad toast.
But you want the toast god damn it. Just one little tiny slice.
But no, you’re being so good. It’s been 97.3 hours since you had anything ‘bad’.
But TOAST.
But NOOOOOO.
You’ve created a war in your own head between the you that thinks you want toast and the you that thinks you shouldn’t have any toast (excluding any physical factors that might make you crave toast or any other food).
Welcome to schizophrenic hell. Population: you and you and definitely no sign of any toast.
Here’s my advice:
Have. The. Fucking. Toast.
Just have it. Enjoy it. Unashamedly. Unabashedly. Eat it.
Why?
Firstly, going against the desire is creating pain and stress and tension around food. This is not positive, nor is it healthy.
Second, you’ll maybe feel like shit after it. This is a good thing. Ok it’s not fun to feel like shit, BUT this is the best and quickest route to learning on every level. Trust me. Your body will learn what feels good and what feels like shit much faster than when you try to do this whole battle and waging war thing in your mind. And that WISDOM is like an injection straight in to the vein of whole-body learning that feeds (ooh, pun!) in to your future food choices. This is the doughnut of necessity. You can’t learn this without experiencing it.
Battling with your mind will not work as quickly as learning with your body. And by ‘work’ I mean getting you to a place where you automatically make healthier choices WITHOUT WAGING WAR with your self.
Second and a half, you might not feel like shit after. So you’ve had some toast and actually you feel pretty damn fine and satisfied. This is good too and this is the perfect opportunity for you to practice not feeling ANY GUILT at all about it. In fact, eating something less than healthy and choosing not to beat yourself up is another fast track to health. This sounds fucking crazy but it isn’t. Think of this as the training ground for super health NINJAS! Ninjas eat toast and then they move on. They don’t cry or whinge or make up stories in their heads.
Third, you will get to the ‘enough is enough’ stage much quicker if you go with the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ experiences rather than try to constantly avoid the ‘bad’. There is such untapped intelligence in the middle way. It’s the whole balance of pain and pleasure thing. Sometimes we have to feel pretty bad to start moving towards feeling good. However, striving for one thing and never the other is called extremism. Extremists rarely have a good time and never get sex. True.
You tell yourself that something is good or something is bad. Your mind helps to create the experience. How about you try and leave your mind out of it a bit more?
How about you put EVERYTHING down to experience and realise that the path to true health lies in not being such a drag about it all.
Be a ninja!
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