The world is absolutely obsessed with going fast.
Work fast. Read fast (isn’t reading supposed to be relaxing?!). Clean fast. Connect fast. Drive fast (fine, I do this one). Eat fast. Life is moving fast fast fast.
But does it have to?
I’ve always been a fan of slowing down sometimes. I love me a lazy Sunday in comfy pants on the couch vegging out. But as I’ve started tip-toeing into minimalism and working on myself, the idea of the meaningful slow has especially jumped out at me. Slow down, find out what’s important to you, do that slowly so you can savor it.
One of the things that I love (obviously) is food…especially sweets. And food has to be important to us…it keeps us alive, after all. That’s why when I started my nutrition coaching along with my training (I use Precision Nutrition, by the way), I was blown away by what they identified as their first meaningful habit.
Eat slowly.
Whoa.
It’s not just one of the many habits this coaching is walking me through, it’s actually the anchor habit of the entire program. That when everything else gets off track, just focus on eating slowly. One meal at a time. There are plenty of excellent reasons to eat more slowly: you are more satisfied, you digest better, you can use meal time as a relax break instead of a rush. But somehow, I had literally never considered this an important concept, and neither had any other plan I’ve every tried.
The fact that this idea coincided with my exploring the idea of a slower lifestyle was a coalescing moment for me. I eagerly downloaded the app my nutrition coaching suggested (it’s called Eat Slowly) and decided I’d keep more normal pace for a few meals to see how quickly I throw down a meal.
Spoiler alert…I ate fast. Real fast. But I always have.
And to be honest, slowing down was not that easy. 20 minutes to eat dinner? I need, like, seven.
But I kept trying and slowly (ha!) but surely, my times started to go up. And after a few weeks of practice, I typically hit my goal. I decided was ready to add a bit of a different challenge to this whole “eat slowly” idea.
So I bought some cookies.
To be specific, I bought a plastic container of six football-shaped sugar cookies decorated in black and gold icing. It’s not fun to admit, but usually those six cookies (and they’re not small cookies) would last two days in my house…tops. And the kitties don’t eat cookies. It’s all me. For some reason, when I get a “bad” food in my house, I want to eat it/get rid of it as fast as I can so I can forget I ever bought it in the first place. So when I got home from the grocery store, I looked at those cookies and told them I was only going to eat one of them a day.
And I kept my promise to the cookies. I ate my last one after dinner tonight.
Now you might say they’re just cookies, and you’re right. But to me they represent more. It’s a commitment to slow down, to savor what is good in my life, to be mentally present and to celebrate little victories in a path to change.
Thanks, cookies.
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