Live to eat or eat to live…
Often when I get to this point in my talks, some of my audience get worried, as if I want to cut them off from food… “But Yasemin, I love food. It’s one of the greatest pleasures in my life. Can’t we just get through life without being so hungry.” But sometimes when I see them eating, it seems to me that there is a contradiction between their words and their actions.
They say they love food, yet they behave as if the opposite is true. You wouldn’t hurry to leave someone you adore, rush things you enjoy doing or dash helter-skelter through a place that made you happy, so why behave like that when it comes to food? What’s the panic that makes you bolt it down as if you can’t wait to get it over and done with? Why gulp it down with barely time to take a breath? A lot of people eat as if they would spoon the food directly into their stomach if it was possible. Does this rush to get the next mouthful down maximise the enjoyment of eating, or is it more like an addict desperate for the feeling of relief at the next fix? If your true answer is the first option, rather than squeezing more pleasure out of your food, you will end up squeezing more flesh into your clothes every morning.
