Hummingbird_Healing_Center

The Same Table

The first few days of a dietary change can be fun as well as challenging. One shops for new and sometimes exotic foods and enthusiastically adds up points, calories, grams of any given aspect of food, such as protein, carbs, cholesterol and so forth. Along about the fifth day recording everything you eat gets tiresome and all the food you had planned to last for two weeks has now become a grazing ground in the fridge.

Twenty-two days ago I started a food “elimination” plan; suspected culprits determined by a costly blood test. Mind you, I got the results last April, but totally balked at the idea of giving up some foods that I love - coffee being one of the most treasured; followed by almonds, corn, most cole vegetables; dairy products; melons, strawberries and blueberries for gosh sake, and the worst – sugar and yeast. Are you aware that anything tasty and comforting has sugar and yeast in it! Like – everything!

Okay, so after no coffee I’m still alive. No, I’m not as alert as I have been, but have learned that if you drink enough black tea it has a similar effect – and helps your body’s water flow considerably!

I mused that we are all called to the same table. Granted, it is a smorgasbord banquet table set with many things from which to choose. It is the choice we make daily, or too often, or not often enough that determines how our bodies react. An old expression is “You are what you eat.” It is all choice. Choose to be healthy, choose to lose, choose to heal or choose to ignore all of that and allow your comfort cravings to perpetuate illness and weight gain.

Likewise, we are all called to the same table upon which life lessons are served. Some people just “never” seem to learn. They try the same things again and again without understanding that one must observe with an open mind and act with a positive attitude to accomplish anything. Oh, if one tries and fails, and tries again with a different direction, one does learn what works and what doesn’t. Still, it is choice that leads a person to act on what is learned.

So, how one deals with a situation is all choice as well. It is the choice we make daily, to react hastily to meet our needs, or to observe and take time to respond thoughtfully. It is a daily choice to create a life filled with chaos or caring, poverty of thought or the power of wisdom.
Dieting is hard work. Investigating motives is hard work. Staying with a program of study to obtain a lucrative career is hard work. Being consistent in life’s “projects,” including dieting, is hard work. Following one’s passion against social norms is hard work.

We all sit at the same table and each makes their own choices: education, religious leanings, creativity, eating healthy or otherwise, learning to live and let live, allowing others to heap what they want on our plates or being miserable attempting to control ourselves and others.

If one would start each day with a clean plate, and choose what would be satisfying for mind, body, and spirit, wouldn’t we all be more healthy?

posted by Shirley @ Wednesday, October 21, 2009