Building It Up In My Head
4 01 2008I’ve been wanting to eat Chinese buffet for weeks now. I just wanted to go in, eat what I wanted without counting points and savor it. I only really like to eat Chinese about 2-3 times a year. So, WH picked me up from work at lunch-time yesterday and took me to my buffet of choice. I was so excited and had built it up in my head. But once I started eating, it was just okay. Not the big WOW! reaction I was hoping for. Not that this restaurant has bad food, the food was very tasty, but the food didn’t comfort and excite me like I’d hoped.
I think since I’ve been on this journey I’m beginning to realize that food can taste good, but in reality it doesn’t fill the emotions that I want or need it to. Food won’t ask me how my day is going. It won’t flash me a smile that says “I love you.” It won’t laugh at my silliness. I think what I really wanted was to have lunch in the middle of the week with my husband. And his company was what I wanted and needed more than the Hong Kong Chicken, egg drop soup, or egg rolls.
Food isn’t the answer to my emotional needs.
I’m so with you there. I love Chinese food, but there aren’t really a whole lot of healthy choices (at least my favorites aren’t), so I saved up my flex points one week a couple months back and went. I expected the food to be so great and so satisfying, but it really wasn’t. It just didn’t taste as satisfying as it usually does, and I think it was because I was thinking, “Is this really worth ALL of my FP?”
Proof that so much of the whole eating process is “in our heads”. Like you said, not that it wasn’t good, it just wasn’t as good as you had imagined it would be, so much of it is in our heads. This is definitely a “store that away for the future” moments. It might also serve as one of those, I really want some of that but shouldn’t go to an all you can eat because it isn’t going to be the best ever when it happens. I LOVE crab rangoon and really would like to have some once in awhile and usally what I do when the family orders chinese is I order chicken with brocoli (instead of sesame chicken) and then splurg with one piece of crab rangoon and if I wait until after I’ve eaten my brocoli chicken, I have to admit that I’m full even if I really want to eat another. The family knows that what ever they don’t eat (of the crab rangoon anyway) will be promptly thrown down the garbage disposal so I don’t slip when I go to clean up the left overs. Definitely an “ah ha” moment. Keep up the good work.
Amen! I am starting to break my emotional attachment to food too. It is so liberating, isn’t it! And it’s much more fulfilling to rely on WH for those emotional needs. That’s what relationships are for, not food.
Thanks a bunch! I figured it out and man this site isn’t as user friendly as I thought it would be. I am trying to be patient while I learn the ropes though……and I am decent with use of computers!
I so know what you mean. I had this same experience with Ben and Jerry’s. It used to be my husband and I’s date night splurge. But now, I wonder how I ever used to get so excited for it.