Eating while traveling

Kathy and I are now in Portland to visit our son and his fiancee. She is graduating from college tomorrow. We like to stay in this hostel when we are in town; it's like our home away from home.

Traveling is a difficult situation for those of us trying to be conscious of our food intake. There are entirely different demands and "rules". I have a friend who took her own food wherever she went so as to be able to keep up with her portions and control them. This worked very well for her, but for me this would be a bit extreme.

But what I have been writing about up until now is the fact that the calorie restriction I have imposed on myself is merely a tool to make me more conscious about my eating, not a hard and fast limit. On the way down in the (rented) car, I used this time to be aware of my craving for something to eat and how related it was to both boredom and habit. There isn't much to do when one is driving, and not that much more when riding. It has been a habit of mine to eat quite a bit of snack food during these drives. But today I resisted this temptation. We had each gotten a sandwich from a place near us we really like, and about half way to Portland Kathy took over driving and I ate mine; this was the first time I had eaten since we started. I ate half my sandwich (something of a victory in and of itself), some fruit, and a few rice chips, then stopped. My stomach hunger had been assuaged, my cellular hunger was fulfilled, and what I really had left was this feeling that I should eat some more simply because that is what one does on a car trip. I didn't.

So much of my behavior around food seems to be tied up in just such habits as these. I have grooved patterns into my eating life and whenever I run across a trigger, the habit seems to run all by itself. I mentioned that I have been under some stress lately and have not been sleeping well, and this is another huge groove I have worn into my eating behavior, to comfort myself with food. And I did some of that, as I reported, but I also spent some time writing about it here and thinking about it some, contemplating, meditating on it, and it helped. The stress and anxiety are painful, I have to say, but as with so much else, when I simply let it arise, it becomes quite evident that it will not kill me and will not harm me, and it will pass away, as all such things do. And the habits of a lifetime can be revised, not by my willing them to be, but by the mere recognition that they are ephemeral phenomena that only have the power I invest in them, and no more.

Now we are going out to dinner with Jamie's family. Another challenge. We shall see.