by Boom Shikha
I recently completed a 10-day Ohsawa diet and I realized that not only do I do a lot of emotional eating, that my attachment to food is immense, but I use food for something other than sustenance. Do you do the same?
Meet your Teacher
Toronto, ON, Canada
Transcript
Hello everyone! I hope that you're doing amazing wherever you are in the world. My name is Boomshika and I welcome you to my channel. As always, I'm so grateful that you're listening, Subscribing and commenting. I really appreciate the support. In this one, I wanted to speak to you a little bit about what I learned about hunger after the osawa diet that I just completed. A couple of them, I completed two of them. And if you haven't heard of the osawa diet, Obviously google it or you can check out my couple of videos on it. I think I did one or two videos on the osawa diet. But it's generally a microbiotic diet and you do it for 10 days. The most strict one, You do it for 10 days and you only eat four grains, Buckwheat, Millet, Brown rice and whole wheat. And then you can have water and that's all really. And the only way you can cook it is by baking it or boiling it with water and salt. And so it's obviously a very strict diet. You obviously don't do it for very long. You do it for 10 days. It's a sort of cleanse. It balances out your hormones. It also has a bunch of amazing effects that are more intangible. But I wanted to share with you, As I said, My observations on hunger and on food in general from the diet. Now this is the first time I've actually done a very strict diet like this. It's not even a fast I wouldn't say because I was eating regularly. I was having three meals a day. But it was very restricted in the fact that I was only eating a few things and after a while, I mean, It became flavorful enough. But in the beginning it's very bland and you're like, Oh my god, I can't believe I can't have spices. Especially as an Indian person, Spices are the epitome of my life. So not having spices in my food, I was just like missing it immensely. But eventually you get used to it and you like the food and you know the day 10 approaches and you're surprised that you've stuck it out for 10 days. The couple of observations that I had about hunger specifically because you learn a lot about your hunger in the process of doing this diet which is fascinating to me. The first thing as I said is that there are two reasons we eat food. Three I should say but like the two main reasons why people eat food. Now of course we imagine that we eat food because we are hungry and we're trying to sustain ourselves and our bodies. But doing those have a diet I realized how little food I actually need in order to survive. I ate very little bowls of rice or buckwheat three times a day and I was completely full most of the time except certain times I'd get hungry and I'd have a little bit extra. But mostly I was very full. I wasn't hungry at all. I wasn't starving and in fact I was glowing more than ever and my my energy levels were high. And so in general I realized that I'm actually probably eating a lot more than I should be. And I started reading up on it and of course yes we eat food for sustenance. We eat food because we need we need it in order to survive. But in this day and age where food is abundantly available I think a lot of us are eating food for a couple of other reasons. Basically first of all to numb ourselves. And that was actually one of the major things that came up for me is that on the osawa diet it's absolutely impossible for you to numb yourself using food. There's not enough of it first of all. It doesn't taste that good. It's not like cheesy goodness or it's not filled with fats or anything like that. It's just basic very basic food. And so if you wanted to numb yourself using buckwheat you know or brown rice with just salt and water it's just impossible right. And so yeah you would eat a little bit and you're like oh my god I really you'd feel this desire to numb yourself. You feel this desire to be like oh my god I really don't want to do this. I hate this diet. I hate myself. I hate the world. And then you want to numb yourself using food because that's what all of us do. We eat carbs. We eat chips. We eat cookies. We eat desserts. We eat something cheesy. We eat something really terrible for us. And then we feel good about ourselves for a few seconds. But on the osawa diet as I said it's impossible to numb yourself using food in order to placate yourself using food to soothe yourself using food right. It's just impossible. And so you really learn how often and I realized for myself how often I used food in order to numb myself. Now of course what happens is that we kind of find other ways to soothe ourselves or numb ourselves. Like you know when you're quitting smoking a lot of the smokers will instead start you know chewing gum and they just become voracious chewers of gum. They just kind of go crazy with it. Or you know they'll put on a patch but they'll put like a hundred a day or something. Like they just go crazy about it. It's like they need this oral fixation and they just kind of substitute one for another. Or they start eating a lot of candy or they start eating a lot of food in general. That's why a lot of smokers when they quit they gain a lot of weight. And so if we are not able to numb ourselves one way using food then we find other ways to numb ourselves. And I noticed that my intake of social media went up exponentially. Normally I don't spend that much time on social media obviously but as soon as I couldn't use food to numb myself I started using social media a lot more. A lot of it was obviously to look at pictures of food which is terrible. But I did that a lot and I'd go online and look at pictures of food or pictures of people eating food or it was just like I was like I want food. And so I realized how often I said I numb myself but also I realized how what I used to numb myself. So if I don't have food I use social media. If I don't have social media then I use physical activity or work. So if I wasn't able to eat properly on the OSAWA, Like completely, I noticed that I worked overworked myself. I worked a lot in order to distract myself from the fact that I couldn't eat. And so it's fascinating to me, It was perfectly fascinating to me to notice this. You know it's like wow really I actually do this unconsciously, Completely unaware of this. We're all doing it but we're completely unaware of it. And that's why I love the OSAWA diet because it just kind of brings it into highlight and all of a sudden you're like whoa this is actually what I do. The second thing that we do with food that a lot of you probably know of already is that we reward ourselves with food. So if we do something good or if we don't do something good or if we had a hard day or if we didn't have a hard day you know we just reward ourselves. We're like oh I deserve it. I deserve this chocolate cake or I deserve this crispy cream donut or I deserve this bag of chips that's a family pack but I'm just going to eat it all by myself. So we and that's me that last person is me because I don't like sweet stuff but I love chips and I can literally eat a family pack of chips by myself sitting in my room and before I know it the whole pack is done I'm like oh my god. And so we reward ourselves using food right again as I said on OSAWA you can't really do that like I mean who wants to reward themselves with buckwheat and it's delicious but it's not that delicious and it's not sweet it's not like a dessert or a savory snack so it's not something you can really use to reward yourself. So you don't have that system anymore and again you notice I notice particularly for myself how often I used food in order to reward myself so I'd have a long day at work and I'm like oh I would really love like a bag of chips right now to to reward myself to soothe myself. Now I guess numbing and soothing are pretty much the same thing basically but you're kind of using different tenets of it like you're numbing yourself to get away from feeling something or you're numbing yourself from to prevent yourself from seeing something clearly. You're rewarding yourself because you had a hard day or because you went through a difficult time or because you're going through a breakup or because your parents are fighting and you want to you know soothe yourself or things like that and so I think they're basically two sides of the same coin really but again food is used for both of them. In general a lot of times when we're eating food it's not because we're hungry necessarily or that our body needs sustenance like that's it's like oh my god I'm so hungry if I don't eat I'm gonna die but it's because we're rewarding ourselves because we're numbing ourselves because we're soothing ourselves because we're using food in order to placate ourselves in order to give ourselves solace in order to not be lonely anymore a lot of us who are single learn by ourselves a lot of cases when you're by yourself on a Saturday night or a Sunday morning and you feel that feeling that pang of loneliness what do people do you know we eat we eat a lot of food and that food kind of becomes a sort of surrogate partner or a surrogate romantic relationship right and so again we soothe ourselves make ourselves feel better using food again on osawa you can't actually really do that no matter how much buckwheat you eat or brown rice it really doesn't work you know you can have a bowl of buckwheat but after that you're like oh my god I can't eat another bowl of buckwheat and then really at that point you start feeling the feelings you start feeling all that stuff that you've been pushing down underneath into the underground by eating by soothing yourself using food right if you don't have that coping mechanism anymore then what are you going to do you're going to actually start feeling your feelings you're going to start feeling what's coming up you can actually start seeing things more clearly and in general is that what a lot of people do is because of the fact that they're doing it for health benefits I really did it because I really wanted to see underneath the surface of my subconscious I wanted to see what is going on down there and it was very enlightening in a lot of different ways as I said I realized how often I numb myself using food how often I reward myself using food how often I push down the feelings that I'm feeling by going and having a bag of chips or going and having something to eat and a lot of times the the things I'm choosing are healthy which is fine I guess but the point isn't that isn't the point isn't that you're choosing healthy snacks the point is that why do you need to eat right now when you're not actually even hungry what are you doing using food like what what are you trying to really do what are you really using this food item for and that's again the question I've been asking a lot of times nowadays after those have ended because I noticed myself doing it obviously as soon as the diet ended I started going into my voracious phase of eating like a crazy person but I really try to ask myself as much as possible ask myself this question of when I am eating something what am I eating for right now am I eating for sustenance is it because I'm hungry or am I eating because I had a bad email or a bad text message or a nasty troll messaging me and I'm trying to soothe myself and make myself feel better or am I eating because I feel like I'm missing Thailand and I'm trying to soothe myself that way or I'm trying to reward myself because I had a long hard day at work and I'm like oh I just need to eat something in order to make myself feel better again what are we using food for right and so as I said I've been noticing trying to notice at least and trying to really pinpoint it now I don't know if I'm actually really doing anything about it particularly I'm journaling a lot and trying to realize what's actually going on and perhaps that's just the first step for me but I've noticed that it's been extremely enlightening for sure I've learned a lot about myself in the last few days just by doing this diet and then by kind of recon doing some recon after and I'm trying to figure out okay what happened there why did I do that why did I eat this why did why do I need to eat this right now what am I trying to soothe what am I using this oral fixation for all right and so I wanted to share this with you because as I said it's fascinating it is absolutely fascinating what we use food for and in a lot of cases I'm sure you imagine that you use food for one thing but you're actually using it for completely something different and I'm not saying that you guys should go and do the wasawa diet I don't know if it's for everyone for sure but I do realize that even just doing a day's fast and figuring out oh my god food is I'm really emotionally attached to food and I can't go without it I think it would be really useful for a lot of you guys I hope this makes sense I hope I was able to explain myself to you if you have any questions obviously message or comment below and I shall do a follow-up video again thank you for watching I shall see you the next time around bye for now
