There are two types of food. One is that which you like, which you have a fancy for, about which you fantasise. There is nothing wrong in it, but you will have to learn a small trick for it.
There are foods which have a tremendous appeal. The appeal is not because you see that the food is available. You go into a hotel, into a restaurant, and you see certain foods – the smell coming from the backroom, the colour and the aroma of the food. You were not thinking about the food and suddenly you are interested in it – this is not going to help. This is not your real desire. You can eat this thing – it will not satisfy you. You will eat and eat and nothing will come out of it; no satisfaction will come out of it. And, satisfaction is the most important thing. It is dissatisfaction that creates obsession.
Simply meditate every day before you take food. Close your eyes and just feel what your body needs – whatsoever it is! You have not seen any food – no food is available; you are simply feeling your own being, what your body needs, what you feel like, what you hanker for.
Dr Leonard Pearson calls this “humming food” – food that hums to you. Go and eat as much of it as you want, but stick to it. The other food he calls, “beckoning food:” when it becomes available, you become interested in it. Then, it is a mind thing and it is not your need. If you listen to your humming food, you can eat as much as you want, and you will never suffer, because it will satisfy you.
Don’t be befooled
Man has fallen even below buffaloes. You cannot befool a donkey – he will eat his food. Man is befooled. Everywhere through advertisements, coloured pictures, TV, movies, you are being attracted and distracted from your humming body. Some company is interested in selling something to you. That is in the favour of the company, it is beneficial to the company, not to you. For instance, wherever you go, there is Coca-Cola; Coca-Cola seems to be one of the most universal things. I’m not saying don’t drink Coca-Cola – but, let it hum; make it a point.
It will take a few days, even a few weeks for you to come to feel what appeals to you. Eat as much as you want of what appeals to you. Don’t bother about what others say. If ice-cream appeals to you, eat ice-cream. Eat to your satisfaction, to your heart’s desire, and then suddenly you will see that there is satisfaction. And, when you feel satisfied, the desire to stuff disappears. It’s an unsatisfied state that makes you stuff yourself more and still to no purpose. You feel full and unsatisfied, so the problem arises.
So, first start learning something which is natural and which will come – because, we have only forgotten; it is there in the body. When you are going to take your breakfast, close your eyes and see what you want; what your desire really is. Don’t think about what is available; simply think what your desire is, and go and find that thing and eat it. Eat as much as you want. For a few days just go with it. By and by, you will see that now no food beckons you. The second thing: when you eat, chew it well. Don’t swallow it in a hurry, because if it is oral, you enjoy it in the mouth, so why not chew it more? If you take 10 bites of something you can enjoy one bite, chew it ten times more. It will almost be like taking ten bites if your enjoyment is only of the taste.
It happened once that a man drank some hot coffee somewhere in Japan and he burned his throat inside. Some complication arose and his throat was completely cut from inside; the passage had to be closed; otherwise’ the man was going to die. The doctors fixed a pipe into his stomach so he had to chew the food, throw it into the pipe, and the pipe would take it into the stomach. The man was surprised because he continued to enjoy his food as much as before. And, even the doctors were surprised. They were at first feeling very sympathetic towards him because the poor man would no longer enjoy his food. But, the man continued to enjoy it. In fact, he started to enjoy it more because now he would chew it and if he did not want to take it into the stomach, he would simply throw it out. Now, he could eat as much as he wanted. There was no need to take it into the stomach; the mouth and the stomach were completely separate.
Chew, don’t gulp
Whenever you are eating, chew more, because the enjoyment is just above the throat. Below the throat there is no taste – nothing of the sort – so, why be in a hurry? Just chew it more, taste it more. And, to make this taste more intense, do all that can be done. When you are eating something, first smell it. Enjoy the smell of it because half the taste consists of smell.
Many experiments have been done. If your nose is completely closed and something is given to you, you cannot taste it. Then, you will understand that the taste has more smell than taste. If your eyes are closed, you cannot taste it even that much, because the colour, the appeal to the eyes, is no more there. They have done beautiful experiments: eyes closed, nose completely closed, and then they give you something; you cannot even tell what it is. They may give you onion and you cannot say that it is onion because much depends on the smell. That’s why when you have a cold you cannot enjoy food, because the smell is not there, the taste is not there. When people are suffering from a cold they start eating spicy food because only then can they feel a little tingling.
So, smell the food, look at the food. There is no hurry… take time. Make it a meditation. Even if people think you have gone mad, don’t be worried. Just look at it from all sides. Touch it with closed eyes, touch it with your cheek. Feel it in every way; smell it again and again. Just take a small bite and chew it, enjoy it; let it be a meditation. A very small quantity of food will be enough and will give you more satisfaction.
Take What You Need
The body simply desires that which it needs; it never desires anything else. That will be satisfactory, and once there is satisfaction, one never eats more. The problem arises only if you are eating foods which are beckoning foods: you see them available and you become interested and you eat. They cannot satisfy you.
The first type of desire has to be fulfilled, then the second will disappear. What people are doing is that they never listen to the first, so the second becomes a problem. If you listen to the humming food, the beckoning food will disappear. The second is a problem only because you have completely forgotten that you have to listen to your inner desire, and people have been taught not to listen to it. The body knows no fixed rules.
We have found that if small children are left alone with food, they will eat only that which is needed for their body, and experts were surprised. Many psychological findings are available now; experts are simply surprised. If a child is suffering from some disease, and if apple is good for that disease, the child will choose the apple. All other foods are available, but the child will go to the apple.
That’s what all animals are doing; only man has forgotten the language. You bring a buffalo and leave her in the garden. The whole garden is there, all the greenery is available; she will not bother. The flowers and the trees may be beckoning, but she won’t bother with them. She will go to the grass that hums to her, and she will choose only certain grass that is her need. You cannot deceive a buffalo; you can only deceive man.