One day, I ate three doughnuts for breakfast. What is this force inside me that downs that amount of sugar so fast? My rational brain doesn't have time to intervene. This is what I am currently observing at Suppers. For me, the wonder of these programs is that I know I will be welcomed with a warm “hello” when I walk through the door no matter how fast I make progress in the program.
As a perplexed failure of every diet on earth, l can' t even find words to express how it feels to walk through a door and find everyone actively practicing non-judgment, "practicing" because it doesn’t come naturally. So, the day I ate three doughnuts for breakfast, I decided that instead of retreating into my secrets, I'd share my dilemma with the group. Not one smirk or cluck of the tongue. Everybody was there for the same reason.
One member shared, "I eat a healthy meal every week, the one I get at Suppers." She didn't beat herself up about the other 20 meals; she was thrilled to discover she could enjoy real food at all. The first, enormous step she had to accomplish was to develop a taste for whole, healthy food. Outside of Suppers, I’d be tempted to judge her eating habits, but here I was appreciating her struggle with her taste buds. I felt so lucky that she was willing to talk about it.
I still have weeks where the only healthy meal I eat is the one I eat at Suppers. But my reasons are different. I am fortunate that I already like the taste of real food. My hard time is with self-loving. Taking the time to prepare dinner for one requires more energy than I can sometimes muster. Suppers meals are loving. We shop for and cook the food for each other. We take the time to cook most things from scratch. We work as a group to decide on menus and recipes, and we all make it important that each one of us has something they enjoy, whether we Iike it or not. This is not something I can do eating alone yet. Food is my drug. Eating is as automatic as popping pills. And it's just about as fast too, if you eat directly out of packages.
Thank you, Suppers, for giving me the space, time and support I need to experiment with change. Thank you creating the magic door that transports me to a place where I am loved while I learn to love myself.