Detachment From Food

I have been feeling low energy and very tired, even when I sleep 10 hours a night. I saw my Ayurvedic doctor and she recommended I do a detox to balance out my kapha dosha, which is very high right now and shouldn’t be.

The detox’s total length is 5 days, plus another month during which I have to avoid certain foods. On the first day, I was getting familiar with the supplements I needed to take, and doing groceries (which was hard when you can’t eat most of it and your husband wants everything in the store!). I also started cooking the basic recipes I was sent. The first day went well overall. I had a few moments when I would open the fridge and see the beautiful, red strawberries right in my face and had to avoid them (ahaha).

On the second day however, after certain morning rituals (regular ones and also others appointed by my doctor), I made the second pancake recipe I was given. The maca pancakes were absolutely horrible, I literally spat out the pancake and couldn’t eat it. I felt bad throwing the batter out, but even after trying to “fix” the recipe, it just didn’t come out right.

And so, on this second day, I started thinking a lot about food, and my relationship with it. I made 3 salads for my husband, and some mashed potatoes, and took out some meat (which I don’t care about because I don’t eat it anyway). It was weird not tasting the potato mash to make sure that the salt and pepper were ok, or to make a salad and not grab a small bite of tomato or cucumber.

Then I started thinking… about how much of my day revolves around food. Maybe this is because I work from home, so it is always around me: I always have a cup of coffee or tea with me, and enjoy baking between translations or editions I am working on. So I started calculating and realised that I spend so much time looking for (or at) food recipes online, grocery shopping, organising food for the week, making new recipes, adjusting old ones, changing ingredients to make healthier versions of everything, taking photos to post on Instagram or on my blog, having meetings at coffee shops, post-workout smoothies in between meals… I mean, the list just goes on and on.

DETACHMENT
So my second day, is all about detachment: opening up the fridge and seeing the strawberries right in front of me, not being able to have one, and not letting it affect me or my mood whatsoever. Detachment is also what yoga teaches us after all, is it not? The practice of acknowledging certain thoughts and feelings, but not going deeper into them, and being able to let them go. Maintaining our state of inner peace, or of inner contentment no matter what external events.

I normally get into a bad mood when I am hungry, I sometimes cannot control it. On another day, those horrible pancakes I tried to make this morning would have made me angry or frustrated. I had been up for over an hour (doing my other rituals such as tongue scraping, cleaning my sinus, oil body massage, pranayama exercises, my daily meditation practice etc, etc). But no, I did not get mad at the pancakes, or at myself, for tasting horrible. I did not get desperate when I saw the bananas on the counter and couldn’t have one to just calm myself and the hungry down. Instead, I made the other pancake recipe I am allowed to have this week, it took me double the time to make breakfast, and in the end, I enjoyed it.

So far, not being able to have the food in the kitchen (it does help that I am avoiding opening up the huge cabinet will all the delicious stuff I can’t have), or not being able to prepare and eat food I make, or just the fact that I am on a mono-diet and eat the same thing every day, has made me appreciate the simplicity in what I am eating, as well as the extra time I have to do other things (like writing this long blog article).

We will see how things go on my third day. My craving for cooking is kicking in, but I do get to cook a new recipe for the last days of my detox.

I will keep you posted and follow my Instagram stories for more insights on my day-to-day detox experience @lacholaahabibii

Anyone else ever done an Ayurvedic detox? Any tips, thoughts, or comments you would like to share?

Thank you for reading

Namaste