How It All Got Started

It all started when I watched this TED video by Matt Cutts called “Try Something New for 30 Days.” Well, that in conjunction with reading this article on the TinyBuddha blog. Somewhere in the article the writer, Toni Bernhard, talks about not multi-tasking. Particularly “writing while trying to follow a movie in TV; composing an email while listening to an audio book and eating a piece of toast.” I thought about all the things I do at the same time: writing a message while checking FaceBook, while eating dinner and watching TV. I grimaced. Guilty! I multi-task with the big dogs.

I decided then and there—well, actually, then and then—that I would, 1) try something new for thirty days, and 2) not do anything else while eating. Hence, my first 30-day challenge: eating…just eating.

Harder than I thought.

This, by the way, is not a ploy to lose weight. I could lose about five pounds and be happy about it but let’s get real. It’s just five pounds. No, a good motivator like weight loss would make this a lot easier. I just wanted to pick a challenge that was, as it were, challenging.

My first day was July 12, 2011. Dinner. I got out the organic romaine lettuce, the perfectly ripe avocado, the grilled zucchini, and the left-over mini burger that I had cooked along with said zucchini the night before. I put it all in a pasta bowl and topped it off with my secret blend of Annie’s Goddess dressing and a toasted Asian sesame which shall remain nameless because I don’t want to give them free advertising.

I ambled over to my kitchen table whose top I haven’t put a dish on since I bought the thing about ten years ago and sat down to savor my first non-multi-tasked meal. Then I discovered something very disturbing: I don’t like meat. OK, my friend Shanna brilliantly posited that of course I don’t like a chopped-up hamburger in a salad. Who would? I don’t know. I sounded like a good idea when I thought it up. And I’ve done it before—and enjoyed it—when sufficiently distracted by, say, TV, FaceBook and email...all at the same time.

Then there was the next night. Breakfast and lunch had gone swimmingly with breakfast being the usual cup of coffee I drink while staring off into space. At 6:30 in the morning even I am not capable of multi-tasking. For lunch I heated up my frozen Jamaican beef patty in the microwave at work and went outside to sit by the fountain. I almost felt guilty about watching the water flow in arcs over the pool of water. How was this different than watching TV? I decided that, for the most part, I was at least paying attention to what I ate and let that technicality slide for the moment. “This is meat,” I thought, “and it’s not so bad.” Yeah, but it’s covered up in a sauce that’s spicy-good and wrapped in a flaky crust that melts in your mouth. And there’s way more sauce than meat.

Dinner, though, was another story. I biked down to the taco truck on my way to book club and got my favorite combo of one asada, one carrnitas and the hotter-than-Hades chile-avocado salsa on the side. I settled down to what is normally one of my most-loved dinners, took two bites of the carne asada and sat back in dismay. There it was again, the “this is not as good as I used to think” disappointment with meat. I managed to get the whole dinner down but it sat like a greasy lump during what was an otherwise great book discussion. Tomorrow is another day and I think it will probably be meatless.

In closing for today, let me say a few words here about cheating. I don’t like cheating. It’s bad for the soul. So last night I put the bar of Green & Black’s chocolate in the refrigerator and had to go downstairs during commercial breaks from So You Think You Can Dance to bite off little chunks.

I don’t think it was cheating when I stayed at my desk earlier this afternoon and ate a few banana chips. After all, I stared at the faux-wood top of my desk while chewing and only strayed over to glance at my wall calendar for a second or two.

May tomorrow always be better. Gives you something to look forward to.