1 month challenge: savour food

Recently I saw a small discussion by two friends about a so called “30-day-challenge”. The idea is that you pick something to do every day for 30 days. These can be to try something out (meditate for 3 minutes every day), to improve the world (eat vegetarian every meal) or just silly (grow your moustage out for 30 days).

I liked the idea, for a number of reasons.

First, I love a challenge. There is something inately cool about setting yourself a (somewhat arbitrary goal) and keeping to it.

Second, I think it’s a good way of building habits. If you do something consistently for a while it will become engrained. Your subconscioudness starts thinking “that’s what I always do”, so you no longer have to extend mental energy on it anymore.

Third, it really helps to focus on something, as the time period is set. There is an end-date to it, making it so much more easy to keep it up. I know, because I’ve tried changing things “forever” and it just didn’t work. The first few days are ok usually, but then around day 5 the temptation to skip “just once” becomes big. And as you will be doing this “forever” anyway, what does 1 day matter? Which obviously is the beginning of the end (and many times even the end of the end…). Having a set time frame will make it easier to really stick to it, and then after that I can slack off again (though hopefully the habit is deeply engrained enough that it won’t…)

The original idea is 30 days, but I think a month is handier, as it’s so much easier to remember the starting and end date. And it’s February, which gives just 28 days instead of the 30…

So, my 1-month challenge for myself this February is: Savour my food.

That means giving it my full attention. Not reading, watching a series, or other distractions. Enjoy the taste of my food.

The small exception I’m going to make is when eating with other people. It’ll be impossible to completely ignore them and I don’t want to. So when having dinner together I will try to savour my food while still paying attention to my dish-mates.

I’ll tell you how my food was at the end of the month!