Sunday, October 4, 2020

Comfort Zone


The plain Hershey chocolate bar is broken down into its four rows, alternating with two rectangles together and one lone rectangle.  The rows are then broken down in an alternating fashion of one piece, two pieces.  The bar is then partially unwrapped, and two single pieces retrieved for consumption.  Each singular piece is placed under the tongue, in order to melt and provide the best possible user enjoyment.  Only after all the single rectangles have been consumed can the "double" pieces be broken down and eaten in similar fashion.

I know this is the proper way to eat a Hershey bar because I have eaten a lot of them.  A lot. I was under the guise that along with pizza and a few others, the consumption of the plain old Hershey bar was the mental equivalent to "drawing the blinds" on the pain I have in my life.  This false comfort, and it is false, is just treating the symptom not the disease.  

So many times we look to food and our relationship with it as a source of comfort.  But ultimately what ends up being perpetuated is a mechanism for reinforcing shame, and negative feelings towards eating outside ones system of values. 

I used to think that the answers to all my questions and/or the only proper way to distract myself from the irritant of the day was in the inside of a pizza box or the Hershey bar wrapper.  

Sweets are the last hold out for me.  I have broken my relationship with pizza and pop.  I still enjoy them both, but on a level that in no way resembles the bingeing and mass consumption days of yore.  

It is a funny thing the relationships we form with food.  Much has been written about the proper way to eat an Oreo and how to eat a Reece's Peanut Butter Cup.

Are there comfort foods that you have to eat a certain way?  Leave a comment. Maybe you are the person that eats pizza crust first. 


Miked, MMFIC



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