W for ‘waste’

I still have trouble with waste and what it all means and entails. However, I’m doing better, and I want to tell you a little story about waste.

Last year, my husband and I stayed in a very nice hotel in an Asian country that served a four-course meal every single night. We were there for four nights, so that was a lot of food I was going to be presented with! I was already doing quite well IE-wise, and in the past 2 weeks or so had got used to eating just what I needed and wanted, telling myself every morning that ‘Today, I will not overeat’. Of course, it was going to be a bit more difficult in that hotel, because the food looked delicious, on the menu and on people’s plates. Still, that first evening, I tried very hard to listen to my body and to eat little. But it meant leaving a lot of food on my plate for each course. Because we knew that quite a lot of food would be served but we wanted to sample it all, my husband and I had indeed decided to each eat just half of whatever would be on our plates (or less if we were not that hungry).

I told my husband how guilty I felt leaving half of my food, for it to just be thrown away in the bin, when we were in such a poor country and thousands of people were starving just a few miles away. Every course was in fact light and quite small, but it soon filled me up, so I stuck to ‘our rule’. Still, I felt very guilty.

Until my husband said: ‘Just by being here, you’re helping so many people – those who picked the fruit and veg, those who farmed the animals, those who cut the meat, those who fished, those who cook everything here, those who serve, those who manage the hotel. You’ve done your bit just by being here. The food is not wasted – you’ve helped so many people!’

That’s when I realised that, once again, just being was enough... It was a true revelation to me. I had NEVER thought of it this way before.

This was a turning point. The evenings after that, I felt less guilty, and by the last day, I thought to myself, when I left half of my dessert, ‘I don’t owe them anything’, ‘them’ being the hotel, the staff, the restaurant. It sounds harsh and rude, but it helped me overcome my sadness at leaving so much food on my plate.

As for the food itself, remember that even when you eat it it’s wasted – it’s turned into waste and it goes down the toilet, for the most part. Whatever you do, it’s wasted. Or ‘waisted’ (to pinch Evelyn Tribole’s pun) if you eat it all when you’re not hungry...