Being overextended is surely not foreign for you – dancers schedules are some of the busiest. For me, yesterday was one of those ridiculously busy days running from one thing to the next.
After a non – stop morning, I figured I had about 20 – minutes to eat my lunch. I really wanted to roast some vegetables but I definitely didn’t have time for that! Instead I decided to simply heat up some curried lentil soup I had made earlier in the week.
I was SO hungry by this point because I hadn’t even had time for a couple bites of a snack in the few minutes I had between appointments.
It was about 2pm and I hadn’t eaten since 7am (that’s more of my own advice I didn’t take yesterday – leaving that much time between meals is pretty much guaranteed to leave you ravenous). I put what looked like a lot of soup into a pot to heat up – eyes wayyyyy bigger than stomach!
Photo credit: whitneyinchicago via VisualHunt.com / CC BY
In the 10 minutes before I had to run out the door I scarfed down a HUGE bowl of soup. Almost immediately after I felt sick..
I had eaten so much so quickly it honestly gave me a stomach ache.
One tip I give many of the dancers I work with is to remind yourself that you don’t need to finish the entirety of any meal in a single sitting. If you have 10 minutes to eat your lunch, it’s OK to only eat a few bites – or whatever feels comfortable and moves you past distracting levels of hunger.
Eat just enough to sustain you until you have more time to sit down to that food again.
Eating slowly and listening to your body is key to reaching your best body. When you eat slowly you give your stomach and brain the opportunity to communicate and ensure that you don’t overeat past the point of comfort.
See that, even I have imperfect experiences with food. I just have to remind myself to make a better choice next time I’m in a similar situation (it happened today haha so I ate a lot less for lunch and avoided the stomach ache).