Food is not always fuel.

Our breaths are not always breaths, but shallow gasps for air.

We stand in line at the store, waiting to buy our pre-packaged organic, non-GMO, gluten-free but tastes like sand-paper snacks. Under the shimmer of the neon lights, we wonder why that faint buzz of anxiety begins to crawl over our skin, and into our minds.

We pause.

Find our rhythm of breathing in this artificial landscape.

Look down, not at our phones, but at our chests, and see them moving up-and-down.

We are alive, and yet we feed ourselves with dead things: crackers, bread, french fries and chips.

We consume without noticing—tasting the salty sweetness as if it was an addiction. And it is.

Breathe again.

Follow our breath. Think about how being alive means being in motion. And as we eat, we remember the intuitive awareness of knowing food is meant to refuel us—not to weigh us down.

Eat the flesh of a fresh red raspberry.

Savor the crunch of a raw carrot.

Sip the sweetness of an orange.

We fill our cups with soul foods as much as we can. Sure, we’ll eat a few chips here and there, because nobody is perfect, and we aren’t meant to be scared of food, but rather alive in our dieting lifestyles.

We indulge in the pearls of blueberries for a snack, as we remember this simple idea: Living means fueling ourselves with tastes and nutrition that bring our bodies, our minds and our souls alive as one.

Eat to live and live to eat.

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Author: Jes Wright

Editor: Toby Israel

Photo Credit: Cyril Caton/Flickr // Pixabay

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