Dukan Day 10: 6 lbs lost.

I’m on the day on/day off phase, the ‘cruise’ phase.   According to the Dukan website, this is marked by ‘perseverance’.   According to my body, it’s been marked by flashes of temptation:

a perfectly round electric blue M&M which had rolled to the back of the counter-top and somehow escaped into my mouth;
a square of full-fat Fermoy Natural Cheese fresh from the Farmer’s Market stall;
- an oval of freshly baked Italian red-pepper dotted focaccia - just one, just the heel of the loaf, hardly a slice at all...  

I had lost my sweet tooth very quickly on the ‘attack’ phase but now that I can eat vegetables I am surprised by these yearnings.    Surprised not only by temptation but also by taste... that slice of bread tasted far sweeter and more delicious by far than the M&M.    Sampling cheeses, I could name each flavour, each added ingredient - I am become talented, a gourmande.

At the weekend Farmer's Market I sampled cheeses, declaring righteously at every opportunity that I was seeking a low-fat option.  Instead of Ben & Jerry’s, I long now for cheese; the sumptuous taste and texture of it.  Hence, the surreptitious slices.   From my reading of the book, it seems that only cottage cheese is permitted as part of my protein intake.   I have searched in vain for low-fat cheese but the name is an oxymoron.   Either it’s not low-fat or it’s not cheese.  

A very nice lady urged me to try the latest addition to the market stalls, the Fermoy Natural Cheese Company.   Oh, joy!   Who better than an analyst to know that what is forbidden is eroticised?    

I’m re-examining my past eating habits and what appears to be the global fascination with food.   Hurrying into work yesterday with a bag of roast chicken pieces in my bag, I was assailed by food advertisements everywhere.   

All the Pizza you can eat for €9.99 at Pizza Hut!       
        Free chips with every Burger at Burger King today!
                  See the world in the new specials from MacDonald’s!
                         Free popcorn and Coke with every sandwich at Spar!

Where is all this food coming from?  Where is it going to?  What if I don’t want extra helpings, free popcorn or chips or Coke?   ‘All the Pizza I can eat’, what does that mean?   Is it the same as ‘All the Pizza I desire”?    Is it the same as ‘enough’?     

What is 'enough'?   

I feel like a child, an infant clutching at the breast.  Babies don’t know when ‘enough’ is because they take in so much more than just food when eating.   It’s not about eating at first, it’s about being fed, being given something, taking in, a multi-faceted satisfaction and seduction.

Taste, voice, gaze, touch, smell,

love and hate and jealousy

gift and poison and debt

you and me and we-make-the-world

life and death.

‘Enough’! 

An infant has to be told what is enough, the breast eventually must be taken away.   

Satisfaction is not guaranteed.

But the seduction goes on ...