Filling Your Cabinet

Please scroll down for today's Heads Or Tails post.

I was looking through my March issue of the Good Housekeeping magazine a couple days ago and stopped to read an article called The Junk Food Gene. The end of the article really made me stop and think.

I'll try to summarize it here..

The mother of an eight year old girl was talking to an expert about the girl's obsession with chocolate. After asking a couple questions about the girl's weight and health, the expert told the mother to fill an entire kitchen cabinet with nothing but chocolate. She was told to restock it every day.

The mother did this and the girl was at first in disbelief. She plowed through the chocolate but the mother did not hover over her and said not a word. By the end of the third week, the girl wasn't eating the chocolate anymore.

The article says that it was never about food with the girl. It was about gaining the mother's attention and trust. It was also about learning to trust herself.

Then it asks us the readers what would happen if we filled our cabinets with our favorite, but off limit, foods? Do we think we'd eat and eat and eat until we could eat no more? Without criticizing ourselves? (There's always a catch.)

It asks us to explore our own relationship with food.

Then came the kicker. The part that made me stop and think...

"Ask yourself this question: If you could fill a cabinet with anything - food, attention, time - what would it be? Chances are, it won't be chocolate."

Ouch. So true.