When a poet rubs a piece of furniture, when he puts a little fragrant wax on his table with woolen cloth, he registers this object officially as a member of the human household.

Rilke

Chapter IX of Sue Bender’s Everyday Sacred: A Woman’s Journey Home takes a look at the meaning of sufficient. Thinking about what is sufficient is timely for me. I am trying to understand presence and enough from a variety of perspectives right now. Sufficient feels like a close cousin of those concepts. From a physical standpoint, I am learning how to slow down while I eat and stop eating when I am full. Much like Bender’s gardner, who stops eating when lunch has been “sufficient,” I am smack dab in the middle of learning what sufficient food means to me.

Eating slowly and stopping when I am full are part of a new and different approach to nutrition and health for me. I am a week into developing my slow eating practice. I have found, through Precision Nutrition (PN), a few eating habits to help me along. 1. Sit down to eat rather than eating standing or moving around. 2. Place my utensils down between bites. 3. Be mindful of the amount of time for a meal, realizing that it takes 20 minutes for the body to process the food that you have eaten – this is particularly helpful in keeping an eye on portion size. These habits might seem like common sense, but I have had to remind myself again and again the last 7 days. Other nutrition habits will be introduced in the year-long PN process.

This is a different approach than I have ever taken toward nutrition. This is a mindful path. In the past, I have counted calories, cut carbs, and followed regimented meal plans. Misery has often followed. This feels less frenetic and punitive, and more wholistic and sustainable than my past approaches to nutrition. Finding sufficient, through mindful eating, makes sense to me.