I'm going to bet that this particular person is a young man. When I was a young man I could stuff myself and I never had a single pain in my stomach ever. I set records for how much food I could eat and all sorts of things. OK, desire for lovely food. A lot of people, when they talk about desires, tend to underrate the intense difficulty people have with the desire for food. When you think about it, when you were born, what was your first pleasure? It was food, it was that warm milk, that was like your first pleasure on earth. And it more or less stays that way that food is the number one desire. Some people argue that sex is, and other things, but no, I tend to think that food, because we have to eat, is our number one desire. It's just always something we do, virtually every day, you do three times a day here, maybe more in your normal life. So because of something that you have to do, which is unlike many other desires, it presents to you pleasant and unpleasant. And the pleasant can trigger off, "This is lovely!" and then you stuff yourself. So how do we work with that?
One of the different techniques I've used to work with food desire, is that I try to limit ever having seconds. Now that's not easy when I stay with my mother-in-law, with good cooks it's hard to limit seconds. But what I try do is I'll take the plate, and generally here it's rice and vegetables, and I'll put on the rice, and I'll watch the actual size of the rice. I basically know the size that I should take for my physical being. Being as old as I am, not being a super-athletic kid, I try to take exactly the right amount. And it's not unusual for me to take half a spoonful and put it back. I try to be aware of the exact portion I should take. Same thing with the vegetables, we have a set amount of fruit, and so on. And then, basically I never go back for seconds. If it really isn't enough, if for some reason that day I was a bit extra hungry, I don't worry about having to fill up, because I know I'm not going to starve, I'll make it until the next meal. No big deal.
And if I happen to take too much, if I'm really not that hungry on that day, I don't finish it. I just leave that bit over. So I'm very careful about the actual size that my eyes can see on the plate of the food I'm putting on the plate. Never taking seconds is something you can experiment with, because it's absolutely true if you've taken a good portion already, you're not going to starve before the next meal, so what's the point? Why need to go back for seconds? If you want to make that a practice, see what happens to yourself. You may then find, that the next meal you have more hunger pains, because maybe you didn't really get enough. Then you can adjust your size again, adjust it a little bigger to what you had last time. then you may find that after a while you're able to see what size you really want.
Besides this, of course, is the food reflection. If you're not using it, then you should start using it again. To really know that you're just eating to keep your body alive, to keep it healthy, that the minute you go off for the desires for the taste, you're just going to suffer, you're going to pull yourself more and more into that craving world. A few things that you can ask yourself whenever you're liking it a lot, and as well whenever you're not liking it a lot, ask yourself, "Where is this taste going to be in 30 minutes?" How many of you, thirty minutes after a meal, are just sitting there and thinking, "Mmm! Those potatoes were so beautiful!" Forget it, you just don't! Most people, thirty minutes after a meal, have totally forgotten about the meal, they're on to the next thing in their life.
30 minutes later it's gone! It's totally gone! Now if you ask yourself while you're eating, "Where is this taste going to be in 30 minutes?" it puts everything into perspective, it makes you realize, "There's no reason for me to get super desirous, super-anxious, super into wanting, wanting, wanting this food, because there's no need!" Because it's all going to go away in thirty minutes. Now on top of that you can ask yourself, "Do I want to die like this? Do I want to die full of desire for another piece of cabbage?" I mean, it sounds kind of dumb, doesn't it? But keep in mind that as far as Buddhism does teach, the thoughts at the moment of death do propel your next birth, and if you desire cabbage - well, cabbage patch dolls? I don't know. At any rate, put it more into perspective, always put it into perspective, "What do I really want these thoughts for, what's it doing for me?"
Now a physical thing again, besides the size of the food you put on your plate, if you want to experiment with what is more traditionally called an ascetic practice, the one that the monks and nuns traditionally work with occasionally, if not all the time, is to mix all your food up together, the whole lot. The rice, the vegetables, the fruit salad, the mayonnaise, whatever, mix it all up together. Chop up the apple, whatever, put it all in, and eat it together. What the heck, it all ends up in the same spot right together, right? OK, try it! Experiment for yourself. It's a very interesting technique. It may disturb the person sitting next to you a lot, they may think you're a bit nuts. But it does work to put eating more into perspective. That's another physical thing you can try.