If you know me, you know I love to eat. If you know me well, you know that eating comes with a lot of baggage as well. I absolutely love love love food! Cooking is one of my favorite things to do because I get to go to the store and buy all different kinds of fresh veggies and spices and come up with a recipe to make them all taste delicious while at the same time nourishing my body and keeping it healthy. I love the fact that we need to eat and that everything you eat has a different effect on the body. Some vegetables have certain vitamins and minerals and others do not, some fruit helps you poop and some clogs you up, some spices can help with colds and others can make you sweat, some food helps to make everything in your body work the way it wants to and other foods make your body stop working all together. Getting in tune with your body and figuring out what you need is such an awesome skill. I am a vegetarian so it is very important that I get the right amount of protein; so picking out different foods (besides just peanut butter--my favorite--and tofu) to make sure I get enough is all the fun. Combining different foods to get different tastes, experimenting with how you cook and for how long, adding different sauces and spices, and making enough for everyone to share make cooking one of the greatest things to do. And it is all so necessary. Point blank, we cannot survive without food.
However, sometimes food comes with its price. When you are particularly concern with your physical self, food can bring some anxiety. Is this too fatty? Is this unnatural? Will this make me bloat? How much do I need to run to burn all this off? These are questions I am all too familiar with and when they come too frequently they can cause all types of normally delicious and satisfying foods to leave a bad taste in your mouth. However, through this maladaptive behavior of mine, I have learned a great many positive things. One thing is that I was very addicted to sweets and they were the source of most of my problems. Sweets, and I am talking real ones like ice cream, cookies, brownies, and peanut M&Ms, are naturally high in sugar and fat and very often made with unnatural sweeteners or high fructose. These are things that, although amazingly delicious, are not really meant to be in our bodies in very high doses. I unfortunately have very little will power and was incapable of having A cookie or SOME candy, I would instead gorge myself till I felt sick. This is bad, as I would then feel extremely guilty about eating and developed a strong negative association with the things that used to bring me so much joy. So, I picked up on the lovely motto of "everything in moderation," and realized that my body can handle some sweets every once in a while. I also learned that my body loves natural ingredients and the Earth loves it when I buy natural ingredients. Therefore, I love to make all my own meals and eat pure, all-natural, local, farm fresh vegetables. This is the kind of food that makes my body work so how could I feel guilty?
So, I am continuing on a journey to find peace with food. I am getting there and I think that exerting a little control over what I consume and what I buy is not a bad thing. If I keep up a healthy diet most of the time (lots of water, vegetables, fruit, protein, and a moderate amount of carbs), then I can afford to get off the train once in a while. This summer, now that I have the time, I am cooking all the time and really loving food. I have made so many new dishes and learning that I will actually feel full and better about myself when I put things in my body that belong there. I have also found that I have less cravings for sweet things and can exert more control when I eat them. So love food! Enjoy our life source! And appreciate everything the Earth gives you by consuming that, and not making it come from a processing manufacturing plant that needs to package and ship it from across the country.
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