Haha – that title almost sounds like a 12 step admission, doesn’t it? While a big part of my blog has been about losing weight, it also is about food.
(Tonight’s dinner with the new Sea Pak popcorn fish!)
I am in a good place now as far as my relationship with food goes, but that was not always the case.
I used to categorize food as ‘good’ and ‘bad’ – meaning good for me and bad for me. So, I was either eating good or eating bad, depending on what point I was in as far as dieting went. I was either on or off a diet. The problem was, I loved to eat (still do). I felt guilty for wanting to eat food. I felt guilty for loving food. Like there was some kind of shame to be had for enjoying it. I thought I had to eat a certain way to get the weight off, which was not a way of eating that I enjoyed.
This really was exemplified for me when I went on Weight Watchers on the early Points system. Please note, I am not knocking WW, but this was just my experience when I was on it. I began to value foods based on their points value rather than their nutritional value.
I developed some rather weird habits. I didn’t want to eat bananas because they were 2 points, so I ate other fruit and didn’t have bananas for a really long time. I would try to compose point values for meals that were my ceiling. Like I didn’t want a dinner that was more than 8 points, and I wouldn’t think of having 8 points for breakfast!
I would never have eaten this for breakfast:
I was still feeling guilt about eating certain foods and then I would have days where I just didn’t count points because it was too hard to figure out and it was depressing at how they added up to a lot! So there was a lot of moving of foods around to fit into this. Then I was starting to eat the sugar-free, fat-free stuff with little nutritional value (frankenfoods).
I had that really long plateau and some regain, which was then the point I did Nutrisystem to stop thinking about food and sort of regroup.
A few years ago, I tapered off that and was thinking about how to eat on my own and, more importantly, what I really enjoyed eating that was also nourishing to my body. Light bulb moment – They didn’t have to be mutually exclusive.
I have done a ton of reading over the last few years on nutrition and kind of experimenting as I have been much more active. Here I am expressing my new found love of coconut water:
I realized that I could experiment and it wouldn’t ‘ruin’ anything I was doing weight wise.
If it didn’t work, I could just go back to what did until I tried something new.
After I got rid of processed foods and realized how real food actually tastes good and eating healthy didn’t mean cardboard, I began to experiment with more new foods and recipes. Something I never would have made, let alone eaten in my former life:
Palak chole. Who knew how good this was?
Of course, not everything I tried was something I would ever want to eat again. Like Shiratake noodles.
But I pressed onwards. I love to play around with recipes and to play around with ways of eating. As many of you know, I have been experimenting with a few lower carb days each week. I have eaten new foods as a result of this and enjoyed them!
Food is fuel, but food also is one of life’s great enjoyments! It’s okay to love food, and to especially love the food that loves you back. You all know I love to have the good stuff:
But always balanced with the other good stuff:
Maybe this moderation thing isn’t so bad after all.