It’s everywhere, right? Food. And it’s such a big part of our lives. Emotionally charged entity. We are married to it as soon as we are born, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, through thick and thin, till death do us part. It comforts us, but do we honor it the way we are supposed to?
Our relationship with food has deteriorated over the ages. Some of us are scared of it, examining every morsel we eat. Some are in denial about the calories and the constituents of their meals. Some feel they are doing their best but the weight is still creeping up. The number of cookery books vie with the number of diets we follow to lose the weight we gain. I once made a list of all the diets I know just off the top my head:
Keto diet, Paleo diet, Vegan diet, Pegan diet, Vegetarian diet, Cabbage soup diet, No-S diet, No C-diet, Zone diet, Atkins diet, South Beach diet, Mediterranean Diet, DASH diet, Flexetarian diet, MIND diet, Anti-inflammatory diet, Blood type diet, Beck diet, the list goes on and on.
Most of these diets tell us what to eat and what to cut out, whole food groups it seems are just deleted. If the goal is weight loss, then most of these diets will work in the short term because as I said whole food groups are being removed from the daily meals.
I have been unable to follow a diet for more than a couple of days…either I forget that I am ‘dieting’ or as soon as I decide I can’t have a food product, I develop a strong craving for it leading to a no holds barred binge, not only of the craved food item but every edible thing in sight. I am a vegetarian, not the healthy, plant eater kind, but the processed carb kind. You know the ones who abstain from animal products, but their meals are mainly bread, chocolate, and ice cream. I tried the vegetarian version of some of the above diets but nope, just cannot follow it for even a short period of time. I want to be healthy and I want food to be a neutral substance in my life-not something I either crave or detest. I want to use food as fuel. I would love to lose some weight but at this point that is secondary to health.
It’s in the fifties that the chronic conditions like diabetes and high blood pressure start manifesting. And then these lead to the big ones, the heart disease and the strokes. There has been research which shows that the tissue changes of Alzheimers and dementia actually start in the fifties and then the symptoms show up in the seventies onward. Diet and nutrition is a big part of health. So now the goal is to learn how to eat and make changes in my diet which are lifelong instead of day long.
From my many years of experience in my food habits, what I have gleaned is this:
- I like Micheal Pollan’s mantra to Eat food, not too much, mostly plants. I read his book, Food Rules, many years ago and tried to follow it in a half hearted way. But now I want to go all in. It has good simple advice, but as in all things simple, it’s sometimes difficult to follow.
- I do not like to cook,(my relationship with cooking is a whole separate blog post and I will have no problems writing pages, pages about it!) but unfortunately I do realize the perils of eating processed, packaged, fast food full of preservatives and extra helpings of sugar, salt and fat. So I have to learn to accept cooking as a necessary evil in my life. I have cooked at least one meal everyday of my married life, unless we were on vacation. So I know how to cook. But I don’t like the process.
- Most diets describe ‘what’ to eat, which over the years is getting to be less of a problem. The problem is in the ‘how’ of eating. I can’t believe I am writing this again…. after 13 years*…. but I still over-eat when I enter the house after work, still buy sweet and savory snacks for my ‘kids’ and binge on them myself. I still focus on the food instead of the company I am with. I came across The Beck Diet Solution by Judith Beck a couple of years ago and I tried it. It is a 42 day re-set of one’s relation with food and can lead to weight loss. No, I did not lose any weight. But I felt better about my relation with food and at least for sometime did not have the overstuffed feeling after having a long meal lasting from lunch through dinner. I like it because it teaches one ‘how’ to follow a diet.
- So this is my plan- the ME health plan. It’s not a diet, it’s a way towards health. I have over the years found things which work for me, and some which don’t. I have tried intermittent fasting- I agree only for a week-but it made me eat more. I don’t want to cut out any more foods from my vegetarian diet. My goal is 1400-1600 cal a day, divided into three meals and a snack. But the focus will be on my habits. The focus will be to make food and eating such a seamless part of my daily habits that I don’t even think about it for more than the time it takes to plan a meal. I know the foodies and the gourmands/gourmets will think this will take the fun and pleasure out of food but believe you me when I say I have had enough fun with food and now is the time to get serious about it. This does not mean that when/if I go on my dream trip to Italy , I will turn away the pasta and the gelato. No, this just means that on a day to day basis, I will be more cognizant of what I put in my body than justing inhaling it mindlessly.
I have been reading about nutrition for a few years and I will try and share it here gradually in a simple manner. Hopefully it will help me and you!
*13 years ago I wrote the SAME thing on my previous blog. Same problems, similar solutions, only difference is now I am older and have more time to focus on my health.
May you always be in the pink of health!!