I just posted this to my blog, but it's something I mentioned last week that I was thinking about posting - my latest light-bulb moment. I just wanted to share with you guys. This is a huge thing for me!
A few weeks ago I had a realization about my relationship to and with food. It was a small light-bulb moment for me; not so much one that has changed my behavior, but in how my behavior has changed.
When I first started dieting - in the sense of being “on a diet” - it was very important to me to be satisfied with my food. I love food, love to cook, and always have. I couldn’t put myself on a plan that deprived me of food, forbade me to eat something (or a whole group of something), or forced me to eat lesser versions of regular foods (e.g. no fat cottage cheese, and things of that nature). So instead of following a diet plan as I had in the past, I chose to count calories.
At first, as long as I came in within my calorie range I was happy. However, sometimes that meant I ate very little actual food because what I was eating was high in calories. I rarely ate lots of junk during the day, but I did eat high calorie foods - pasta, cream sauces, rice, curries with coconut oil, and so forth. I began to tweak my diet, realizing that I wasn’t going to last very long if I had to keep skipping dinner because I ate a huge bowl of chicken curry at lunch for 850 calories. So I worked on making healthier choices, but still very concerned with making sure I *enjoyed* what I was eating.
And time went on. I lost weight. I began working out more seriously. I began shifting my focus primarily from losing weight to being healthy and strong. (Don’t misunderstand - I still want to lose weight, but it’s part of a larger goal, now.)
When I started lifting weights seriously, I realized that I needed to add more protein to my diet. I had always resisted protein powders and supplements, but I read enough reliable sources to overcome my objections and so began adding protein powder shakes and smoothies to my daily routine.
As with my “diet”, at first I was very concerned about enjoying my protein powder. I’d mix it with milk, blend it with fruit or juice, do anything to make it an enjoyable snack.
Then, last week I came home from the gym. I was, as is normal after one of my heavy lifting days, ravenous. I’ve often described it on the board as “so hungry I could gnaw my own arm off” which really isn’t far from the truth. I dropped my gym bag inside the door, walked to the kitchen, threw a scoop of protein powder into 8oz of water in a shaker cup, and chugged it. And as I stood there in the kitchen, still in my gym clothes, leaning against the counter, licking the remnants of watery protein powder from my upper lip … the light bulb came on.
I have been doing this after my workouts for at least a month now. No milk, no juice, no fruit, no yogurt … just chugging protein in water to nourish my body. In other words, I have gone from NEEDING my food to be emotionally satisfying, to using my food as a tool.
Wow.
I cannot describe how incredibly powerful that is. To realize that food no longer has that emotional stranglehold on me.
Sure, I still enjoy my food. I enjoy cooking and have, in fact begun to photograph and blog about my cooking adventures - and am looking forward to taking a food styling class in NYC next spring. I am enjoying the challenge of making nutritious recipes that are also yummy and emotionally satisfying. It’s fun to take some old family standby foods and tweak them so they taste just as good but are better for you - and even better when I can serve them back to the family and they don’t know the difference!
But on those days when I don’t have time, or energy, or motivation to “cook fancy” - I can eat what I *need* to eat to nourish my body and not feel deprived - because I have finally come to accept food is just food. Sometimes it’s enjoyable and sometimes it just needs to do the job.
Food is food.
