Food Nutrition and Health

[NoelFigart]

I love to swim laps, because it gives me time to think. There’s just you and the water. Boy, howdy, let me tell you what, swimming is the creative person’s friend. It gives you solitude and silence so that you can just think about whatever it is you’re doing/creating/inventing.

During a swim this evening, I got to thinking about the relationship between food, health and happiness. First off, I love my food. I love to cook, and I love good meals.

Thing is, we’ve been sold on the idea in this country that good, healthy food is “rabbit foodâ€, or is chemically processed to give the exact nutrient ratio that will protect us from all disease. We act almost as if someone who dies did so because they didn’t take their vitamins or something.

It divorces us from the natural and human component of eating – pleasure. In spite of Calvinist and Puritan philosophy, pleasure is not some evil trap that will cause us to become weak-willed and ill. Pleasure is good.

Believe it or not, pleasure will protect you from eating junk food the rest of your life, or living on bread alone, or doing any one of a number of “bad for you†things that you can do with your relationship to food. You won’t eat at the Golden Arches every single meal of your life. Why? It will stop being pleasurable. It won’t FEEL good. You will crave a “good for you†food at some point and you’ll eat it because it’s pleasurable.

A list of the foods I’ve craved in the past week: Pound cake, toasted bread and melted cheese, oranges, oatmeal, coffee, wine, roasted Brussels sprouts caramelized with olive oil and red wine, artichokes dipped in garlic butter, a veggie-stuffed omelet with red peppers, onions, and mushrooms, blueberries mixed in plain yogurt, Earl Grey tea, sushi, oven roasted French fries…

Let me tell you, if it was allowed on the day I craved it (I was craving pound cake on an S day), I had it! Is what I named a healthy diet? Well, there sure are a lot of veggies on that list, aren’t there? Are there soi-disent “forbidden†foods on that list? Some. Not enough to make me worry. I had servings of all of those foods with meals and ENJOYED them very much.

If you’re coming out of a very restrictive eating pattern, I’d say that you don’t need to be afraid you’re going to live on whatever your favorite forbidden food was forever. It won’t even taste good to you to do it for a long time. What will happen is that you’ll find lots of different foods quite pleasurable, you’ll have servings of them with many of your meals and you’ll just enjoy them.

[gettheweightoff]

Love what you said.

I am finally realizing this myself and I guess I thought if I were a person who "enjoyed food" then I was a pig, or a fat person when nothing could be further from the truth. Food should be enjoyed whatever size one is and I think you are so right that by enjoying your food you won't feel deprived and binge on crap food later.

Instead I denied food, ate bland food, "health food" etc. and never truly felt satisfied and binged later on crappy, cheap food only to gain weight. How many times did I say no to rich foods, sweet foods, a family member's birthday cake, a glass of wine etc. etc. when I could have just enjoyed it and not binged later.

I have lived in a food prison and not enjoyed much. This past week I have realized just how lovely food can be and how nice it is to sit down to a meal with a bit of fat in it for instance and feel satisfied and truly enjoy it. As a result my desire to binge eat has subsided a bit.

I am looking forward to a real treat on the weekend out in the open, not in secret and without guilt!