About Food

I have talked a lot about food, making it, being the most relevant topic. And I have thought a lot about food, a lot about making it, but also a lot about our relationship with food, more specifically, my relationship with food and how it has evolved over time.

I was once talking with a wonderful woman who said to me, "Lilly, I wish that I could only eat because i want to and not because i need to."  My eighteen year-old-self agrees entirely. Until recently, eating was a hastle, a chore to be written on your to-do list then crossed off when you remember to bring a pb&j to work with you. It was not the enjoyable experience I now look forward to when thinking up what to make for dinner. It was a struggle every day.

There is a lot of focus on food in our culture and we can look at it from many different angles. You may identify with the foods of your family (see my last post, chili: why you'll never be able to throw things in a pot like your mother) or maybe with your geographical region, "I am from New England and thus I eat a lot of potatoes."Maybe it is your heritage you identify with or you have recently come to learn you have a food allergy and are learning how to enjoy (or possibly resent) the types of food you are allowed. Maybe you just got out of school and you are enjoying Ramen, frozen pizza or whatever you can get at Ocean State Job Lot that week (which I suggest to everyone, because sometimes they have some really legit stuff).  Our situations in this moment in time dictate what we put on our plates.

But that doesn't dilute all the negative food culture that surrounds us. And I don't mean "magazines make women feel they have to be thin, etc. etc.", that is a topic for a different post on a different blog.  I mean that no matter our situation, it is likely that you feel you could be doing better - whatever that means for you. Now, where I get overwhelmed in this schema is in the information overload. No matter what side of the weight/health fence you sit on, there is a vat of information to be stirred up and poured down your throat, just listen to John Tesh (which I do). And generally, I find, that people sift through the stockpile, pick out the bits and pieces that they like/want/find and incorporate them into their belief system. Seldom do you find that all your own puzzle-piece food beliefs match up with anyone else's. This makes sense, you see, because we all have different bodies, wants, and different ways of fulfilling the need to care for ourselves.

The problem occurs then, when one person insists on imposing their own beliefs on another. (I realize that you can extrapolate this system to many other situations, but right now we are just talking about food). I am happy to hear your woes and your ways of reconciling them, objectively, because these are your beliefs and who am I to interject myself into them? But please don't expect that others are looking for your advice on the subject unless they ask you directly. I am becoming increasingly better at saying "thank you, but I am not looking for advice on the subject" (here I am talking about more than just food). It is incredibly hard. Maybe you are much better at it then me. Congrats. You are very brave. But the truth of the matter is you aren't going to change your belief systems until YOU want to. Do you want to? Do you want to ENOUGH to change?

Maybe the health risks dictate the NEED to change your habits. But need and want bring very different meanings to that sentence. You can understand the health risks and still skip that next meal or choose pork sausage over the much more health conscious but less flavorful chicken sausage (me and the butcher have this conversation on the regular - he insists he would rather die of a heart attack than eat chicken sausage). The much harder part seems to be the transformation of your desires to match your needs (your priorities, essentially).

I have been thin my whole life. When I was a kid I went through this really awkward stage where I was very skinny with long, stick-like limbs and a gigantic head. No lie, I looked like a bobble-head. There are pictures. Eventually I grew into my head, but it took a while. Eating wasn't a centerpiece of our family culture and my appreciation of food was low on the list of priorities. I just wanted to eat when I wanted to, not because I needed to. Some times were better than others, depending on the situation and I would bounce back and forth between being conscious of it or not. And then one day that changed.

People can share their concerns with you, and most of the time it is frustrating because you already know what they are going to say. And because you already know, you are like, "shut up please". Because knowing something, and doing something are two entirely different beasts (which we tend to remember for our own benefit, but immediately lose sight of when we are giving someone else advice). You have to be ready to hear what they are going to say and it is going to have to matter to you ENOUGH to change your beliefs for YOURSELF. ( I think this also contributes to why we begin to understand things we have heard our whole lives only after turning twenty) And when Ethan and I had this conversation, it was like I had never heard anyone speak before, and it all made sense, and yes, yes I was going to change. I was going to do better to care for my body.  I am going to need to live in it for long time, after all. (Most women on my mom's side live long, long lives). And I'm going to need to have some children to take care of me when I am old and crazy (crazier). (Sidenote for my mother - FUTURE children)

And I'm not saying that it was easy, and it took a very long time. Look at me now, writing this blog! Who would have thought. And I don't even try to count the calories, just the nutritional information sometimes. And I am conscious of ingredients, etc. and I do try to eat "healthy" but that means something different for everyone, I am learning.  So each time I add half a stick of butter, hell, maybe even the whole stick! to some recipe I am making, I don't fret. If I was worried about my health, there are A LOT of things I would have to cut out before I got to the butter problem. And maybe you are at the butter problem right now, and this is probably not helpful advice. But I just NEED to leave the enjoyment in the cooking right now, and for me that means spending my research time looking at different recipes and reading wikipedia instead of trying to substitute out ingredients for healthier ones.  It ruins it for me. It brings me down. And I have worked really hard to climb this high.   And you have to do what works for you, ultimately.