I’m just going to go ahead and throw it out there: the main reason I am overweight is that I have a disordered relationship with food. It’s a relationship that I’m working on and finally, finally feel in control of. The main reasons I don’t have the body I want are due to two pregnancies in two years and a lack of consistent, effective exercise in my adult life, and that’s probably a different entry all together. So back to the the food. There are a lot of pages out there that share inspirational quotes and sayings, this likely isn’t going to be be of them. However, I follow some that do share them and every now and then a certain message resounds with me. Like the (horribly paraphrased) quote that says food can either be poison, or medicine. It all depends on the choices you make about what to put into your body. Poison, or medicine. Food has the power to kill you, or to improve your health and ultimately life. And once I really started investigating the ingredients in the processed food that made up at least 30-50% of my diet, I couldn’t deny the facts. I couldn’t unknow them. And honestly? It started to piss me off.
How many years and dollars have I spent chasing the low-fat dream that this program, or that one promised me? How many tubs of tasteless zero fat yogurts or 100 calorie snack packs or diet soda have I choked down believing that I was doing my body a favour? Not even getting into the mental impact of punishing myself for my slovenly ways with food, and the resulting cycle of deprivation and binging behaviour; how many artificial sweeteners, fillers, flavours, colours, and edible petroleum products have I consumed? I shudder to think. And yeah, it makes me angry that I would have likely continued this cycle, getting sicker and fatter (with brief periods of thin and even sicker) for the rest of my life had I never found some decent resources on Facebook.
Ok ok, I’m finished ranting for now! Back to the good stuff, the food. Because just as I can point to my relationship with food as a major cause of my weight gain, it is also what is going to save my life. Honestly, I only decided that I wanted to teach myself to cook when I was faced with the task of feeding my daughter. I didn’t know much but I knew that she deserved good quality, whole food nourishment as much as possible. It took embarrassingly long for me to hold my own nutrition to the same standards, but I’m proud to have a 2 year old who will try anything and likes almost all of it. As her grandma says, she has a very sophisticated palate for a toddler! It didn’t take long for me to develop a passion for nourishing my friends and family, constantly trying new things and creating my own dishes. I’ve had to make some adjustments to my go-to ingredients to follow a mostly whole food program, but it’s all delicious so I don’t mind! I will start sharing recipes and links to amazing food soon, I promise! For now I should get something done around here. Have an excellent day!
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