Body Love: Yoga, Health and Fitness: Making Peace with Food

I got up this morning to find my sweetie going through our recipe file and laughing hysterically. "Look at this one," she said. "It's for Hungarian eggs, but then at the bottom I've written a recipe for deviled eggs with just eggs, mayo, salt and pepper, that takes all the other stuff out. Why do you suppose I thought I needed a recipe for that?"

Our recipe file reads sort of like a life history in food. There are the things we once made when we were young, like my hamburger and tater tots casserole that hasn't seen the light of day since I was 20 years old; the things we'd like to make but won't, like the hundreds of tasty-looking cookie recipes that I won't make because I don't need any more ways to eat sugar in my life; the things we used to make a lot but somehow forgot about, like the vegetable gougere that needs to be reinstated in all its tasty gooey goodness.

The file brings up family history and memories, like watching my sweetie's mother sort through her pile of recipe clippings to find just the right one and trying to convince her that she doesn't need to keep the ones that she didn't like.

My sweetie and I were together for 15 years before we ever combined our recipe files so there is a history there as well of how our lives came together over time.

But there is also my history with food, in all its painful difficulty, because I've never been particularly easy with food. I have learned to enjoy it and appreciate it over the past 20 years but it has been a tough journey at times. I'm a picky eater, so I have many painful memories of sitting at dinners, hungry and tired but trying to be polite while I pushed food around on my plate and waited to get home to some peanut butter and crackers. I also have memories of people telling me what my relationship with food ought to be, and how wrong I was to eat the way I did. I have many days when I come home tired and I just want it to be easy. I have memories of controlling my eating in an effort to control my body. And I have memories of bingeing on sugar in secret and in shame. I have lots of "shoulds" around eating and lots of denial and resistance as well.

I know many other people struggle with food in a variety of ways and I have no easy answers to having a graceful relationship with food, but I do have just a couple of tricks that have helped me with it over the years.

1. Find a way to have fun with food that doesn't involve sugar.

This was a tough one for me, because I love sugar and I love baking. Baking is soothing to me. Cooking, on the other hand, feels mechanical and tedious. However, I can enjoy cooking when I'm doing it with someone I care about. I can also enjoy it when I think about food as fuel for my body and I know that when I cook something I'm using only ingredients I know and like and that are good quality, so I know I'm providing my body with good fuel and with something I know I will enjoy. When I cook something, I know I won't have to pick at it to find the bits I don't like.

Sometimes I can enjoy making food as a science experiment, making it more abstract and interesting. And I figure out which restaurants have cooks I really trust (for me, this means that I can see something on the menu that looks unlikely and know that it will taste good to me because of the skill of the chef) and those are the places where I allow myself to experiment with my dining.

2. View food as fuel.

I said that above but it's worth repeating. Sometimes I can eat something I'm not wild about when I can tell myself that I am providing good care for my body. I don't like doing dishes or going to the doctor either, but I do them because I need to. Sometimes I can eat for the same reason.

3. Stock your house with good food that you'll eat.

I know all the health gurus say this, but I think the key is that last part. It doesn't do any good to stock your house with good food that you won't eat. I buy the same stuff over and over again because it has a proven track record. If I have spinach in the house, I will eat spinach. Not so with squash!

4. Don't stock your house with cheap filler food.

Enough said.

5. Make a list at the beginning of the week of the meal and snack options you have available to you.

I put this last, but lately this has been my favorite and most helpful tip. I'm so busy with work that I don't have time to think about food. At the beginning of the week, I take a sticky note and write down the different meal and snack options for the week.

Notice I didn't say ingredients! I actually write out the combinations or finished products. That's important for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I can see if there are meals that need preparation or cooking time and plan out when to do that, and then schedule it into my calendar. Secondly, I don't have to look in the fridge and see ingredients staring at me, then default to peanut butter and graham crackers because it's easier. And I don't have to rely on remembering what I planned to eat.? Thirdly, a planned combination looks much tastier and more interesting than a bare list of ingredients.

If I've already written something down, the thinking has been done already. I find when something is written down, I am far more likely to eat that particular thing, even if it takes a little more time and work.

Using a sticky note makes the list manageable. It can never be bigger than a sticky note size.

Then as I go, I cross off the things I've eaten up, which tells me I'm out of something and it also gives me that successful crossing things off the list feeling, as if I've accomplished something.

Enjoy the holidays! Me? I'm going back to that recipe file to find a few more memories.

copyright 2012 J. Autumn Needles

Source: http://bodyloveyoga.blogspot.com/2012/12/making-peace-with-food.html

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