Most
mornings I eat a breakfast of whole wheat toast with peanut butter and a
banana.
Most
mornings I feel guilty.
I
like the toast with peanut butter, it tastes good with my coffee, but if I was
really a good person I would eat something healthier. Oatmeal with flaxseeds. Yogurt with bran and fruit. Those don’t taste as good with my coffee…so I
eat the toast and I try not to think about it.
If I was a better person I would something more whole grain, something
with more micronutrients, something that perhaps I didn’t like so well.
Because
if you don’t like the food, it has to be good for you, right? Actually the more you hate it, the
better. Or the weirder, the better,
right? Remember when eggs were bad for
you? Now, they’re good. Carbohydrates used to be not that bad for
you, a necessary part of your diet, now they seem to be the grim reaper in a
bread bag. Once a food is deemed ‘bad’
it seems to make a shadow in your conscious, every time you eat that food you
are sinning. Even if it has been
acquitted of it’s nutritional crimes, you still wonder if you should eat it.
Women
have a relationship with food, it’s not just something that we put in our
bodies for fuel, it’s our friend or our foe.
A secret lover that we go to when we are stressed. A personal trainer that makes us feel better
about ourselves when we do well. A
friend we go to when we need comfort.
We
feel self righteous and good about ourselves when we eat what we think is ‘good.’ A ‘good’ that can be based on lots of
misplaced notions. A salad is good, but
a sandwich is bad because it has bread (because bread is evil). A salad is good, but pasta is bad (because
carbohydrates are bad). A salad is good,
but pizza is bad (because pizza is just evil incarnate, I mean it has bread and
cheese). Are you noticing a theme here? If you eat the healthy food you are good,
almost even holy. If you eat the bad
food you are bad, guilt ridden. You feel
the ultimate sin of ‘fat.’
Woman
cannot live on salad alone. Literally. That would actually be bad for you.
So
what’s a girl to do? How can you eat
without all the emotions tied up to it?
I
mean, food is just food, right? Can’t
you just eat whatever you want and be happy?
` Lately
I’ve been trying to make sure that everything I put in my mouth has a significant
amount of nutritional value. An easy
goal, to eat good whole food. Sounds
good, right? Then there’s that handful
of corn chips, not much value there.
After that comes the junk food hang over. Not a belly ache, but guilt. You shouldn’t have eaten that, you’ve wasted
valuable calories on just fat and salt, sure it’s ‘whole grain,’ but what does
it really do for you?
Then
if you never eat them the times you actually do you find yourself pigging out
on them. Case in point? An unholy occurrence a few days ago between
me and a bag of Fritos.
With
everything there is balance. Somewhere in
the middle is the sweet spot. The place
where you can eat a handful of tortilla chips just because you want them and
then not feel bad about it. Some days I
can find that place. Some days I find
myself hiding in the pantry spooning mouthfuls of Nutella into my maw because
my three year old just threw a face melting tantrum on the playground. If only I just didn’t feel so much about it all.
If only it was just food.
3 comments:
It really is shockingly powerful, that connection between food and feelings! I think the self-righteous part is true, and then there's also the aspect of knowing how certain foods make you feel, physically, and trying to learn from that but not be consumed by trying to control everything we eat. So tough! I try to keep in mind the verse "man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word thc mouth of God" somtimes that helps. :)
This entry hit pretty close to home for me. It's crazy to think how many people I know who label food as 'good' or 'bad' when all it is is just food. Guilt really sucks when it's tied with the food thing
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