Day 18

"I just don't think I could eat like this for the rest of my life."

"Why?  Are you hungry?"

"Well, you know, I just crave certain things and I can't imagine giving them up."

"Like what?"

"Well, like, my Mom's chocolate mousse pie..."

"Traci, no one is telling you you have to give that up.  That's something for a special occasion.  You're not eating that for breakfast are you?"

"No..."

No one should have to give up their Mom's chocolate mousse pie.  

But no one should be eating it everyday.

Healthy eating isn't about finding some perfect plan or magic answer that you must blindly follow for the rest of your life.  

Eating is a celebration of life.

It is a supreme pleasure, a great joy, a blessing.

It shouldn't feel like doing your homework.

Even though it is doing your homework.

Food is the prep work you do for your body so that, in turn, your body can do for you.

It just doesn't need to feel that way.

As Michael Pollan says in his must read book In Defense of Food:

"Eat Food.  Not too much.  Mostly Plants."

That is it.

That is the entire recipe for healthy eating.

The trick is in the "eating food" part.

As hard as it is to accept, chocolate mousse pie is not food.  A "nutrition bar" is not food.  A lot of the bread we eat is not food.

Food looks like food.  

It is not something that has been morphed, squeezed and rendered into a food like facsimile.

It is an apple.

It is a potato.

it is a nut.

And when you eat food 80% of the time your body is strong enough to handle the other 20%. It knows what to do when you just have to eat a high fructose, orange flavored, squishy-goopy doodad.  It can recover.

Your body is not something to be muscled into submission.   You can't just feed it whatever you want and expect it to function the way it's supposed to.  That is like going out to your car and pouring diet coke in the gas tank and expecting it to run.  There are rules as to what makes a car go and you can't change the rules just because diet coke was all you had in the house.

Your relationship with your body is a give and take.   The more you give to your body, treat it well, listen to its needs, the more it has to give back to you.  It will give you the vibrancy to truly feast on all of the best of what life has to offer.

Chocolate mousse included.