I already get the question: “Do you still ‘do it'”? They mean 10-mile eating. Like in the old days: “Do you still live on under $1000 a month”? Well, no to both.
But what’s changed since B10MD (before 10-mile diet) is what i think is food.
Cooking breakfast I realized that I’d gathered kale, carrots, oregano and lemon balm from my garden and half an onion and some mushrooms and peppers from my fridge (from the local store) and a local egg and made a frittata. In other words, whole foods look like food to me. Plus some favorite spices and organic olive oil. I looked further in my fridge and shelves. Local grains and beans. Local honey, homemade catsup and homemade apple butter. Organic mayo that I could have made from local eggs plus anywhere oil. Homemade bread and butter pickles. Local burger. Some lame squash from the summer. Some winter squash and potatoes – home or friend-grown.
Look, this isn’t virtue. I promise. I’m not trying to prove anything. it’s just what looks like food to me now, just what I like cooking and eating.
I also have TJ nuts, Tillamook cheese, TJ chocolate covered almonds and anywhere crackers and salad dressings and dried fruit and plenty more, but these are treats, not centerpieces.
What changed really? Relational eating. I like being connected to people and place through foods grown here or whole mostly organic foods from not too far away. I know how to cook whole foods. It’s not a big deal, a counter full of recipe books. I don’t take hours. It tastes like what it recently was: alive.
I also think relational eating itself is a shift from the current local food fad. Local food is an object, relational eating is an experience of connection. I notice how much food is displayed now without people. Like car ads without drivers. We have objectified and commodified our world, picking and choosing rather than relating.
What do you eat now? And why?
Hi Vicki,
It’s been a while since we spoke…so many years ago since Conversation Cafes!
Humans are the only mammal that don’t seem to know how to feed themselves. Feeding oneself is no longer a sensory experience. Here is what I tell my acupuncture patients, and I am currently doing this for my life. Eat what you gravitate toward. Not from the mind, but from your body – what you are drawn to? To start, go to a good grocery store with a wide variety of produce, and find out what your body is gravitating toward. Touch and smell as much as you can.
I ask many of my patients who want to lose weight, what they eat, and they are following fads, what other people are doing, everything but from their inner knowing. I think what people need to nourish themselves with is unique. What will work for me won’t work for you. I teach them how to regain their confidence in choosing what to eat. I trust that their body will tell them, with practice, what it needs, from season to season from breakfast to dinner. And always ask, after you eat anything, how do you feel?
Many blessings to you.
Mary