It's time to stop making food the villain
How often do you think a food is "good" for you? How often do you think a food is "bad" for you? What if there was no good or bad, there was just food? What if we didn't make value judgements about the food we eat?
Why Value Judgments Can Be Harmful
How often do you judge what you are putting into your mouth? What if we stopped that and just allowed food to be what it is.
A cheeseburger is simply meat, cheese, bread, condiments, and maybe some vegetables
A donut is simply a baked or fried piece of dough
Cotton candy is just spun sugar
Chocolate is just roasted beans combined with sugar and sometimes milk
Seafood is just the muscles of fish and/or crustaceans
Meat is simply the muscles of other animals
Vegetables are things that were growing in the ground or under the ground
Fruits are things that grow on trees, bushes, and vines
“Unless food is rotten or poison, it is not bad.”
When we judge the food we eat, we also judge ourselves for eating it. That is where things get harmful. Judging ourselves is not productive or useful. When you eat a food that you have thought of as "bad" be curious about why you believe that. It is an amazing way to discover your beliefs about food and your beliefs about your eating patterns.
Energy Choices
Take a walk in the shoes of a hunter-gatherer. They don't see food in the same way as we see it. Good food to them is something that will keep them alive and fuel their active lives. Bad food is something that is rotten or poison. That's it. They don't worry about carbs, protein and fats. They just eat what will keep them fueled.
What if we change the labels we give to food. Instead of saying a certain food is "bad" we could say it doesn't offer as much energy as another food. A handful of M&Ms and a handful of almonds have different energy profiles that give our bodies different amounts of energy.
Different foods give our bodies different amounts of energy
Notice the beliefs you have about different foods and challenge those beliefs. Food is just a part of life. It has no labels until we add them. Let's look at our beliefs about food and see which beliefs we want to change and which we want to keep.
Are you with me?
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