Hello out there! I just wanted to let all of you know that I will soon be migrating over to a a newly formatted blog. That said, I will have my "fresh start" blog in the coming weeks!
On a complete side note, and something I felt the need to sort out and write about, the food arena has been playing a major role in life these days. As many of you may or may not know, I recently started school for Holistic nutrition as it has become a passion of mine through the adventures of learning more about my own food allergies. Holistic nutrition takes a non-traditional approach, affirming that there is no 1 diet that fits all. Food items heavily marketed by the government, such as dairy (Got Milk?), red meat (Where's the beef?) and sugary juice drinks (Florida's Natural Orange Juice) are taken into consideration, but overall, viewed as a non-necessity to one's diet according to this program. With my own food allergies, I haven't been eating the 1st 2 foods mentioned above for about 2 years now, but in an effort to dig deeper and really explore my own eating habits, I have recently tried to rid myself of the 3rd. No folks, not just orange juice...all sugars. Up until yesterday, I thought to myself, "this was going to be pretty easy." A life mostly without bread, dairy, and red meat is not that difficult- so how bad could getting rid of sugar be? BAD....REALLY FREAKING BAD. Why? Because I am pretty sure I am a sugar addict. Let me set the scene for you: every week I eat oatmeal and some fruit I store at my desk for breakfast, prepare all of my lunches for the weekdays, and try to have a light dinner. With my awesome new job, not only are there tasty treats laying around all over the office like landmines, but food gets catered in at least once a week. Yesterday in particular was a double whammy. The Santa Monica office came to visit...and brought 15 boxes of Krispy Kreme donuts with them. Good thing I had already had breakfast and wasn't hungry- barely bypassed those sweets. And quite frankly, until someone removed the boxes I was 'dreaming of sugar plums dancing in my head.' A few hours later, 20+ boxes of Domino's pizza made their way through the doors and were set down on the ping pong table right near my desk. Not only was the smell of bubbly cheese and crispy crust wafting right towards me...but the mad rush of people that also must have smelled what I smelled, came barreling through. In a lame effort to defend myself from the pizza smells, I whipped out my trusty salad and tried to continue along my merry way. IMPOSSIBLE. My salad seemed like a pile of prunes compared to the delicious meal I knew was readily available only steps away. That was when I finally realized that not only was this food pleasing to the taste buds, but that consuming this "special occasion" food together was a social event. And because I wasn't taking part in it, I felt completely left out. My question is then, why is our relationship with food such an important one that we feel like we can't just "leave it" or are "let down" if we don't consume it? I am of course not speaking for everywhere here but I know that many of you would agree that the temptations are nearly uncontrollable at times. When we don't satisfy a temptation we almost feel punished, like we weren't allowed to be apart of the fun. And when we are able to take part in the tasty eating, we let everyone know, by posting pictures of our dishes on Instagram and Facebook- commenting on how good the food was and telling all of our friends that they too must try it. So, in an effort to change this philosophy, I going to use my own diet as an experiment to see if it is possible to change this way of thinking towards food. How can I feel rewarded by eating healthy and ultimately feeling better, as apposed to feeling punished for not eating, well, put plain and simply...crap? One dietary ideology known as "crowding out" suggests adding more healthy foods (such as whole grains and veggies) while maintaining your regular diet. The idea here is that the healthy foods will eventually start to replace the less healthy and therefore "crowd" them out. So- next week's plan? Green juice every morning, while still sticking with my oatmeal concoction that is loaded with sugar for breakfast. Maybe I'll feel too full/satisfied and want to just go with the green smoothie every morning? We shall see! Wish me luck :)
xoxo AA
