The ” Never Read Another Diet Book” Diet

As you might imagine, I get asked a lot of questions about food. Lots of people don’t feel good. Lack of energy seems to be a major problem and food intolerance is rampant and weight loss continues to be a huge industry generating a steady stream of diet advice. People just don’t know what to eat. Just a minute ago I searched Amazon’s New York Times best seller list of top non-fiction titles and of the first 5, 4 of them are attempting to answer that question. One of them suggests, among other homey things, an apple a day and lots of water. Revolutionary! All of them suggest more plants and regular moderate exercise. Brilliant! Another focuses on the evils of sugar. Is sugar bad again? Cause for awhile it was good or maybe just okay. Sugar good? Sugar bad? SUGAR BAD! Three of them are written by doctors. One by an LA yoga mom. Aside from people asking me what to eat I also get asked if I have read this or that book. My answer is “probably not.” And I won’t read any of these best sellers either, because what they have to say has already been said ad nauseum and it hasn’t done a damn bit of good for the general population that continues to gain weight and feel bad from food. Why don’t these diets help?

Too much information. Too much expert opinion, too much “this is what I do and look how great I look” has clouded our judgement and silenced our best decision maker; our inner personal chef. We have all embraced the inner child by now, now it’s time to embrace our inner chef; the one that lives inside our gut and tells us all day, everyday, using a variety of signals, some subtle, some overwhelming, exactly what you, I, each individual person-not the whole world-because your body is not the same as mine-should eat to function, feel and look our best. This is called inner wisdom.

For example: bananas are good right? Healthy fruit, filling, good potassium, good carbs, pretty much everyone will endorse the most popular fruit in America. Well bananas plug me up. The second most popular fruit-apples make me gassy and I don’t crave apples very often. I don’t care that the LA Yogi wants me to lean into the soluble fiber and pectin in apples, my body doesn’t like them very much. I do crave oranges and pears. Pears don’t make me gassy. When I find a good pear, I will eat several at a time, usually immediately, which is good with pears because they don’t stay perfectly ripe for long. I might make my whole lunch out of pears. Is that good? Bad? Who am I asking? I am asking my gut, my intestines, my head. Is a lunch of 4 pears and nothing else healthy for me? My inner chef told me to buy them because I was craving them and they looked delicious and ripe, and afterwards I felt happy. So yes! Pears are good for me. This is called intuition.

What about stuff that isn’t so healthy? Well-sometimes there is more benefit in eating what you want rather than depriving. For instance, on the heals of my lunch of pears I might make a dinner of an entire box of Annie’s Shells and Cheddar smothered in La Victoria Green Sauce? I love this indulgence and it makes me really happy. And I know, without some expert having to tell me, that if I do that more than once a month I will gain weight, so I don’t do it very often. But when I do I relish it and usually fall into a fabulous sleep afterwards because that level of carbohydrate knocks me out. This is called moderation.

Example number three: I love a complex crunchy salad and eat a huge bowl of the stuff several times a week. But after a few days I get a craving for something more substantial in a way that only a small chunk of meat, fish or poultry will satisfy. I don’t stress about my craving for flesh. Instead I try to find something lean, clean, organic, something that fits my food politics and I thoroughly enjoy my meal. And my body thanks me for it with a renewed sense of energy that is different from my veggie energy. This is called discernment.

Am I suggesting you do what I do? Absolutely not. What I am suggesting is that you listen to your inner chef and read your body’s signals before, during and after you eat. It will tell you what to do. Listen to that wisdom and let it guide you. If you drink a soda and feel like your teeth are melting then they probably are so don’t do it. Or at least not very often. If you feel creepy after eating a fast food burger it’s because there is creepy energy in that meal. Make burgers at home with happy beef.

All of this is so easy and yet so elusive for so many people. It makes me sad. I really wish the experts and all the healthy home cooks that feel they need to share their “secrets” would just chill out. What works for them may not work for you. You and you alone are the expert at what to eat. And that is the answer to the other question I get asked most often: “do you have a cookbook?” No I don’t. There is already too much information. Write your own recipe book. This is called creativity.

After telling you not to listen to any one but yourself I am going to give one piece of advice. Don’t think about this all day everyday. Obsessing about food, worrying about every bite, trying to craft some perfect diet for yourself, being too strict, infusing every meal with so much concern is bad for the digestion and eventually you will feel like you are allergic to everything because you have worried yourself sick about being allergic to everything. And don’t tell everyone about your allergies and intolerance and preferences and how eating this or that does this or that because then you attach ego and begin to identify to these negative reactions and that only amplifies the whole mess. I only told you about me and bananas to make a point but I don’t identify myself as “gassy post banana” and tell everyone about it while I’m standing at the banana bowl. No one cares but you and you care too much. It’s like talking about your dog to a cat lover. Don’t give your food choices so much power. This is called humility.

Chill out and listen to your inner chef. Let her/him prepare something to delight and nourish you and relax about it. Food is so simple. Really… it is.

 Print This |  Email This | No Comments

Miss Paula Please!!

Okay. I have kept my mouth shut long enough, but now I’m boilin’ and I need to rant a bit…Yesterday while standing in the grocery store line I saw Paula Dean, queen of the fried food feeding trough down yonder in Savannah, spokes-lady for Smithfield Pork and Food Network mavin-of-all-things-fatty, on the cover of the April issue of Prevention Magazine!!! What the??? One minute she’s wrapping a cheddar stuffed hamburger in bacon and dropping it into the deep fryer, cackling her way to the bank while Americans drop dead from obesity (the second leading cause of death in this country), obese herself and hiding her diabetes and the next minute she’s a spokesperson for healthy eating? Does this women have no good ole Southern shame? Miss Paula please!! Take a lesson from Emeril. When his bam started to lose it’s bang he made a jump (also obese so he didn’t get far) onto the “light eating” bandwagon and belly flopped right onto the shopping network. Girl get a grip. You are not the one to be giving health advice. This is what you should be doing. You should be making a public apology and forfeiting your fatty food franchise-getting your face off of bacon packages and changing the menu at Lady and Son’s. That’s right, you need to stop making money from making people sicker, retire to your opulent compound and take care of your own health, reflect on the rouse you have just pulled on the American public and ask forgiveness from those you have harmed. Pitifully clinging to celebrity by appearing on the cover of Prevention magazine is just sad. And to the publishers of Prevention…really folks? And to the public, please stop paying this women to talk about food. Like her cuisine…she’s a hot mess.

 Print This |  Email This | 2 Comments