We all packed into this tiny little room like sardines, only less smelly. The plastic cups and bowls filled with fake food shed some light on where we were exactly.
“Hi!” a small brown haired woman squealed as she be bopped into the room. “I’m Jessica, but everyone calls me Jess, and I am one of the lead nutritionists here at Good Eats. Today we are going to discuss nutrition and what role it plays in your individual journeys.” Everyone squirms in their seats, probably because we all know where this is going. Either that or they were positioning themselves to catch me if I went down again.
“You don’t have to be the Saint Pantry,” Jess chuckled, “you just have to take it easy. Food is our friend. Everyone say it with me…Food is my friend! Great. Give yourself a clap!” Enough with the clapping already. “What we want to do today is learn about our relationship with food and also change our thinking when it comes to this stuff,” she says as she holds up an odd plastic clump which resembles vomit more than oatmeal. Hmmm…change our thinking? How and the hell are we going to do that? I think to myself.
My relationship with food isn’t built on a solid foundation. For instance, I have only ever smoked weed once and even that was a fake try (like Bill Clinton...I never really inhaled) because from a very young age the movie we watched in our Dare class was enough to build my drug free life on solid ground. Yet I have eaten many slices of cake. Go figure. The change in thinking about food being a fuel vs. just something to occupy my time is going to be a little rough.
Usually, food is top of mind everyday. In the bed before I wake the kids up in the morning, I’m thinking about what to make for lunch. On the ride to work I’m thinking about snack time. At snack time I’m thinking about dinner and at dinner I’m thinking about breakfast for the next day. And on those days when I’m too preoccupied to actually think about food, my family reminds me with the ever so annoying “What’s for ___?” Simple activities are food related, too. Instead of thinking about carving a pumpkin and getting messy with the kids, I’m thinking about cooking pumpkin seeds and if I can actually use the insides for edible pumpkin flavored stuff (which the answer to that last one is no…I don’t have the brain energy to actually make it work).
I know in my heart that I need to reroute my FPS (food positioning system) and look at food for what it is. Food is the fuel my body needs to operate properly, and honestly all that crap I shove in my mouth isn’t doing me any good. I mean, would I put sugar in the gas tank of a Lamborghini? Of course not. (Oh….wow…breakthrough! That was neat. I just felt my brain open up and soak in the analogy. Wonder if I can do it again?) I can’t promise myself that I won’t have M & M’s or a piece of cake, but what I can promise myself is that as the days wear on I will change my thinking little by little. I am the tortoise after all…
The Runner
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