Last night I went to bed anticipating this because if you live in Oregon, one thing you know for sure is that it might never last.
When I cracked my eyes open in the morning light seemed to be spilling through the seam of a door and I thought someone was using the bathroom-but no, that was early morning light trying to creep into my bedroom.My husband was already up and I woke up and walked in on the guy sitting in my living room, laptop on the ready...coffee, a mini walk in the backyard and then back to my favorite thing in the morning, checking whatsapp messages from 10000 miles away-my Indian family-Fatima ladies!
I stepped in when a couple of friends were discussing dinner menus and there was talk of healthy eating and one of my friends sighed about how frustrating it is to worry not only about what to cook, but also about how healthy it is.She however, apologised a few minutes later, because she hurried to tell us, it was her personal experience and might not necessarily reflect everyone's experience.
That set me thinking-yes,it was a hassle to plan menus anyway-healthy, regular,no fat,no carb, no oil,no meat....
I told her so and then she said something that really got me. She said, "I sometimes want to cook everything I like and have a go at it!"
It was a thunderbolt moment for me. I thought about myself and went."Yup, I'd love to do that too!"
My no carb diet works really well for me-I've lost weight, my cholesterol numbers are down, H1ac is decent,but there is this yearning-a plateful of rice, fish gravy,tapioca curry-heaven! But no, I can't down a plateful of that-well I can once in a while, but that cannot become my regular diet.
My route to this way of eating came not from worrying about my weight - never worried about that. I have to thank my fellow Fatima girls for that-we never ever discussed weight, we had so much fun discussing Shah Rukh Khan and Aamir Khan to worry about how much we weighed.
My first consciousness of being overweight came in Engineering college-thanks to the boys in class with me. Cruel, crude comments could get at you, but I had too much of a inner storage of confidence acquired in school to let that pull me down.I knew that appearances were secondary when the class nerd, the only guy who got a campus placement offer, someone who awed me with his intelligence and his superior standoffishness wanted to marry me. To this day my husband has never ever commented on my weight, even when it was obvious that I had gained some pounds.
So I breezed through life until my forties brought me to where I am-my point is, health is why I eat the way I do.
Each of us get to this point of watching what we eat through different doors.
I am reading this book called.'It was Me All Along' and the author talks about her relationship with food and how it contributed to her being overweight for almost 20 years of her life before she picked up the courage to sever that emotional tie. Different door?
My kids are gluten free because it seems to help with gut issues-yet another door.
I have another friend here who decided to just give up meat out of the blue-she wanted to be vegan but found it too tough and went back to including dairy and eggs.One more door to that point of watching what you eat.
Short of certain foods doing a number on you stomach, quite a lot of people who decide on a certain way of eating , arrive there unwillingly, heartbroken at being compelled/expected to avoid food they really love-oh rice and sambar come to mind-and there is this undercurrent, an urge to run back to your old ways and everything else be damned, but then something stands in your way- my 'healthy numbers' , or healthy weight, or ideal something....
Eating is a sensual experience and involving most of your senses( I'm thinking all five-consider the spluttering of mustard seeds, the crack of a papad on your plate, the whoosh of marrow leaving a bone). I think when you alter your way of eating, you are subverting your senses and suppressing them from their full potential.
And obviously there are foods that appeal to you, the taste,the texture,the aroma-think buttery baby potatoes fried up with a hint of chili, cumin and salt-and you can't have them!
So to consciously avoid what you like just because it will keep you alive longer,or make you thinner- is that gratifying enough?
The author I mentioned earlier talks about how getting off of her controlled intake of food freaked her out.The fear that indulging might derail her weight loss became as obsession. So she decided to eat in as much as possible-less inducements that way.
And the sheer chore that planning a meal involves- I want to eat noodles, but I cannot eat it because I'm on this diet, but I can have as much chicken as I want, but what I actually want is-noodles...
You run down a mental checklist-but it is usually made foremost of things you want to but cannot have,followed by a sullen lacklustre list of foods you are expected to choose from. Like I can have as much mayo as I want but what I want is-lemon rice. (I am sure everyone has cottoned on to the fact that I miss rice most of all...I'm a tamilian from Kanyakumari district, what do you expect?)
I'm blathering on, I know, but we have one life to live and this march towards optimum health or the perfect figure takes enormous sacrifice and can stave off a host of health problems and add a few years to our life-but we all die anyway, and I remember a joke I read about all these health nuts dying too, but dying of nothing-not an illness, but just nothing.Funny but true.
So with one life to live, I'm of the thought that we hold ourselves in, the entire month and go to town on our favorite meal on the last day -start fresh the first of the next month. After all tomorrow is another day!What say Karthi?
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