Food lifestyles

[Tiam]

Current threads in this forum got me thinking, but I want to be sensitive about how I put this, because it's not meant to be demeaning or cynical. Here goes: We have seen food trends from time memorial. We've seen combining for proteins, vegan, organic, non gluten, paleo, low carb, Cocunut oil!!....my point is, I realize that everyone is an individual and that different things work for different people. For some people, one lifestyle may make the difference over the other and that's great. But does anyone out there ever feel overwhelmed by it all? All the different kinds of diets and nutrition lifestyles? I love to hear good things. I like to know how something worked and something didn't, and why, but often I just wonder: Can't I just make bean soup and not worry about it too much? Now legumes seem to be on the oust with the latest food trends. It gets exhausting. Does anyone feel the same? Please know this is not criticism, it's a self expression and wonderment. I like to make chicken stock....with my non organic foster farms or cheaper chicken. I know....I've seen all the horror stories. I buy local, but commercial, non organic eggs. I don't make bread. Or baking. I buy bread if I need it, which isn't often, and just buy something off the rack. I like to make my own beans and grow my own veggies. I don't liked canned food so my "preparedness" stock is not too big. I eat beef....not organic, but hardly ever. I buy chicken. Not organic at 6.00 dollars a pound, but the l.00 a pound stuff. I like to make beans and pastry with "gasp!" Lard! The real stuff. from a pig, when I eat something like that. I don't like or eat fruit. I like white flour products and whole grain products. I like slow cook oatmeal but not pin oats. I like brown rice, but I like white rice too!Local food! Is it from 50 miles of where I live????? I like white pasta but I learned (here) that there is a great Barilla whole grain pasta that doesn't taste heavy and bitter, so I like that too! I like unhydrogenated peanut butter and real butter and sour cream and whole milk. I drink creamer in my coffee with white sugar and since I don't drink coffee more than twice a week, it's not usually on my radar to think of who grew it. And don't consume much of these at all. I mean really. Less than once a week.

I don't adhere to any particular lifestyle regarding food....but there's so much info coming in, sometimes I feel like I don't know what the right choice is. Sometimes I read all these things about this is the right way, the wrong way, the only way. I start to get a complex! I start to have self doubt about everything!! Anyone else ever feel this way? Hey. I am just a simple girl, but sometimes it all feels VERY complex, you know what I mean.

[redfox]

It IS complex, and this is amped up by our present society's apparent love of The Silver Bullet. There is no one perfect food regime that will (fill in blank).

Make bean soup! Drink coffee with creamer! Enjoy your life.

[Zoebird]

No, I don't feel overwhelmed.

My husband and I like to study, talk about, and learn about health. Nutrition is a part of that -- something that has interested us since we were teenagers. In areas where our emotional relationship to food wasn't as healthy (orthorexic tendencies for DH; emotional eating for me), we have healed that over time.

We were never really looking for The One True Way, nor were we ever looking for perfection -- even in our current lifestyle. We just learn as we go, and think about things and try things out.

For me, I started out with a fairly healthy diet at home. I went to university and learned a bit about nutrition, but mostly ate what the dorms served. It was similar to what I grew up with.

Then I met DH and he was doing a body-builder thing. Monotony, marco-nutrient profiles, and protein drinks/shakes. Blech. LOL so I just sort of kept on. Then I decided to go vegan. It wasn't for health, morals, or ethics. It just "felt" right. So, I did it. And, I loved it.

I loved the simplicity, how I learned so much about food (how to prepare it, trying veggies i'd never heard of and flavor profiles I'd enver experienced). Perhaps, though I wasn't too strict. I would still go out to dinner and choose vegetarian, even if it wasn't vegan. I never refused food as a guest. It sometimes caused me frustration with my ILs (not 'getting' what I could/couldn't have no matter how many times I explained it -- and in my head, not confronted to them), but i often ate it anyway.

During this time, DH had been lifting and gained a lot of weight. His friend put him on a "diet." It was essentially paleo, but I'd also learned of WAPF through a client. we started our process of buying local, organic, and fair trade -- as often as we could, farm-fresh. It was a cool learning process for us. We learned a lot about food sourcing, more about cooking and preparing. . . and overall really enjoyed it.

DH adapated his "diet" from the one his friend gave him to a more WAPF styled one because we were 'hanging' with these people, going to the same CSAs and farms that they go to, and overall, it was just what made sense to him.

During this same phase, I started to get into raw veganism (i have raw vegan friends -- most of them "loose" in that they'll eat fish, eggs, and dairy raw if they feel compelled to), and decided to shift my diet to high raw. I was about 80-20 in terms of that -- mostly because it was a new avenue to explore and learn about food and such. I really enjoyed this, too. My 20 was largely cooked beans and grains, as well as starches like potatoes and the like.

Over time, this didn't sit with me, and while I enjoyed a lot of recipes, I went back to more cooked foods and also left veganism behind. I felt better on a vegetarian diet (for a lot of reasons), and did that for several years until I got pregnant. Once pregnant, I followed cravings back into meat (oddly, mostly fish, and one steak. LOL).

After pregnancy, I went back to vegetarianism (i'd only eaten meat 5 times during pregnancy). It was no problem at all, really. Same diet as before, and healthy and the boy was healthy so I was happy. DH was still doing WAPF.

But, sometime in DS's first eyar, he started to hvae all kinds of weird gut and skin symptoms. we couldn't figure them *at all* to be honest. And when we moved to NZ, they got *much worse*. Our local WAPF chapter recommended a naturopath, and she quickly said that DH needed to go gluten and dairy free.

I thought it would be easier if we ate the same as a family -- so I did some research and discovered paleo. It seemed to make perfect sense in light of what DH needed, and we started a week later (had to clear the house of the food still left over).

It was really fun going paleo because we rediscovered our love of food -- the same excitement we had when we worked with the WAPF in our first community. we started to source our food particularly, and go seasonal, and discover foods we hadn't tried before (like my new-found love of liver pate!). It was a new area of discovery in terms of food, as well as in terms of science and also community. We really tapped into a new community, too. And that felt good.

Not to mention, we are *really* healthy.

More recently, we started intermittent fasting and juicing -- which has brought us more excitement and more joy in the process of discovering juicing. Honestly, for us, it's a really fun project.

With this, we are never terribly strict. I mean, I had cake today! And DS and I share sweets on a regular basis, too. I enjoy those things, and since overall I'm quite healthy and we feed ourselves and our son good foods, a few sweets now and again aren't going to hurt us! It's a treat. It's fun. It's nice. It's pleasurable.

I never feel stressed about letting a food go, or bringing one in, or changing over time. It's just on-going discovery. I love the way our diet is right now, and I'm sure it will change as new information and discoveries come in. But, I can definitely see this as sustainable.

For DH, his digestive issues are basically gone (he actually had to do a second protocol on top of smply changing diet), and the issues that I didn't even know where issues are gone too. It's amazing! I love it!

And you know, we are like this with movement, too.

I'm constantly learning more about yoga; DH is learning more about lifting; and we are also total nerds on posture, gait (walking and running), mobility, stability, etc. We LOVE this stuff. It occupies our minds a lot, and we enjoy it.

I've spent the last month learning how to stand properly. I'm taking a training on how to help other people reduce pain in their bodies through posture -- something that is part of yoga, but this gives me another tool to better understand and communicate it to my clients.

This year alone, DH and I have added our postural exercises, pilates, and more foam rolling to our daily fitness/wellbeing routines. I suppose that, to others, this would be overwhelming, but for DH and I -- it's an enjoyable process of self discovery as we find ourselves feeling better.

Two years ago, DH had incredible pain in his neck. It was "unbearable!" after acupuncture treatments, he happened to read an article on foam rolling. He gave it a try, and two weeks later, no more pain! Since then, he's been a devotee. I have just gotten into it, having seen him develop all kinds of health from the process (better mobility mostly).

For my own part, I had a lot of pain in my back, left shoulder and arm, and up through the left side of my neck. Postural patternign work has made a HUGE difference on that in just one month -- 90% of the pain is gone. I added in pilates to help facilitate my process in developing the proper posture, and it's been challenging, but I am still seeing improvement. I also added in foam rolling (and this is in addition to yoga, walking, and body weight exercises), and this is improving my posture also. I would suggest that I may be pain free in a matter of months! Amazing!

So for me, this is *exciting* and fun -- not overwhelming.

And honestly, if i want bean soup, I eat it. Hekc, there's ONE good mexican place here, and sometimes we go there and I eat the beans, the rice, the home-made corn tortillas, the cheese, the salsa, the guac, the meats, and finish with the desserts, etc. No pressure. That's part of life, too. It's wonderful and special. I never feel deprived or overwhelmed.

I guess I'm my own project. I like it.

[ApatheticNoMore]

What I am pretty disgusted about is what this society has done to food. That much of the grocery store is packaged stuff that isn't food at all, the same for restaurants. It's literally substances that are chemically engineered to appeal to you, engineered precisely to push your buttons to simulate nutrition. They might have about the nutrition of the box they come in, but they are engineered to taste like the real thing (one drop of natural flavoring will do it). That much of conventionally produced food especially animal products is hardly food at all (chickens fed arsenic, chickens that never see the sun, meat treated with chemicals to make it turn red after it has browned, cows doped up on hormones and antibiotics to fatten quicker, yea that's not food).

But if one agrees people should eat real food like people have for time immemorial (yea even after the dawn of agriculture!) then that will drive one to more organic and naturally raised food, and that I believe in. But then there's still a lot of sub-debates about what real food among all the foods out there to eat: mostly plants? should one eat dairy? wheat? legumes? butter? only olive oil? lots of red meat? and frankly I don't think this part is very clear cut.

I think on the one hand there's people spinning tales of what strict diet they hope will keep them perfectly healthy in thier truly old age (90s and so on), and I'm not sure they understand how rare that is, frankly what really old age usually is. And on the other hand there's food companies whose absolute garbage passed off as food contributes to making people not just not model thin (who cares) but more and more extremely obese. So that these people take dangerous diet pills to try to lose weight totally oblivious to the fact that they have been completely played by a corrupt food system (diet pills are still related to amphetamines, half a century, nothing changes). Diet pills that raise blood pressure and cause irregular heart beats and may stop your heart and mcdonalds and packaged meals, in what universe does that make sense (yea talking about someone I worry about ).

As for fun I ocassionally have the desire to follow the food restrictions of various religions for a period of time: orthodox lent, ramadan, etc. which is no doubt quite inappropriate as I'm not of those religious traditions but then if that's the case why should anyone care how I eat?

[goldensmom]

Regarding foods, over my lifetime I've seen this is good, now it isn't; this is healthy and now it isn't; eat this, not that; drink this not that; eggs are good, eggs are bad' coffee is bad, coffee is good; and on and on it went and will go. I tend to be a 'real food/whole food' person but we eat just about everything in moderation and don't worry about it.

[Rosemary]

I think that if we focused on whole foods made out of real, unrefined, nonchemical, nonindustrial ingredients, and just eating what is necessary and not eating more because of palatability or cravings, there would be far fewer food-related illnesses.

Recent writings on the food industry have investigated how manufacturers and restaurants have sought to find the "bliss point" of manufactured foods, increasing sugar, salt, and fat to make customers want to eat more. And if there's any food people shouldn't eat more of, that would be it! Those huge restaurant and bakery portions, things that come in boxes... they are going to pack on the pounds faster than almost anything else, as well as do the 'invisible' things like contribute to arterial plaque, raise blood pressure, etc.

I find it amazing that a restaurant can take something like a salad, for instance, for which the bulk of the ingredients might have about 100 calories, and turn it into an 800-calorie event.

[catherine]

I think our obsession over which macronutrient/micronutient is going to make us healthy/lose weight/live longer is a diversion from the bigger picture of how we've increasingly failed to live integrated lives. If we live true to the earth, and in communion with others, by honoring the perfect way in which nature offers us our nourishment (and if we can avoid mucking it all up with our "advancements") I think we're good to go.

[Tammy]

Yes, all this gets old after awhile ... I havelactose intolerance and GERD. I eat what works for me, with an eye toward health, sustainability, and justice. The end. And it will be different for each person, and each season in life.

[Kestra]

Yes it is overwhelming. At least with my co-workers it's become kind of a joke - we're all on so many different types of diets it's entertaining to look and discuss what everyone is eating.
I really hate all or nothing stuff and I don't want to worry about what I'm eating all the time, or feel deprived.
Sometimes I feel guilty. Ethically, I think veganism is the way to go, but I'm not a vegan. I even had fish a couple months ago (have had fish once a decade or so) because I felt protein deficient - gasp! Don't tell my parents - apparently they gave my Celiac diagnosed sister a hard time for eating eggs. It's really hard to be gluten free and vegan and not spend all your time buying and making food. So I'm not.
For health reasons I do avoid all gluten. But I do other bad stuff - I don't bake from scratch - I buy the store bought sugary gluten free cookies because I have more money than time and motivation.
I eat sugar, drink coffee (sometimes with liquor), don't completely avoid dairy. I eat white rice sometimes.
On and on. Whatever, man. I just can't deal with being that finicky.

[pinkytoe]

Yet another outcome of technology and media providing too much information IMO and also the fact that we are lucky enough to have infinite choices. I think one's perspective changes as you get a few years on you and have seen so many trends come and go. When I was younger, I truly believed that eating a certain way was the end all be all. Now I have come to realize that the old saying of all things in moderation is what works best for me. Anything of one extreme - paleo, vegan - doesn't make sense to me - but certainly works for some.