How I Stopped Eating Processed Food - My 3 Eating Practices
Ok, full disclosure, I ate probably 20 Reese’s peanut butte cups in the last two days. (God save me from post-Halloween sales). I am not an eating saint here to tell you about the zen of eating.
What I am is someone who, at one point, struggled through the hell of wanting to be thin and attempting enough contortionist practices to know that I have to find a different way. That pain and self-loathing became the catalyst for a new journey— a journey to true nourishment.
A Wholesome View Of Bodies
Our bodies are sacred temples. The house our souls. Everyday, our bodies process thousands of inputs for how help keep us alive, alert and well.
So why do we put junk inside of it?
How have we become a culture that uses food to medicate ourselves from pain?
This is the terrain I must navigate. These are the questions I ask myself when I’m tempted to pick up the 1.2 kg apple pie at Costco.
Living in the city, in a place with an infinite supply of food, I am often hungry. I am hungry for something deeper. Food that has meaning and love. I am hungry for purpose, for adventure, for beauty, for wonder. I am hungry for deep friendships and open heart. If I don’t properly nourish my body, mind and soul, I become ravenously hungry, to the point where I try to fill the multi-layered void with multi-layered meals of dessert, dessert and more desert.
I know that binge eating on processed foods this will happen if I’m not nourished. So how to fill the void properly?
The Practice of creating a full life
More and more, I’ve noticed myself wolfing down my food. I’ll eat when I’m in the car, thinking that it’ll save me more time. At work, I feel like I don’t have a quiet, sacred space to enjoy food. There is only my office, or the noisy cafeteria area.
It’s as though I want soul food and body food at the same time. When my soul is full, I don’t need as much physical food because the void has been filled the proper way.
I often think of the times in my life when I was so eager for and fulfilled by my work that food was a second priority. It wasn’t a respite from my work. In those circumstances, food was the fuel for the work I wanted to complete. I naturally ate healthy. I cursed myself when I ate cookies and started falling asleep at my laptop. It wasn’t that I was trying to control my eating. It was that I loved my life and my current project so much that I wanted to be in the best condition to enjoy it!
Is it possible for me to find that level of purpose in my daily life, so that my joy-levels are so high, my soul so full, that I don’t need to use food for fulfillment— ever?
Yes, I believe so.
This is why I’ve been leaning into writing in the morning and making more and more videos.
They give me a sense of purpose. They are things I love doing MORE than I love stuffing my belly with Oreos. They make me want to be the most alive, alert and fresh-minded as I can possibly be! Oreos are counter-productive to my higher life goal, so they stay on the shelf.
Without something to give me that sense of soul-purpose, I easily gravitate to the potato chips and dark chocolate as a way to experience the high (and the crunch, the saltiness, the sweetness) of being alive.
With something to give that sense of soul-purpose, I naturally eat less and eat better because I am already partially full. My physical hunger is not mixed in with my soul-hunger, so my eating is only needed to fill one hunger, not both.
I am aware of all of this at an intellectual level, but what happens when it is time to eat? This is why I’ve developed my personal eating habits.
My Body Nourishment Practices
Eat only when I’m hungry.
I do not stuff things into my body when I don’t feel ready to eat. It is better to hold onto the food and eat it later. I trust that my body will tell me when it’s ready to eat. Until then, stuffing food in is like deliberately putting paper into a jammed printer. Intuitively, something in my body just wants to say NO. Trust that eating is best for me when my body wants to receive food. Otherwise, I’m just giving it an onerous task, more burden, which means that I won’t be able to enjoy or do what I really want to do.
I Eat only what My Body really wants to eat.
This involves training myself to tune into what my body really wants. You might think that, well, what I really want is to engulf an entire red velvet cake, but when I tune in and ask my body, it says, no, I just want to eat an apple or an avocado. This means being present when I select my food, not just swinging the fridge open and grabbing whatever is on the middle shelf. It means going into the kitchen or grocery store to select food for myself is sacred task.
I eat mostly plants.
This is a natural byproduct of practicing Principle #2. The more in tune I am with my body, the more it tells me that real food is always better than processed food that comes with polished branding and glossy packaging. Processed food always has chemicals or substances added into it to give the product shelf life, and those substances become something that my body has to process - to which is retorts asks me, why you gotta eat that? Over time, I just naturally eat a cleaner diet.
When Food Won’t Satisfy
If I’m hungry for something, but not for food, I tune in and ask myself what do I really want. Then I steer myself to enjoy that other things before I reach for food in the kitchen. I’ll dip into my jar of Soul Nourishment Practices instead of the Body Nourishment. Here are some of m personal favourites:
My Soul & Heart Nourishment Practices:
Read Books
Spend time in Nature, as much time as possible.
Plan trips for myself.
Fly my drone.
Take baths.
Pause - just do nothing! Give myself space to do nothing.
Visit a retreat center
Go to a yoga class.
See friends
If you don’t have a personal list soul-nourishing activities, then please make one! It’s so healthy and yummy for us.
Yes, there have been times that I failed at making it to my list and ate more candy than I are to admit. Those are moments to give myself grace and say, “Thank you, body, for processing those substances. What is it that you really want?” When I give my soul a chance to speak, it will tell me.
Nourishing my body well is a habit that I’m developing, so I focus on the habit, not each individual act of will at each mealtime.
Eating better not a practice of willpower or discipline. It’s actually just about loving my life — and my body and soul — enough that I only want to put the best things into it. I much prefer to love my life, instead of hating my life. So my changes in my eating habits are a byproduct of loving life. :)
