Can you love eating food and being healthy?
Raise your hand if you ever thought or said “I want to get healthier, but I love food too much.” Guilty.
You fail immediately, even though you really really really want to. When you think this way, these two things appear as conflicting statements, polar opposites. Mutually exclusive. Either/or. And they don’t have to be.
How can you love food and be healthy at the same time? It’s something I’ve been grappling with and have been working on so it works for me, not against me.
Let’s break this down. “Love eating food” means eating what you love, when you want it and in quantities you want it. On the other hand “eating healthily” goes against this belief. There are rules. Eat this, don’t eat that, this is good, this is bad. Eating all the comfort food is fun, but eating healthily is boring.
No wonder it’s a losing battle from the start.
And there is this bad rep about cooking when all the diets of the jour tell you to buy ready products as the best way to monitor calories. Because of this, some of us start thinking and believing that when we cook, we overeat and gain weight. Hence, it’s bad for us.
Wrong. Hear me out. First, this is a mindset shift, and second, a practice.
Reframe it as making food for yourself that is delicious and good for you. No ifs, buts, or maybes.
Cooking for yourself is a relationship worth investing in. If you haven’t done it consistently, at first, it will feel like you’re overdoing and overeating. But over time, it will even out. Give it a chance, make it a practice, enjoy the process (as equally as the end result), and don’t get discouraged.
You will master something and start looking at how you can improve it so it’s better for you. You will experiment with cutting fat and sugar, halving recipes, freezing meals, making the same thing in a different dish, roasting vs deep frying, and using your kitchen gadgets to prep and chop. You will come up with a toolbox of quick tips, tricks, and recipes to make on stressful and busy days. You will learn to take shortcuts. It will become easier and more intuitive with time.
And don’t ever sacrifice flavor. Your food should never be boring. Repeat after me, food should never be boring.
After some time, things will shift in your mind, it will no longer be this vs that. When people ask you what you eat to feel so good, you say food. Ditch the rest of the labels. You’re making food that you like to eat and that makes you feel good, strong, happy, and healthy.
I am not saying don’t ever eat out at restaurants or order out, just make cooking a part of your life.
It’s not going to be easy. You will be pulled and persuaded left and right not to cook. You’ll be tempted to buy this or that cause that’s what marketing does. Instead, use cooking for all the other benefits besides making delicious food for yourself.
Use it as an activity, a creative outlet, meditation, self-care, and a way to express love for those you care about. I guarantee you, whatever you make is a thousand times better for you than what you buy. And once things are in harmony in your mind, you’ll use that energy to create something for yourself not fight it.
If you’re looking for a private and supportive community of people from all walks of life who use cooking (all levels) to nurture, heal, and feel better join Dishmeetup on Slack.
