Enjoyment

After my last tracking debacle, I knew I had to talk it out in my ED therapy.  I was feeling quite ridiculous that after making so much progress in my recovery that I still reverted back to analyzing every bite of food I ate.  We went back to a trick my nutritionist gave me - and that is to look at all foods and find what nutritional value they are giving me.  Everything from vegetables to cookies give me something, albeit some more than others.

This is a hard exercise to do - looking at foods that are condemned as unhealthy and try to find some benefit from it.  Automatically I think "No, these are bad!" but look again - there is something to be earned in each bite.

The night of that therapy session, my husband and I were planning on having pizza, and I was stressing over it.  My first thoughts were that it was fattening, full of carbs and really something that "shouldn't" have been part of my eating plan that day.  Afterall, I had plenty of carbs earlier - this would just add more!

However, we broke it down, from the bread to the toppings.  Here is what we came up with.

- Crust provides carbohydrates, which in this case was made from flour, water, salt and a bit of yeast.  That's all.  Flour even contains traces of fiber and protein.
- Sauce provides a fruit/vegetable, with tomatoes being super healthy for you.  There are yummy spices in sauce that can benefit your body too, like garlic, onions, basil, oregano, pepper, etc.
- Cheese is a good source of protein, of calcium and dairy (and vitamin D).  There is fat in there, which our bodies need some fat to function properly.  I learned when I was in anorexia that not having fat caused my body not to ovulate and therefore amenorrhea set in for three months. 
- If there was pepperoni on there, that contains some meat, spices and more fats.  Sure, pepperoni isn't a nutritionally dense as say a nice steak, or fish, but it's still there doing something.

When we got done disecting the pizza, I was starting to feel better.  And then my nutritionist said I am missing one ingredient from the whole pie.

Was it vegetable?  Dairy? Protein?  What am I missing?

Then she pointed out as matter-of-factly the ingredient I was missing in my pizza was enjoyment.

So we talked about this.  What eat something if I don't enjoy it?  Why force myself to eat a snack of celery when I can't stand it?  While I want to get all the food groups into my day to create variety and reduce my urges to binge or restrict, I need to be relaxed about it and up until now, my new eating plan had seemingly turned into another form of ED - one that was starting to become obsessed with a perfect, recovered manner of eating.  Again, I must learn to trust my body for it will tell me when to eat ice cream and when to eat some fruit instead.  It's happened before and it will happen again.

In our culture, we approach food in a utilitarian way, as my therapist explained it.  We eat to keep going, and more importantly, to keep doing other things.  We eat lunch at our desk in less than 10 minutes to keep working on email.  We eat dinner on the road to drive to our destination in a set amount of time.  Athletes consume gels and chews in an event because there is no time to eat, and energy is needed.  Moms and dads get the kids ready for school and grab breakfast to eat in the car, and carry their coffee in stainless steel mugs to work. 

In other cultures, this is despised and laughed at.  Europeans are known for taking luxurious lunches in the middle of the day, all to enjoy food.  They in essence live to eat, not eat to live, and somehow, it's interesting how there is this notion that Americans are obese and have unhealthy obsessions with food. It's almost no wonder when food is used as a tool for survival, not a lifestyle to enjoy survival.

This weekend, I attended a Ukrainian festival which served traditional, old-world style foods and I couldn't wait to try them.  I had perogies, kelbasa and other delicacies I'd never eaten before, savoring every bite.  I even had a couple Ukrainian beers - totally lived it up :)  If I was still deeper in my ED, going to an event like this would have been a nightmare.  I would not have known how many calories were in the food.  I wouldn't know how much to eat so I wouldn't gain weight.  And in the end, I would have probably overeaten all of it because I just simply did not know what to do.  However, this time, I couldn't wait to try the ethnic food, no matter the nutritional contents.  And wouldn't it be great if I could add some of these recipes to try at home?  I think I would really enjoy that.