Processed

Let's talk about processed foods.

Let's talk about its place in the recovery literature, or nutrition neutral literature as I like to call it.

Here's what's happening.  I'll come across an article or think piece and it will be shouting on the rooftops about how no food is good or bad.  I digest it (pun intended) with smiles and my own rooftop shouts until I see a statement like this:

"Research/doctors/cultures/things are pointing to a mostly plant diet with limited process food for longevity and health".

Guess what?  When you say something like that, you're throwing your entire food neutrality stance out the window.

Can we stop talking "limiting" foods in general?  Can we come to a consensus that eating all the foods in as much variety as possible - the veggies, the treats - is possibly the most sane way of approaching our diets?

I'll admit I've had a great run lately.  I'm considering myself recovered (I know, right!), eating what I want, not obsessing over my body and feeling pretty hot about it all.  The good days are way outnumbering the bad, and I can only recall one time in the last few months being truly ED tested, and I got through it. 

But something else is occurring.  The more I run my Body Image Librarian Facebook Page and scour the interwebs for great recovery/food/exercise/body positive articles, I am seeing the same bashing of processed foods in all of them.

And guess what has happened:  I too am starting to think differently when I reach for a potato chip, or bread out of the grocery store as opposed to from a "real" bakery.  Lunch meat on my sandwich?  I probably "should" have gotten something "healthier".  I silently shame myself for coming home from work and having some crackers that come in a box instead of strawberries in my fridge.  Anything not whole or natural is something to be given second thoughts, and I hate that recently, this has been happening again - but fortunate that I am catching it in its tracks.

So if you're writing about food not being bad or good and yet blasting a certain food group - and I, an ED recovered individual - is being ever so slightly triggered by it, you're doing it wrong.

I'll be honest - if one only eats processed food, sure- it's probably not the best.  But neither is just eating fruits and vegetables.  Or only salty meats and protein.   We all need variety in our diets across the board so we are sustained, satisfied and enjoying our culinary journeys as human beings on this planet.  Particularly if we are privileged to even have food choices to begin with. 

Many of you know that it wasn't until I gave up the labels Good, Bad, Healthy, Unhealthy, Junk or Garbage in regards to food where I could come into intuitive eating.  I ate the processed maybe a bit more in the beginning but then it evened out.  As a result, I actually eat less of the processed stuff - because my body isn't telling me to eat it.  Why is it not telling me to eat it?  Because I don't tell my body what to not eat.  That's how it works - my body tells me, not the other way around.  My body is the boss of me and I love it.

Case in point - coming home from my annual conference last night, I was driving on major highways.  The only thing at these rest stops are mostly fast food.  My body did not want it.  Days of hotel food and conference outings left my body wanting something fresher because it needed that change.  My body wanted to avoid the processed fried food because, not because the powers at be around the world are telling me to.

Bottom line: If you think you're letting yourself off the diet hook but still telling yourself not to eat this or that, it won't work in the end.  Allow yourself the chips, the bagel from Starbucks.  Trust your body will handle it and ask for something else later.  Let your body boss you around!