chapter 39
food is morally neutral
you deserve to eat.
Nothing you ate yesterday, said today, or have left undone for tomorrow can take away your right to be fed. Your inability to create a nutritiously perfect meal today does not mean your body is better off not eating. All calories are good calories when you’re having a hard time. There are no good or bad foods. There are no right or wrong foods. And I’m gonna say it: there are no foods that are absolutely healthy or unhealthy. Healthy is a wholistic state of being that requires more than just knowing the amount and type of nutrients in the food you are eating. Being kind to yourself while eating ice cream is healthier than hating yourself while eating a salad. Anxiety and perfectionism are not good for your health. At the end of the day, your relationship to food is as much a factor in your health as fueling your body in a way that makes you feel good is.
Meal planning is not a thing people who have it all together do.
Meal planning exists to make it easier for you to eat and buy groceries. That is the function. For most of my life, meal planning caused way more stress than not knowing what to eat did. So I didn’t do it. Once I had a family of four, that flipped and it became more stressful to stare at the fridge with little sentient leg weights hanging on to my ankles, so I started trying to plan what was going to be for dinner that week ahead of time. There is no right way here; it’s simply what is the lower stress option. You get to decide.
If you would like to try meal planning, it helps to first de-Pinterest the idea. If you eat a meal and you like it, write it down. Start a list.
They don’t have to be intricate, cohesive meals either. Eat a really good sandwich? Write it down. Pour some jar sauce over some tortellini and it hit the spot? Onto the list it goes. Eventually, you’ll have a list of meals you like. Before going to the grocery store you can pick out a few for the week. Voila. You meal planned.
If feeding yourself is very hard, turn your attention to kids’ food.
Toddler food is designed to shotgun the maximum amount of nutrients into someone with a limited palate and an even more limited attention span. Yogurt pouches, Uncrustables, microwave macaroni and cheese… throw in a multivitamin and you’ll live to see another day.
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