food

i am becoming a foodie.

that sounds like a very odd statement when coming from someone who spent more than a decade struggling with annorexia and has never had a particularly great relationship with food. there were always things i liked-chocolate, coffee, cheeses... but i've liked the guys i've dated (would even go so far as to say loved a few of them) but that doesn't mean we had a good relationship. for a while before i started rehab i honestly convinced myself that i didn't need calories as long as i was getting appropriate vitamins and minerals. clearly, there was no relationship with food at that point.

i like to cook. i've always liked to cook. i like being thin and i've always liked being thin. but somewhere along the line it went beyond liking to be thin. i'd cook for the people around me but eat very little myself. i was the only skinny chef my brother would trust. rehab was hard. it didn't come close to fixing everything. in fact, it made a lot of things harder. then again it usually is hard to change bad habbits and even harder to change things you don't necessarily want to change.

the first life-altering revelation to radically change my relationship with food came to me courtesy of oprah. she had michael pollan on to discuss a new book-food rules (which i read cover to cover). one of the rules he discussed on the show was that we should be eating food, not food-like substances. it suddenly occured to me that the first step to a good relationship with food was maybe eating real food. like stuff that goes bad (another one of his rules) and using common sense when i choose what to eat. sure, it's easier to grab a box of something to snack on but chances are it's not something i should eat.

the second life-altering revelation was that food is fun (this one was courtesy of ratatouille-definitely LOVE kids' movies). i love art. i love music. i love theatre. i love color. and watching a rat redefine food in a city i'm dying to visit made it that much more fun. the possbilities are endless, yet people tend to eat the same things over and over again. i could eat something different every day for the rest of my life and not have tried everything.

the third life-altering revelation came a while after the first two. i began to eat better and suddenly i realized i began to feel better. i don't think i've ever felt this good in my life.

and i like grocery shopping now.