I have been on the mindful eating journey for about four years now. I can't believe it's been that long already. As my readers know, I initially viewed mindful (or intuitive) eating as a way to ultimately lose weight and indeed it did result in an approximately 10% weight loss over about two or three months. Since then, my goal of intuitively eating down to a more socially acceptable weight (yes, dieting, though by another name) has evolved into the realization that I will be much healthier and happier focusing on healthy practices at the weight I am at NOW (which is about half-way between where I started in January 2009 and the 10% loss) rather than longing for a size that I can only reach through strictly adhering to what I consider disordered eating practices (aka, dieting).
In the past four years, I have become much more attuned to my hunger and satiety patterns while coming to enjoy physical activity to the best of my somewhat limited abilities. I do what I can and try not to compare my arthritic, orthopedically challenged body to that of a younger, less damaged body (my thoughts regarding the pediatric orthopedists and the treatments they prescribed to me as a child and how these treatments contributed to my unfortunate condition today cannot be expressed in a "family" blog...).
So far, so good.
However, my blogging and blog reading over the past four years have led me to wander down paths and develop food fears that I must now fight every day. Based on all the reading I've done, most food is POISON and I'm clearly poisoning myself on a daily basis (yes, I'm being sarcastic).
I regularly eat poisons such as dairy, whole grains, nightshade vegetables, bananas, legumes, red meat, high cacao chocolate, wine. It is truly frightening. It would seem that most food, unless it's been sanctioned by the paleo/ancestral/low-fat/no-carb/nightshade vegetable hit squad is BAD BAD BAD, not mention HORRIBLY DANGEROUS DANGEROUS DANGEROUS.
If someone, forty years back, had looked at what I ate on this typical day, they probably wouldn't have batted an eyelash. And no doubt in forty years time, the food police will have found other foods that are bound to kill us before we know what's hit us.
Meanwhile, back at my ranch (so to speak), I continue to mindfully eat a wide variety of foods, in reasonable quantities and avoid an undue reliance on highly processed products. These are my choices. I also continue to fight the voices of FEAR FEAR FEAR that permeate today's food landscape though sometimes the continuous fear mongering makes me practically sick to my stomach.