MORALITY AND FOOD


And now an excerpt from April's earlier post:

"I've written extensively about how I find it most counterproductive to think of food in moral terms. Foods either make us healthier or they don't. They either fit into our lifestyle or they don't. They either taste good to us or they don't. There's only one way to find out: do the research and/or give it a try. I am not doing CR to prove that I am a good or moral person, and if I were, I think that would be downright silly because my ability to eat this or that proves nothing about my character. I wish that all this talk of food as morality would just go away. It sets people up for ridiculous guilt, which in turn sets them up for more binging, followed by more fasting or purging, followed by my eventual entry on that topic.
Ditto on the "idea of junk food." CR is not about how we feel about food. Most of us find that we feel better about food post-CR than pre, but whether we like "junk" or not, we can still do CR and improve our health, hopefully even lengthen our lives. Lower calories, more nutrition, that's all. "


Now, I know that April would prefer that we just go on and drop this subject, but I wanted to make a bit of a personal confession. I find confessions help me to confront my fears, gain inspiring feed back from others, and just get over it.

Now my personal moral issue and guilt behind food does not necessary revolve around the other subjects I read people blogging about; environmental, animal rights, etc.. I am not at that point YET, but as I have posted before, my dream is to one day become a cool hippie Brooklyn hipster, thrift store clothes, incense and all.

My issues revolve around my eating habits, weight and general appearance. I used to think when I was much heavier that people would watch me eat and think or say, "Gosh, doesn't that pig know that she's not going to do any better in life by eating that Big Mac?"

I can remember from early, early childhood always being a bit heavier than my sister. She was two years older than me, but we wore the same size clothes. Chrystal was always the popular, more social sister too and I always related that directly to her being thinner and prettier than I am. This I know I did not completely manifest in my own mind, at least not the actually being heavier part. I remember being told by older, much thinner cousins at an early age that I needed to start watching my diet and overall food intake. Being counseled on nutrition at early age, but all that information going totally over my head. For Pete's sake, I was like 7. I couldn't control what my mother bought at the store, is what I thought at the moment, but looking back on it, I could certain control what was being shoved into my mouth.

So, I have always been aware that nutrition and proper exercise were lacking in my life and have always had a tremendous amount of guilt and self hate about it all.

Until.....

Now!

Even when I started loosing weight 4 years ago, I still was very self conscious and constantly felt guilty about what I ate on a regular basis.

With the help of CRON (or the beginning stages, learning of it) I am learning to not associate my food intake with my emotions or morals. The learning process that I am going through is helping me to grow spiritually and emotionally as well nutritionally. (if that makes sense)

AGAIN: LOWER CALORIES, MORE NUTRITION, THAT'S ALL!

Thanks, April for that post. It brought up a lot of thoughts for me all day and has left me with an overall feeling of inner strength and excitement about further honing my CRON lifestyle.

Now in other news;

I want to be a marathon runner. Just kidding. No marathons for me today, however I would like to start attempting to learn how to run properly. April asked me earlier if Pabst and I could be running partners and my first thought was "HELL NO!". The poor kid can't get out from right underneath my feet to save his life. But, tonight I took him for a run, walk after work. We would walk a block, run a block, walk a block, run a block, etc...

He actually did quite well and now he's passed out like a baby and NOT chewing on my work shoes. So, two birds, one stone.

Night all!