A new post has been long overdue!
When I first started writing back in '09, I was a super busy yoga teacher/frustrated artist. Now I am a new mom who manages a yoga studio, and is just getting back into teaching after a few months off.
In the beginning I tried hard to stay apolitical about food. It seemed everyone had an opinion about good eating habits (trying to lose weight/gain muscle, vegan, vegetarian, organic, local, small-batch, no red meat, paleo, gluten-free, wheat-free, dairy-free, macrobiotic, etc). Gone are the days of being diplomatic.
My mom decided we would become vegan when I was about 4, and I started kindergarten with a lunch bag full of weird food. The ingredients for our new lifestyle weren't as readily available as they are now, and were definitely homemade. Love my mother, but she was still learning the art of cooking. The best meals I had during this period of my childhood were at our neighbors' and friends' house the Benfords. Joanne cooked everything from scratch, but was a total master. She excelled at Indian food, made chapatis, all kinds of bread, and her garden was huge compared to ours. Especially impressive since gardening in Vermont is its own special challenge due to the short growing season.
I loved toasted pitas with butter, peanut butter or hummus, and had no qualms about lentil burgers, yet my system craved fat and probably protein-- so much so that my friend and fellow vegan Jody and I would sneak to the store, buy a box of eclairs and eat them behind the Grand Union. I think I was 7.
As an adult the only strict diet I have tried was an anti-inflammatory diet, prescribed by Naturopathic Doctors Margaux French & Jenny Tufenkian. It felt so good! What started out as a pain in the ass expensive 3-week restricted diet ended up being an entire year of nightshade/gluten/wheat/dairy free livin'. Despite how great I felt, when I look back at myself in photographs that year I straddled the line of being way too skinny. The long-term effects were that I could (still can) enjoy dairy and grain again in low doses because with less inflammation my digestive system functioned better. Yay for that, but I still needed more fat in my diet. And instead of binging on pastries, I graduated to expensive cheese.
In the yoga world, vegetarianism is flagrant because eating animals is considered an act of violence. For many it's a spiritual and political choice to not eat meat. For others, meat is just gross.
Most Naturopaths I know are not vegetarian, and recommend eating local, organic, grass-fed meat as part of a balanced diet which leads me to wonder:
Are trendy diets and political eating are simply a mask for disordered eating?
As a breastfeeding mom, food is what gets me
through the day without falling asleep. Good fats help me function. I still struggle with eating enough healthy food all the time, but have great motivation in the form of an adorable human who relies on me for everything. Also my ND says she doubts I would have gotten pregnant on the anti-inflammatory diet...
 |
| two kinds of cabbage is my favorite kind of meal. |
|
