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What if food was just food? That is, what if you put food back in its place? In this world, with so much emphasis and information constantly thrown at us about which foods are better, better, best it becomes easy to get caught up in all of it. The book, In Defense Of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan, touches on the subject of food getting picked apart as we try to take out all the bad and add in all the good. Food begins to get overly complicated and something valuable gets lost in the process.

Tried Every Diet?

However, I want to take the defense of food in another direction. One that might speak more fully to those who have tried every diet and created a negative relationship with food that preoccupies too much of your precious time and regularly steals away your sense of wellbeing. What if food was just food? What if food, in and of itself, could not take away nor create your wellbeing and peace?

Savor It

Food is actually neutral. That is why one person eats a cookie and savors it, and another eats a cookie and feels terrible about it. It is not good or bad. It is the perception of the meaning of the cookie that causes the reaction. Whereas one person looks upon the cookie with positive thoughts, the other looks upon the cookie with a negative perception of what eating a cookie truly means. The cookie is not the bad guy. Your thoughts may be though.

Perhaps you have had that experience of eating a dessert and feeling just fine, though another time eating the same thing causes great despair (quite possibly because you were on a rigid diet). Same dessert, two completely different reactions. If you haven’t had that experience lately, because you consider any dessert something to be feared, consider your behavior as a child. You probably used to eat with delight and joy the same foods that you now avoid or eat and feel guilty about. Same foods, opposite perceptions.

Your Relationship With Food

If you consider different times in your life when you had a different relationship with food, you will begin to see the truth. It is not the actual food that is causing your discomfort or stealing your wellbeing, instead it is your thoughts about the food.

If you can begin to see the validity in that statement, you are in a powerful place to make positive change. That is, to lose weight without dieting and a bunch of rules, and put food in its place once and for all. Begin to know that when you eat, regardless of what you are eating or whether you are hungry or not, that food cannot create NOR steal your wellbeing away from you. That is, when you feel overwhelmed or stressed and reach to food, it will not be able to create the wellbeing you are looking to reconnect with. In the same token, if you eat when you are not hungry, food alone is not capable of stealing your wellbeing away from you.

One Week Challenge

For one week begin to consider that food is not truly capable of taking your sense of peace. If you eat when you are not hungry or indulge in a food you consider off limits, just allow yourself acceptance in the moment. Recognize that it is just food, and this is just one moment. Something bad did not just occur. You are just eating. Take the drama out of the equation as best you can. Be willing to leave the struggle behind. You do not have to master food; rather you just have to make peace with food and your body as it is, in order to allow yourself the room to create a new way of being.

Understand that you are free in all of it, even when you are eating when you are not hungry. In that moment, your point of power is in acceptance of yourself and what you have eaten. Make the choice to accept what just occurred and MOVE ON. Shift your thoughts and perceptions back to your meaningful life. Nothing has been ruined or stolen from you. You have just eaten. That is all. Your peace is right here waiting for you, you only need to recognize it. Put food back in its place and watch what happens.

Recommended and Related

In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, by Michael Pollan

Photo by NatalieMaynor.