It's All the Same To Me
Met a really nice woman at my chiropractor's office today, and had a good 15 minutes or so of conversation with her. We're both massage therapists, so we had a major "thing" in common. I mentioned writing about low carb, and it transpired that she eats a gluten-free diet, which has a lot in common with low carbing. In the course of the conversation, I mentioned that one of the things I love about the way I eat is that there's no division between types of food.
I mean, if you're eating the Standard American Diet (SAD), you've got some kinda real food -- most people eat some meat and veg somewhere along the line, even if it's in the form of chicken nuggets, or the lettuce and tomato that comes on their burgers. But a lot of the SAD is made up of "food" that doesn't merit the title. People know it, too, which is why they give it different names: Junk food. Snack food. Comfort food. Convenience food. If all you've had during the course of the day is a couple of Pop-Tarts and a bag of microwave popcorn, you know that you'd best eat some "real food," another term we hear pretty commonly. That your "real food" may consist of a frozen entree with a bunch of processed carbs and chemicals and a big 20 grams of protein is another matter. People are aware of a line between "fun food" (there's another special title) and "real food."
None of these distinctions exist in my life. If I have leftover cake in the house, there is no reason not to eat it for breakfast. Why not? Because it will be made from almond meal, vanilla whey protein, and eggs, and very likely have more protein in a serving than a ham-and-cheese omelet. If I get a snack attack in the middle of the afternoon and fill up on my beloved Golden Flake Pork Cracklin's, and later have no appetite for supper, who cares? Those cracklin's had a ton of protein and healthy pork fat in 'em; they're very little different from the chop I might otherwise have had. Speaking of pork, my favorite cookie recipe of the past year is Cocoa-Peanut Porkies, made from -- do not snicker -- pork rinds. With 6 grams of protein apiece, and 7 grams of carb, 5 of which are fiber, I might as well have a couple for lunch. Better than pasta salad, that's for sure!
Since I've axed the carbs, there just isn't any serious junk food in my life. All of it is a riff on protein, fat, the best possible carbs -- vegetables, nuts and seeds, a little fruit, sugar-free chocolate, spices -- and fiber. There simply isn't a line between "junk food" and "real food" in my life. It's all real, it's all nutritious. There's no reason not to eat cookies for breakfast if those cookies are as nourishing as anything else I might eat.
Many people would think of the way I eat as terribly constricted. But I find this absence of a division between good food and fun food peculiarly freeing.
