My fridge is like a drugstore Thursday, October 18, 2007

To the outside world, I am obviously a person who enjoys her food. I mean, the ass had to come from somewhere, and mine came from copious amounts of fresh baked pastries, cream laced risottos, garlicky shrimp scampis and stacks and stacks of well buttered toast. Food was something that I used to cure my boredom, to calm my stress, to make me forget the things that were depressing me. If I craved something, I ate it. I didn't really think about things like nutrients when I ate; I just thought about how it tasted and how quickly I could get it into my mouth. Really, food was an accessory for me.

But as I told Danyele last weekend (over a shared plate of scrambled eggs), I have recently found myself thinking of food in a totally different way. It's not just fuel to me anymore, it's not just something I eat to savor a taste that I'm craving.

I have come to think of food as medicine. It's probably because I've started doing my grocery shopping at Trader Joe's, which means I'm eating all kinds of organic and unprocessed foods. There's so little room for me to fill with food now that I cannot help but think about everything I eat in terms of how it's going to affect me. I am not a person who likes to take a lot of supplements; as it is I can barely deal with the vitamin regimen I have to follow so I don't want to add in fiber supplements and probiotics and a bunch of other things just to keep my body functioning well. I much prefer to eat high fiber cereal and Greek style yogurt to give my gut what it needs.

The only vitamin/mineral issue I have had so far is an oddly fluctuating potassium level. Do I take my potassium supplement every day? No, because I really only need it on days when I'm doing a lot of outdoor endurance exercise (like say...walking 20 miles a day for 3 days). Instead I make sure to eat some bananas or cantaloupe to make sure I get some potassium from a food source. My HDL levels were also kind of low but instead of taking a fish oil pill, I've added more nuts and avocadoes to my diet so I can increase the amount of monounsaturated fats in my diet (and thus raise my HDL levels). My Kashi GoLean Crunch loads me up on fiber, and my Greek yogurt (high in both protein AND active cultures!) helps keep my insides primed and ready to absorb as much of the other nutrients as they can.

The crazy thing is, it seems to be working. My skin looks fucking AMAZING these days, my eczema hasn't acted up in 8 or 9 weeks, I'm sleeping better and I'm as regular as I could possibly wish to be. Finally, for the first time in my life, I am truly listening to and respecting my body. I am feeding it what it needs rather than stuffing it with what I want, and it's making all the difference in the world.