Freedom in Eating through Nutritional Diversity and Embodiment

Discourse regarding restrictive eating and my journey to honor nutritional diversity and embodied balance.

One of my best friends once told me he didn’t understand restrictive eating. He said something along the lines of, “Just exercise and eat whatever you want.” His perspective makes sense given his exercise of choice, ultra-cycling, which requires a lot of caloric intake. For me, who loves food much more than “exercising”, this seemed a little too idyllic and easier said than done.

Since college, I’ve had a dynamic relationship with food as my food intake (or diet) philosophies have ebbed and flowed. At times, I’ve engaged in counting calories and intermittent fasting as well as avoiding oil, bread, garlic, beans, or whatever food items I’ve heard of causing adverse effects. For me, these activities have more-so spawned adverse mental-health ramifications which overall have felt more detrimental than whatever the intended benefits¹. Additionally, I’ve cultivated a lot of mindfulness and gratitude for food and how it evokes relationality with the world around us- learning about how foods make it to our plates as well as sharing food with others. I love food, but sometimes it has felt and feels like food doesn’t leave my brain.

Nutritional Balance

In the aftermath of graduating and the spaciousness before beginning a full-time job, I’ve picked up running, mostly out of desperation to have something to do. It seemed like a good time-filler that could satiate personal desires to be outside, become more fit, and eat food guilt-free… and with a little hindsight, that last desire seems a bit unkind. I don’t think it’s in my best interest to treat eating as a conditional activity that I must earn. What I mean by this is, imagine telling a child they can only eat a cookie if they run three miles… seems a bit harsh. If you love something and you have to earn it, engaging that love becomes conditional, antithetical to unconditional love. I want to learn to engage food with an ethos of unconditional love for myself and others. While I love cookies, I also love apples, peanut butter, brownies, brussel sprouts, chickpeas, and really, most other foods whenever they’re prepared deliciously! I think the notion of restricting the intake of foods considered unhealthy, that in actuality may not produce embodied discomfort/adverse symptoms when consumed in balance with other nutrients, can do more harm (mental) than “good” (physical). Rather than restricting what or how much I eat, I am trying to intake with an intention of nutritional balance. For instance, when skimming How Not To Die by Dr. Michael McGregor, I came across his premise of the daily dozen:

1. Beans, Tofu, or Tempeh

2. Berries

3. Other Fruits

4. Cruciferous Veggies

5. Greens

6. Other Veggies

7. Ground Flaxseeds

8. Nuts & Seeds

9. Whole Grains

10. Spices & Herbs

11. Beverages

12. Exercise

While moderating my diet according to the daily dozen premise seems too diet-esque for my present taste², I think it’s a helpful tool to consider diverse nutritional intake. Now, I aim to eat cookies in balance with everything else I love.

Embodied Balance

Back to running, I’ve run on and off since the beginning of high school. Luckily, I had a phenomenally kind cross country coach, who taught me to love running, and a team composed of wonderful people, some being my best friends to this very day. So since this delightful foundation, running has been a hobby that’s enabled me to connect with my thoughts, body, nature, and the world around me whenever the need for such has arisen. So like I said, with a little too much time on my hands as of late, I’ve more intentionally explored running. What I’ve been discovering, which relates to food, is that in putting out energy, I feel more attuned to my hunger. When I don’t run, I sometimes find it more difficult to mentally distinguish whether I’m eating because it’s time to eat, people around me are eating, or because I love food and am excited to eat. I think intentional movement³ enables me to feel more attuned to my body’s cycles of output and intake and the concurrent sensations. That being said, a thoughtful friend has helped to elucidate that still, food is not to be “earned”. While movement may enable embodied receptivity to hunger, movement is not conditional for joyful eating. She kindly shared, “People deserve to eat without worry or fear or restriction, regardless of how/if they exercise.”

So lately, with movement and my intention to indulge in diverse sustenance, I feel freer to eat joyfully. And it feels refreshing :) That being said, these are just two means of joyful eating which are working for me at the moment, and they very may not be pertinent for another. Luckily, joyful eating is a vast tradition to cultivate and discover. Please feel free to comment below on how you engage in joyful eating!

1. My intention is not to yuck someone’s yum- it’s for us to each discover what works best for our unique bodies.

2. In my experience, dieting can have adverse mental-health ramifications which I am learning from.

3. While running is my present movement of preference, there are so many more different movement modes to explore and indulge, like walking, dancing, gardening, throwing a frisbee, yoga, weight-lifting, and cycling, just to name a select few, and honoring movement can look different for everyone. Regarding modes of activity, the more the merrier, like nutritional diversity, might enable your body to sustainably enjoy them, i.e. not overworking the same parts of your body.