I know Mama is running behind on making resolutions. Its January 5th and in true Mama K fashion I have procrastinated until the last minute. However the resolution is here and I am ready to embrace it!!
This year I resolve to accept that I love food. Mama say what? I KNOW!! It's crazy. But hear me out...
You see I'm a big girl. I have struggled with my weight my entire life. I wish I had some pictures handy to show you the timeline of how Mama went from a pudgy little girl to a big fat lady with diabetes. Now I know a lot of you will say "Mama dont call yourself fat! That's self defeating." Or "Mama you need to embrace who you are and love the body you have."
Well the truth is I don't love the body I have. I love who I am, but not the body who I am is in. It's big and lumpy. My knees hurt. My back hurts. I get sick constantly because monitoring my blood sugar sucks and I don't do too great a job of it. I have to pay double for every item of clothing in my closet and none of it looks good because the lumps, bumps, rolls and cheese curds on my body don't let that happen. In my head I can run, jump, dance, hike, fly, and flirt with hard bodied 21 year olds. In reality I am slow. I have to pop pills for days after being active because everything hurts. Hard bodied 21 year olds don't like obese cougars.
I don't consider voicing this to be self defeating. It's true. Hiding it from myself does nothing for me. I could live in an alternate reality where I tell myself that big is beautiful but the reality is big is unhealthy and limiting.
So, Mama what does this have to do with learning to accept your love of food? Shouldn't you resolve to diet this year? Shouldn't you resolve to start an exercise routine? Ohh sure I'm going to do all those things hell who doesn't every New Year. I think none of that will matter though unless I have a healthy relationship with food.
Right now food is an evil succubus from hell. It tries to lure me in with all its delicious wiles. Food wants to sink it's teeth into me and turn me into a carbpire sucking on meaningless empty calories for all of eternity. Everywhere I turn I see something telling me that I am fat because I love food. I believed and bought into this scare tactic along with everyone else in the world. Food was enemy number one and in order to drop these pounds I had to hold nothing but pure hatred in my heart for the mocha caramel fudge brownie shaking its moneymaker at me from the display case. Why though? Why do I have to hate the brownie? Ohh because society says we place too much importance on food. Food is fuel only! Even when I attended Weight Watchers last year , they talked about how horrid it was that we as humans had gatherings to consume food. No social gathering was complete without food and thus this must be the source of evil permeating our society and causing us all to no longer fit in stadium seating.
Mama's brain eventually kicked in and I got to thinking. Since time incarnate humans have gathered and broken bread together. We haven't been fat since time incarnate. Humans have learned to create wonderful things from the bounty nature has to offer. We evolved to make food so much better tasting then the lump of dead dinosaur you used to have to swallow down raw. So how did it become evil? I believe it was the event of mass marketing.
The 1950's opened a new horizon of over processed, prepackaged space age food. It was the age of Jell-O and TV dinners. Fast-food restaurants had their humble beginnings in this dawn of convenience.Consumers flocked to it as the new and amazing food stuff flew onto the shelves.This began a descent into a hole we don't know how to get out of. Obesity rates have gone up year after year as we move further and further from preparing our own meals from raw natural ingredients. I didn't realize until I was 12 or 13 that you could actually make a cake without it coming from a box. Seriously you can make bread from your own oven? People used to actually make sandwiches with bread that wasn't the exact same size and width?
With all of these modern new fangled foods we moved to a more urban society and no longer worked our butts off in the field from dusk til dawn. A perfect storm to breed epic fatness. We don't exercise and we consume food so far from it's original origins it has nothing good left in it and thus makes a hasty retreat to your ass in shame.
Once we started down this path we created a whole new market that was hungry for you to be hungry. The diet industry is a multi billion dollar industry. Do they truly have your best interest at heart? Hell no. They want whats in your wallet. They want you to fail because success doesn't keep lining their check books. That industry is feeding off of your fear and paranoia and we all follow like the good little lemmings we are. If you are afraid of food they will show you tricks to keep eating it without the guilt and fear, but you have to join them and buy their products and keep falling off the wagon to get back on and on and on.
Food is a part of life that should be enjoyed. It is delicious. Your fuel can be fragrant, scrumptious and make you want to make out with it a little bit. Food brings people together and that is a good thing. We should enjoy each other's company over a bottle of wine and fantastic hummus plate. Laughing and telling stories the whole time. So, this year I am going to accept that I love food. I will love the bounties of the earth and allow myself the pleasure without guilt. (Twinkies are not a bounty of the earth in case you were wondering) I will do it in moderation. I will enjoy it as close to how nature intended it. Ceviche? Heck yeah! Hummus? Yes please! Taco Bell? No thanks.The mass marketing that has destroyed our ability to enjoy food will see very little if any of my money this year. This year I go Roman without the vomiting and excess so drink up, eat up and learn to love food. It's ok as long as you do it right.
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