Last April I started counting macros. This happened for a few reasons.
I wasn’t feeling well and thought that a “better balanced” diet would help.
I wanted to recomp my body.
I wanted simplicity in eating.
At the same time I was hesitant to start because I know myself and I know my tendency to get obsessive over things like this. Regardless, I gave it a shot. I stuck with it for 6 months without seeing or feeling a single change. Okay, that’s not true. What I began to notice as the weeks rolled on was that I was wildly unsatisfied with this way of eating and my digestion took a major hit. Near the end I began to binge on random things like granola or cookies because I felt so unsatisfied.
This mindless and impulsive consumption wasn’t due to restriction. I was definitely eating enough. To reach my macro numbers each day I usually had to add more food in at the end. I believe the root of the issue stemmed from not eating in alignment with myself.
As we all know by now, I was vegan for 5 years. The first 2.5 ish years were AMAZING. My digestion was optimal. My bodyweight was healthy for my 5’3” frame. I was excited about food. I felt satiated. Cooking was enjoyable. It was truly all good in the health and food department.
Prior to this I did not eat a single vegetable. No fruit either. This is not an exaggeration or dramatization and it’s certainly not to brag. The definition of a vegetable in my family was a can of green beans heated up and put in a bowl. Actually, that’s still what they do a lot of the time. No salt, no nothing. Just plain canned green beans. To my young tastebuds who added sugar to her Rice Krispies every morning at breakfast, the thought of even a solitary naked green bean was extra yuck. I was a processed food kid through and through.
So when I went vegan in 2013 things shifted quickly. I talk about it a lot because it was such a pivotal time in my life. This was pre vegan Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. Before Beyond Meat and the Impossible Burger. The OG vegan days. The options were fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and tofu if that was up your alley. Red Bamboo in NYC was revolutionary with its unique plethora of vegan offerings. The alternatives weren’t of interest to me though. And so, a plant based diet happened to be what I landed in. I learned to like fruits and vegetables fast. With a complete 180º transformation of my diet came a 180º transformation of my health too.
But, all good things must come to an end which was the case for me and veganism. I stayed vegan about 2 years longer than I should have. It took me an entire year to decide to eat an egg. An egg! From my parents backyard chickens! Two years! The ethical dilemma was off the charts, especially as a public and outspoken vegan at the time.
Once I stopped being vegan I was rarely eating animal products. Maybe once or twice a month. And then once or twice a week. Whenever Mitch and I met in April 2021 I was still eating animal products on occasion. Usually just whenever I was out to eat at a properly sourced place. I would bless the meal before eating it and eat it with a presence of gratitude. As Mitch and I began to spend more time together he began to cook for me more and meat and eggs began showing up on my plate more. I was in school at the time to become a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner. This is a fantastic program that helped me out a lot with my health. And they do educate on the importance of consuming animal products. So the fact that Mitch was cooking more animal products for me as I was learning about them from an entirely new perspective, it all lined up perfectly for me to feel good (mentally) eating them. Soon my respect and gratitude for meat was brushed aside and a meat-based meal became just another meal. With that, I recognize that I became just like everyone else. Mindless of the life that was took for me to consume this meal.
Regardless of your beliefs or perspective on consuming animal products, I think the awareness of what it took to get that piece of chicken on your plate is important. The disconnect that we have from the animals we consume is immense and that disconnect radiates out from that meal and into other areas of your life.
The mindless meat eating continued for about a year before I had a major breakdown of my digestive health. Things became a wreck to the point where I was unable to sleep at night due to the severity of the acid reflux I was experiencing. I gained about 20 pounds during this time too. Eggs started to become repulsive to me (still are) and I started to get turned off by eating meat. I incorporated a lot of digestive support which did not alleviate the discomfort I felt. Finally I started to scale way back on animal product consumption. I recognized the importance of animal protein from the perspective of the schooling I went through but I grappled with the ethical side of things which I why I went vegan all those years ago in the first place. I knew deep down that I lost that ethical tie with the lack of gratitude I had for the meals I was eating and that altered the energetic essence of who I truly am.
I dabbled in reducing animal products for a bit but quickly fell back into it while still struggling immensely with my health in ways that I knew were connected to these “healthy foods.” And yet, I continued to try to bypass the guidance coming from my body all in the name of “health” and research presented to me from respected outside sources.
Being a processed food kid, taking Prevacid as a young teenager, starving myself in high school, and then being vegan for 5 years did not set me up with an adequate amount of stomach acid or enzymes to properly digest animal products. This is why individuality is so important when it comes to diet.
And yet, I began counting macros in April 2023. My goal was 140g protein per day. I got a lot of that through meat. At first it was fine but quickly I began to struggle once again. I also created an obsessiveness around protein. Protein. Protein. Protein. Must eat all the protein.
I obsessed over it and created so much stress for myself, which is just as bad as eating McDonald’s.
This was my life for 6 months last year. It wasn’t all bad. I did like the structure of macro counting but in general I was not satiated. I would eat a full meal, completely balanced in the macro department, and still crave something else. This was not me. I wasn’t typically one to have cravings. On occasion, sure. But in my day to day life, it didn’t happen. Until now.
October 17 2023 rolled around, 6 months to the day since I began macro counting which also turned out to also be the end. I needed to take a break and work on my relationship with food. Tend to it. Repair it. I felt like I regressed back into unhealthy tendencies and obsessions that I did not want as a part of my life. I tasted freedom and flexibility around food before and I had a deep hunger for it.
My major takeaway from my macro journey ended up being that I need to eat exciting foods. I need to eat foods that aren’t boring. I can’t pair a protein, carb, and fat together meal after meal and feel good. I need vegan rainbow lasagnas and west African peanut stews. I am high maintenance in this way and I had to come to accept that and to own it no matter what others think. Food is art. Food is nourishment to our bodies. Food is a communion with nature, with God. It provides us with the opportunity to live healthy lives. I feel like the effort put into a beautiful recipe is respecting the food and our bodies as we consume it in a different way. In presence. Which as a result transmutes it in our bodies in a different way, as deeply rooted nourishment.
Hilariously, after this realization I began counting macros again this past January…. for like a week. That week solidified my decision to not do it because the entire time I was weighing my food and plugging it into the app I kept hearing that this wouldn’t work. This would not be the thing that would help me to lose the 20 pounds or to not get acid reflux or to digest optimally. or to love food. Macros was not it and it wouldn’t be it no matter what because that is simply not the type of person I am. I am not a logically-based person. I am not a rule follower or science follower. That is not me. I know that my inner guidance holds more power than any research study or macro based calculation. I know it but to step into that power is to take that leap into a world unknown. To take that leap into the world unknown is to walk your own path of divinity.
As a child I simply saw food as… well, food. I think that’s a common experience. Food came from boxes and was filled with sugar and artificially colored to attract my eyes and my stomach to it in a way that overrides nature. What child of the 90s didn’t like color?! Put color in food and you know we’re going to gravitate towards it.
The Crayola-inspired Fruity Pebbles. The gem-shaped chewy burst of Gushers. The kiss of color from the sprinkles on the Cosmic Brownies. The no real fruit to be seen Fruit Roll Ups. Ring Pops. Baby Bottle Pops. Nerds. Air Heads. Chiclets. Runts. Gobstoppers. You know.
Along with consumption of all of this and more I began to develop an unhealthy relationship with food that only grew bigger and bigger as my age amassed as well.
I honestly don’t remember if I ate breakfast before school as a child. I know for a fact that I didn’t eat breakfast in high school. I rarely ate lunch either. Sometimes I’d take a serving of Special K cereal for lunch. It equaled 150 calories. Then I’d leave school and hit up Burger King or KFC with friends or head home to the processed food pantry and eat to fill the ravenous hunger that I ignored all day. I’d feel guilty, promise myself I would be better tomorrow, and then tumble through that cycle day after day.
The struggle with food that we learn as children is one of the fastest ways to disconnect ourselves from our bodies. Tune outside of yourself. Finish everything on your plate. You can’t have a snack because we’re eating dinner in an hour. Calories in, calories out. You have to exercise to burn off holiday foods or desserts. We see adults hating on their bodies and talking about food and themselves in dysfunctionally toxic ways. We’re taken through drive thru’s for dinner because the day is busy or our parents are exhausted and we eat the food in the car on the way to the next thing. Other children make comments about our bodies or their bodies that create wells of shame deep inside of us.
It all screams - I am wrong, I don’t know my body best, calories are king, food is just food, eat and move on the the next thing.
Disconnect. Disconnect. Disconnect.
At some point you reach the very of the rope. The need to do things differently is recognized and the tactics that once were can be no longer.
Disconnection is oftentimes the root of dis-ease in the body.
When we pull away from ourselves the root of our intuition and connection to it is severed. It can be healed and reconnected with the proper intention and work but if we continue to go outside of ourselves to make it happen then it will simply not happen.
And so, we must go in.
We must do things differently.
What does that look like?
There is no one size fits all. There is no one way to do things that will work for you forever. We are in a constant state of flux and if we hold our diet in a state of rigidity then we are pulled out of alignment. You are a tree, firmly rooted, yet swaying your branches and leaves in the breeze. Firm, grounded, connected. Soft, moveable, guided.
Just like a tree receives all it needs from nature, we do too.
And yet, we seek the “experts” and studies to tell us how we should feel. We look around to see what everyone else is eating because they must know better. They probably have it all figured out. The disconnection continues and we keep wondering what we’re doing to get it wrong.
Because, after all, you must be the problem, right?
When you drill deep into the root of things, yeah, that’s right. You are the problem. But not for the reasons you’re thinking.
The problem is you because you are not listening to you.
When we talk about diet on the Holy Health Podcast I always use the example of drinking tea. You can drink tea, or you can drink tea.
The difference makes all the difference.
You can throw on some water, grabbing a tea bag and tossing it in a cup as you’re getting ready in the morning. You take your tea to go, drinking it on your way to work in rush hour traffic while you’re stressed and worrying about the 34 things you have to do today. In this circumstance you bypass the experience of drinking the tea.
Instead, you can drink the tea. You can choose to pick the tea, smelling it, looking at its colors. You pour the steaming hot water into a mug and add your tea of choice. If it’s a vibrant one you can watch it infuse the entirety of the water with a color only nature can provide. You allow it to steep and then you drink it. Feeling the temperature of the tea, smelling it, tasting it, really tasting it as it merges and becomes one with your body. This is the experience of drinking the tea.
And the body knows. Our bodies are divinely designed to know these things. They pick up on the subtlety of the experience, assimilating the nutrients with more care, more potency.
If we journeyed through life allowing ourselves to experience food and drink like the latter example, what a rich life it would be.
This food journey is very much still a journey for me. Invoking presence and awareness into consumption of food is something I am striving for and intending to do more of. I recognize the importance from the digestive aspect to the energetic aspect, and among all of the spaces in between.
Food is a major form of nourishment that we’re talking about here. This is a communion with God through nature and the edible abundance that is provided for us.
What a gift.
It isn’t something that an expert can tell us how to navigate and it’s not something a research study can show us. Sure, there is a component of education that can be supportive. But, generally speaking, after revealing the basics, the rest of the guidance comes from within.
It’s all a practice that happens within.
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