Healthy Eating for a Happy Life

As full-time caregiver to a young child, most of your day is spent centered around food. If you are not washing, chopping and preparing food, helping to put the food into someone's mouth, figuring out how to transport your food with you through the day or cleaning up after the food mess, then you are thinking about what the next food to prepare is or what you need to buy to restock the food supply. Culturally, we are obsessed with food, and with weight. Our obsessions and repressions around food, what to eat, when to eat, how much to eat and what is safe to eat all combine to make for one big confusing relationship to navigate at the dinner table (if we are lucky enough to make it to the table for our meals).
 
The obsessions with food, overabundance of food and focus on how we look do not have to be part of our lifestyle, and yet many of us, despite our best intentions, end up with some form of food or eating relationships that are not healthy. My own relationship with food has been rocky and still goes through good periods and rough periods. Out of concern of passing on unwanted patterns to my daughter, I have been thinking and reading about how to consider and approach food in healthy ways that will serve her, and myself, well.
 
There is no shortage of books, websites, theories, and whole professions that will tell you what you should eat, how much and when to eat in order to maintain health and, more importantly, according to the media and the diet industry that bombards us constantly, weight. But what our diet- and appearance-centered culture usually neglects to address is how to eat.
 
There are two simple rules that we need to remember when choosing food and how to enjoy it. First is to honour our body and the second is to respect the food we eat. I know so much more now about how my body reacts to certain foods than I did when I was a teenager. Culturally we are much more aware of and willing to admit to food allergies and sensitivities. It is important to notice how your body responds to different foods, especially sugar and caffeine but also common problem causing agents like wheat, soy and dairy, (or surprising things like raw fruits or vegetables) and to respect the effect and mitigate it. If you know that chocolate affects your mood and energy levels, then don't eat it. Find a substitute, or engage your discipline and have only a limited amount of high quality chocolate.
 
Discipline is a word that has a bad connotation, but its root, the Latin disciplina, means "teaching" and comes from discipulus, pupil. We have to look no further than our children, especially during the baby and toddler years, to see that routine and discipline make for happy individuals and smooth, effortless days. There is effort in maintaining our discipline, but we are rewarded with freedom. Freedom from tantrums and overtired, overexcited or over-hungry 2-year-olds in the case of our child, and freedom from the many, many symptoms that come from eating things that our bodies do not want, overeating or under eating.
 
Honouring our body means listening to it and obeying what it is telling us. Respecting food means treating it as its own entity, almost as a being itself. When we prepare food, we should be paying attention to what we are doing. Zen monks say that when you stir soup, stir the soup. This means hold the spoon, look at the soup and focus on the soup. This can be hard to do when you may be shaking a newly walking 12-month-old child from your pant leg, or shouting into the other room that lunch will be in five minutes, so start cleaning up the toys, but the intention is to be focused only on what you are doing in the moment.
 
The same is true of eating your food. If you take the time to clear the table of toys and books, sit in your seat during the meal (HA! I'm not sure when the last time was that I was able to do this the whole meal, but it will happen again one day), and focus on the food you eat you will notice your food more and your body's reaction to it, making it easy to stop when you have had enough. No TV, no books or magazines, no knitting or writing, just enjoy the food and notice each bite.
 
When I am helping Natasha with her food, if I offer her a mouthful when she still has food in her mouth, she points to her closed mouth as she continues to chew. This signal for me to wait until she is done is a reminder to myself to do the same thing. Many of us were raised in households where we had to finish everything on our plates before we could leave the table, and so a rushed, keep-eating-no-matter-what mentality was adopted. This way of thinking has its roots in the 1940s and 1950s, when food was still rationed, particularly in the UK, because of the war. Adults had justified anxiety about food, as no one knew if there would be enough and when the next meal was coming. In the West, lack of food is certainly not a problem now, but our belief in scarcity still overshadows our reality of abundance. And when that belief in scarcity is ingrained, no amount of food we eat or store will ever be enough. We are, culturally, like Scrooge when it comes to our approach to food and eating.
 
During the 1950s, sweets came off ration and suddenly parents were able to, and delighted in, giving their children sweets again. After years of missing the occasional treat, many people were suddenly eating sweets every day. While our bodies love sweet things for the instant energy they provide and the infrequency of concentrated sweeteners in the natural world, daily treats, year round, are too much for our digestive systems to handle happily. Again discipline is needed here and being mindful of compulsive behaviour can often be enough to disrupt patterns.
 
Many of us are also used to sweets as rewards or pleasure and withholding sweets as punishment. Refined sugar has been, for years, associated with being nice to ourselves and others (think of Valentine's Day, Mother's Day and Easter to name a few instances) and a lack of sweets means a bleak, restricted diet and likely person. Examining our relationship with sweets and food makes it easier to make healthy choices, and keeping emotional attachments out of the decision from the beginning can give our children a much smoother relationship with food and happier life. Natasha's treats are few and do not include refined sugar. This does not mean that she has a bland, boring diet with no fun foods or things that she loves. We have animal cracker cookies sweetened with molasses, unsweetened or malt-sweetened carob chips (which she loves and eats like a vacuum cleaner) and special dried fruit like papaya spears and mango for her. I do not offer her these every day, and when she does ask for one, I give it to her without hesitation. As a result, she only asks on some days, and often will go for a week or more without asking for a cookie. It is a treat when she gets one and it is her choice. I have also noticed that when she asks daily for something, like her dry papaya, after 5 or 7 days, she stops asking. She is paying attention to her body and acting on what she feels.
 
Today, as we grow more and more busy with our lives and spend less time at home, a meal on the go is more and more common. Fast food and prepared food is everywhere, and often we are eating on the go, sometimes literally, as we walk and eat our sandwich at the same time. The speed and efficiency and increased portion sizes of food makes it very easy to forget to take the time our food and body deserves when eating.
 
We should look to our toddler to learn from their eating habits. Natasha waits until she is finished what is in her mouth before taking more into her mouth. She also stops eating when she is full. Many of us have lost touch with this signal from our bodies or ignore it when we do notice it. We should all be finishing each mouthful before adding more food to our mouths and bellies.
 
As mothers, we often worry that our children are not eating enough, especially when they do not finish everything on their plate. But if we honour their bodies and their knowledge of whether they are hungry or not hungry, we will notice that they are more adept at caring for their caloric needs than we are. And if we honour their bodies and needs, if we watch and learn from their eating habits, we can slowly re-learn what we knew at that age and have forgotten through socialization and media influence. Women have a particularly complex relationship with food and our bodies because of influences on all sides and every medium, but we have the power to keep our children from following the same path. There are books and resources to help us learn what to look for in healthy eating habits, but the most powerful tool for this is our own awareness and attention.

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