“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

Sounds pretty easy, right? Wrong.

I’m still trying to digest all the information presented in Michael Pollan’s fascinating article Unhappy Meals from Sunday’s NY Times Magazine. The article is hard to summarize, because there’s so much pertinent information contained therein, but Pollan’s main recommendation is to stop fixating on nutrients and focus our diets more on whole foods.

But that’s a lot easier said than done, at least for me.

Some people are super conscious of their appearance, always influenced by the latest fashion magazines and celebrities; I’m hyper-conscious of food, influenced by lifestyle magazines and celebrity chefs. I’m always thinking about food, reading about it, worrying about it, or eating it.

When I started this obsession, it was to facilitate a much-needed weight loss. I still struggle with those 10-15 pounds that I never seem to be able to get rid of, but I am much healthier than I was at the start of my journey, and a lot of that is because of my dedication to the cult of food.

What to do, then, when Mr. Pollan tells me to stop worrying about getting enough protein with my carbs? To stop multiplying calories by grams of fiber? To toss my multi-vitamins?

Frankly, I would love to give up all these silly food affectations and obsessions that I’ve acquired over the years and return to a simpler lifestyle eating more healthful, whole foods. I tell myself this, and yet, I keep coming up against mental blocks when trying to implement it.  (Am I really supposed to go back to full-fat butter instead of margerine???  It contradicts everything I’ve ever known!)  Old habits die hard.
I’m not at a point in my life where I can go through my kitchen and throw away anything with more than five ingredients, but even thinking about some of Pollan’s assertions has me changing the way I’m thinking about food.

It may be a long row to hoe, getting to a place where I am truly living his mantra to “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants,” but I think it’s an important step in my life. Maybe I’m past the point when I need to analyze every single calorie that goes into my mouth. Maybe I’m coming to a place where the whole should be more important than the sum of its parts; rather than allowing it to be my whole life, maybe it’s time to let food in general become just another part of the whole.

~*~

My dear friend Cate is sending me Pollan’s book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, which we both plan to read, so expect more musings to come.