Pre-Training Day 8 | Tips to FIRE, today

FEED YOUR SOUL – Eating Tips That Go Beyond Food & Nutrition

Here are some useful eating tips to help you on your journey.

Food is more than fuel

The modern myth that sees food as “simply fuel” is the cause of much disease and hardship.  Not too long ago, eating was an integral part of culture, and of transmitting culture to the next generation.  Lately, the job of transmitting culture has been outsourced to television screens (and, lately, mobile screens).  Instead of thinking of food and eating as necessary evils, shift your view. See food as a gift instead – an oasis in the desert, an opportunity to step away from the busy-ness of life and to reconnect with people you love.

Food is more than nutrients

When talking diets, the temptation is always to reduce food to its parts.  We call these parts “nutrients” and think we understand a food once we understand what is in it.  However, the whole is much bigger than the sum of its parts.  Food is more than nutrients.  On paper, honey and syrup are virtually identical when comparing nutrients.  In reality, they are worlds apart with respect to the effect they have on the body. Simply categorising foods based on nutrient content is handy as a rough rule of thumb, but beware of reducing food to “nutrition”.

Food is information

Every bite of food carries with it a whole history.  Before taking your first bite of a meal, ask yourself (silently, or people may think you’ve lost a marble or two) what path each item on your plate took to get there, just in time to feed you.  How many hands touched it before it ended up on your plate? You plate is the final link in a long chain of events. This mental journey will increase your gratitude for the food you are eating, but it will also make you aware of “machine foods”, factory-produced foods devoid of the human touch, poor in information, poor in nutrition.

Bring back the table!

If you have not been doing it, start re-introducing family meals around a table.  Do it gently, no need to be aggressive about this.  Whether you are only one person in the house or not, it makes no difference.  Bring back the table.  Whether you eat at home or at the office.  Bring back the table.  Whether you are in a rush or not.  Bring back the table.  Eat seated and calmly, from a real plate that will break if you drop it.  Let the table become a little shrine of refuge from the demands of “the world”.  Don’t let buzzing, beeping, ringing noises distract you from the simple pleasure of eating real food.  Invite others to join you. Even when you are fasting, make time to sit at the empty plate and just be still for a while.

Mise en plas

No, that wasn’t a typo. That was French. It is pronounced something like “meez-orn PLASS” and it is a cooking term, referring to getting everything ready (“set in place”) before you start meal preparation.  “Mise en place” is, however, much more than a tidy kitchen workplace.  If you want to spend less time in the kitchen, yet make yummier, healthier food, then you have to “put in place” a much bigger plan – one week at a time.  Initially, it sounds daunting, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll be surprised how easy it is, and how much joy it brings.

Start with a prayer

Begin every meal with a prayer, whether silent or aloud.  Hold hands if you are eating and praying with others.  If you are not of a religious persuasion, spend a minute saying thank you to all the people who made it possible for you to eat this meal, silently or aloud.  This sacred moment of prayer or reflection ends the busy-ness that went before and shifts gears downwards, where there is less busy-ness and more real energy.  Gratitude is medicine. Profound thankfulness for what you are eating is a key part of healing your body.

Win first, war later

Some millennia ago, military strategist Sun Tzu (“The Art of War”) had this to say:  “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.”  As soon as you start out on this journey, you will be faced with 101 good reasons to quit.  The good food warrior will anticipate the resistance and plan for it, instead of trying to “wing it” without prior preparation.  Change your mindset to a victory mindset.  Become the general of your own health. Plan the battles you are likely to face beforehand. Nobody knows you better than you. You are the warrior, you are the battlefield.  Conquer yourself – your fears, your history. Then face the interesting challenges everyday life in the real world will throw at you.

Build a book

Switching your food culture is not easy.  Initially, you will try desperately to make “healthy” copies of the unhealthy foods you used to enjoy. That is fine, but it is only the beginning.  Later you will find new, healthy tastes you never knew before.  Or you will develop a new taste for healthy food.  Whatever your journey, begin a recipe book of your family’s favourite healthy recipes.  Bring it together in one place, so you don’t have to look for that one special recipe in some thick recipe book.  It may seem easier to simply put bookmarks in a recipe book, but take the trouble of copying out your favourite, most regular recipes and store them all together in one place. It can even become a gift you can give your children when they leave home. It is very tempting to cook without recipes, but that makes it harder to pass on the culture to the next generation.

Chew your food!

It is tempting to swallow food half-chewed in a rush to get the meal over and done with.  Chew each bite 20-30 times. That way, you get more nutrition out of your food. You are also less likely to suffer from constipation.  Plus, your stress levels drop when you chew food well.  All good things.

Start implementing these tips today still. 
Remind yourself of them every time you eat today,
 and also in the days ahead!