“I eat whatever the fuck I want.”
Perhaps I should back up a bit. Cornered at an ashtanga party (wait isn’t “ashtanga party” an oxymoron?) with “diet” thrown in my face, this seemed the most appropriate response.
The other half of the conversation sized me up in my skinny jeans and made a question mark out of his face:
“But you can’t really practice ashtanga without…”
I stopped him right there.
“I didn’t say I stuff my face with crap all day long. I just eat whatever I want”
These days what I want is pretty aligned with what I need.
I’ve never loved my body as much as I do now, and I’ve never worried as little about it as I do now.
I move my body everyday how I want to– ashtanga yoga, thrice weekly twenty minutes of intervals on a bike (inspired by Peak 8 fitness), and a weekly bouldering session, vinyasa class here and there, that is, until ski season, when all bets are off. I am always moving. I do all this activity not to look a certain way (not that I mind those side effects) but because I like how moving this way makes me feel and changes my mind. So I eat to support that active lifestyle and its concomitant postive mental outlook. I’m also very lucky to have the time to spend this way.
I don’t waste time thinking or worrying about what I’m eating. I don’t do diets or green juices (not that I’ll turn a tasty one down) or “Whole” who’s its and what’s its. I don’t spend time trashing my body. Look, no matter how much ashtanga and altitude shrink my frame, I will always have a butt, and depending on who you ask, that’s either my best or worst feature.
Fuck it, I don’t have time to give a shit anymore.
I only have time to enjoy it. I’m not saying we should look to John Mayer for advice, but he had a point when he said, “Your body is a wonderland.”
So it really doesn’t matter what I eat (my diet changes all the time) or what I weigh (I have no clue). What matters is how I feel.
Richard Freeman said once in an arm balancing workshop: it’s just an experiement.
So I experiment.
I consider my body a toy. I want to see what it can do; I want to know where it hits an edge; I want to see what trips it up and revel in that mysterious place of testing the limits. The toy needs batteries. It needs them first thing in the morning. It likes to eat light. It likes to eat light midday too, notwithstanding wisdom that suggests otherwise. it commonly consumes bananas, almond butter, walnuts, peanut butter, yogurt, bee pollen, spirulina, local raw honey, srpouted what bread or local fresh bread, spinach, eggs, salad, polenta, rice, oilive oil, beans, greens and chewy gummy vitamins from whole foods. I also eat meat and fish, but often I don’t–because I am to lazy to cook it. I eat anything my husband makes, because he makes everything taste good. I harbor an addiction to these strawberry greek yogurt ice pops from whole foods. I don’t even like strawberry flavor. I don’t know what the f–k whole foods has put in these things but I’m pretty sure it is the same thing found in every Taylor Swift song. I eat organic ’cause I’m high maintenance like that.
Recent experiments have led to me to avoid the following, unless I want to feel like shit:
pizza, pasta, doughnuts, bagels, pancakes, lasagna, cake, cookies.
croissants do not seem to pose a problem.
a once a week cocktail does not pose a problem.
of course, after a full day of skiing or hiking I might sing a different tune re: pizza. If I’m nursing a baby, I might sing a different melody on the cookies.
of course, a lot of what I’ve said way off the Ashtanga party line. I’m ok with that. I experimented, and I do what works.
If you read this and wonder, how do you find this kind of ease in eating I will tell you what I wish I could say to my 16-year-old and 22-year-old and 25-year-old selves, right after bitch slapping them:
Stop worrying about how you look– ask how you feel. What would make you feel good? What do you enjoy eating? Stop listening to what “they” tell you to eat, be “they” of the fitness world, yoga world, ashtanga world, ayurvedic world, or Mars– and figure out what works for you. If you are so out of balance that you don’t know, or worse, enjoy eating things that make you feel like crap, I highly recommend doing yoga, which balances everything, and trying the Conscious Cleanse. I eat way off cleanse most of the time, but that cleanse got this sweet-tooth to stop serenading Ben & Jerry and anything else made of sugar with a terrible rendition of Britney Spears’ “I’m a Slave 4 U.”
Most of all I’d say:
Your Body is a wonderland. Act like it.