filling the void

people (not surprisingly) keep asking me why i'm doing this diet. and tho i've tried to pare it down, and offer a simple response, no one seems to be satisfied with this simple version. then when i attempt to explain, in less succinct terms, why i would ever think doing this is a good idea, invariably i get confused responses and generally people think tell me i'm crazy. granted, on some level, this is actually accurate. and i certainly lead into the explanation a bit backwards, making excuses and concessions before i give people a chance to make their own judgements. but, i mean, really, it is kind of crazy. it's pretty far outside the norm, anyway. far enough, that crazy might actually be the right term.

so, why? the simple answer i give is, 'i'm trying to retrain the way that i think about food.' which is accurate. but obviously not adequate. what do i mean when i say retrain'? i guess, for one thing, food associations. i have a lot of them that i would consider unhealthy, and these i would really like to get rid of. the simple example, of course, is watching a movie and wanting to eat while doing so. the less simple, and perhaps less cut and dry examples, being the association between boredom and eating, entertaining and eating, and traveling and eating. at the very least, this process is helping to highlight the relationship between eating and these activities in my life. in general i cannot say if it is absolutely 100% better or worse to deny the associations, but i think it is healthier to understand that there is an association, and to be mindful of the activity of eating as unrelated to sustainence. yeah, i'm already aware of these associations. it doesn't take long of being on a significantly restricted diet before the nature of food in everyday life becomes very readily apparent. but i believe the longer i maintain the restrictions, the more capable i will be of maintaining the mindfullness even when i am allowing myself to 'indulge.'

other things i can think of off the top of my head that are part of why i'm doing this:

1. to better understand the food elements i eat, how they taste and what they can be used for: like how broccoli stems are totally delicious, but i'm not really all that into the florets, and apparently cauliflower is one of my favorite veggies, since i can't seem to stop eating it, raw, or roasted (but definitely not steamed). esther thinks we're using too much salt, but for my family i think that's to be expected (we're all fans of salt, and have been known to eat salt straight, from time to time). i think i'm learning to value the flavors of foods, as opposed to the values of fats and sugars, which appeal to base desires in the appetite. doug and i have been making efforts to eat the food basically plain, or with just the addition of salt, to really engrain the flavors of the foods themselves. additionally, i've been experimenting with different cooking methods of these foods as they are added. it's fun. it consumes most of my time. i like playing with food.

2. to increase variety in my newly vegan diet: really i have a pretty healthy diet. compared to a lot of americans, i eat a ridiculously healthy diet. but when doug and i made the list of all the foods we were going to eat, i realized how limited my ordinary food list is. while i generally eat whole grains rather than refined, and eat more beans and fruits and vegetables than the average joe, i mostly just eat bread, with 'butter,' peanut butter, or hummus. that's really what it comes down to.

3. to think of food as food, as opposed to the processed things we generally eat, and to learn to create food from whole ingredients: i think this one is the one i'm most excited about. In Defense of Food, by michael pollan, has really helped to provide a frame work for my conceptualization of food. not allowing myself to eat anything but whole foods (or whole foods i processed myself) makes it all the more apparent how much i don't do this under normal circumstances. i bake with crisco, since i can't use butter, and i butter my bread with vegan margarine. i eat cereal made by some factory, with vanilla soy milk also made by some factory. i have learned, so far, that the extent to which i have removed myself from the majority of the food processes involved in the foods i consume is really quite startling. after becoming vegan, i immediately began searching for vegan margarines, and looking at the ingredient list only for egg and dairy derivatives, totally disregarding the fact that i had no real idea what several of the 'plant derived' ingredients were, how they were made, or what role they actually played in the food itself. consider, by contrast, that i don't use personal care products (soaps, detergents, shampoos, etc) whose ingredients i do not understand, and basically this means i will only use baking soda, vingear, and pure soaps on my person, but that i was willing to eat soy protein isolate and calcium disodium EDTA... there's a significant level of hypocrisy in there.

i think in short, it comes down to being more directly connected to that which sustains me. food is important. it's VERY important. really, it's the most important thing. when i think about limiting the foods i can eat to those only processed in ways that i actually understand, and that, perhaps, with the right equipment i could do myself, for example replacing hydrogenated vegetable oil (of course trans fat free, but still) with expeller pressed coconut oil, i feel like i'm doing the right thing. it makes sense to me, and (thankfully) it doesn't deny me the ability to make pie crust. when i think about making my own breakfast cereals, trying to emulate the concept of vanilla oat clusters like those in the trader joe's cereal i used to buy, using real oats, evaporated cane juice (or some other natural sweetener i understand), soy milk (homemade, of course) and actual vanilla beans, i feel like i'm doing the right thing. it's a hell of a lot more work, sure. but like i said, food is important.

and, i guess, that's why. and, i guess, given the length and complication of the reason, that's why most people don't get the full answer, and don't understand. it's probably ok that most people think i'm crazy. it's nice to be sure, for my own sake, tho, that i'm not.