Sunday, January 3, 2010

[ch]Eating with Macrobiotics

So I have been recently looking into the macrobiotic diet. I hate the word "diet" because anytime I have ever said it people jump all over me, call me names like "skinny" or tell me not to be ridiculous. No, no, no...everyone has a "diet." It's a word with about five definitions, including:

1 a : food and drink regularly provided or consumed b : habitual nourishment c : the kind and amount of food prescribed for a person or animal for a special reason d : a regimen of eating and drinking sparingly so as to reduce one's weight diet>
2 : something provided or experienced repeatedly

People just always tend to assume that when I speak of a diet, I'm trying to lose weight rather than adjust definitions a., b., or c. To me, macrobiotics seems to be less of a "eat this, not this" and more of an overall realization and acceptance of the food one ingests and how it effects your body/soul/mind. Throughout this whole research mode I have been consulting Hip Chick's Guide to Macrobiotics which basically puts this entire, ancient practice into layman's terms for me. It's a grand, magnificent balance of yin and yang...connecting yourself to the earth by consuming foods that comes directly from it. What I like most about this is that it directly ties into the eating experiment I tried in 2009...eating locally.

While I'm not morally a vegetarian or vegan (I'm sorry, but I get too much joy out of portioning a salmon filet or grinding up meat for sausage or breaking down poultry...) there are things I have started to cut out for my own health. Of course, they happen to be two of my greatest weaknesses: dairy and red meat. As far as dairy is concerned, I have started small. There's is no way this ice cream addict can fully cut out frozen dairy goodness so I have begun with cheese and milk. Impossible? Almost. Cheese is everywhere. It's delicious and creamy and meltable and spreadable and there is really no way to avoid it altogether but I try. Red meat has been a little easier because in the meantime I have replaced it with pork. Luckily I will probably get tired of my little piggy friends and be strictly poultry soon enough, but it's all a process.

As far as the mind/body aspect of the macrobiotic lifestyle, that part is needing some adjusting as well. I hope to begin yoga and meditation at some point, and have already started walking more. We will see where this takes me, but in the meantime I'm still in the education part of it all. I may have cut out beef tenderloin, but there's no way I'm rubbing any fat man's belly for enlightenment...just sayin'.

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