Dreamer

Hello dreamers and happy Friday!

Weekend is here and I am so happy about it! It wasn’t a hard week, however, I feel pretty tired, and I can’t wait to go home and spend some relaxing time!

For those of you here for the whole journey, you know what I just said isn’t true, cause going home is always tiring for the reasons that it’s a 3-hour drive to the mountains, and there are many things to do at home. First on the list, taking down the Christmas lights and the main Christmas tree!

However, until I went, I wanted to dive into a sensible topic for which I might get so much hate, but what is life without some spice?

Well this topic, as the title states is Mindful eating! It’s so controversial this topic, that if you search it on Google or anywhere else for that matter you’ll find so many opinions and advice that you’ll go crazy.

I’m not here to drive you crazy too, I’m here to share my “engineeresque” opinion.

I am an engineer in the food industry and I teach tourism and the food industry in high school, so I might know a thing or two about what we call food, without being a nutritionist. Also, if you check my Recipe section, you’ll understand my point of view, exposed below!

And when I see on the social platform Mindful eating, Clean eating, all kinds of diets and supplements, I kinda go crazy.

Most of us are born healthy. Some of us have the luck to eat some breast milk which is the perfect milk. However, moms, don’t stress too much, I was raised on cow milk and formula for 3 weeks and I turned 26. Nothing that wasn’t caused by my ignorance happened to my health!

But after we are born, at about 6 months we start to live on solid food. Fruits, veggies, bread, milk, eggs, meat. And then the body starts to assimilate more from what life has to offer into our bodies.

Due to what is called “genetics” we have a predisposition to certain diseases, weight counts, allergies, and other NORMAL things.

And while some are trying to make you feel bad about you, and your health, in order to gain some cash, I will debunk the myths.

Maslow taught all of us about the pyramid of needs, which is used by all companies when they decide on marketing strategies. And what need do they choose? The need to be a part of a group, to fit in!

You want to be like those cool girls, who get incited out, who have fun, you need to lose some weight. Why? Cause in all media this is promoted.

Ya, ya, you’ll tell me that Gen Z changed the game rules by including everyone. Gen Z is the reason we have plus-size models on the runway, and we have a clothes section for plus size. Yeah, we do, but we also do you a size XS that should be an M. How do I know this? I still buy XS now at 58 Kg, as I did at 49. And this is not normal.

All of the industries gain from this. Fashion, Lifestyle, GYM, Nutrition, Food, Diet Name it.

The entire process is a bit more psychological and with pleasure will dive into a future article, but now I will resume to Diet industry or diet culture as you might know it!

We have fasted, we have mindful, we have vegan, vegetarian, raw, raw vegan, keto and so much more. Many of these are restrictive diets, which work very well on your body as applied, but when you give up, your body reacts in a negative way, making you feel even worse about yourself.

This kind of diet responds in the short run, with magical effects, however, in the long run, they only destroy your body and metabolism!

To understand better, let’s talk about what is food. As simple as you might need to understand, food is fuel to our organism. Food is anything we can digest without poisoning the organism. You can eat grass, and live. A poor life, but you can live.

However, like fuel in general, we have some different types, for different types of mechanics in our bodies. Some will need more fats, some will need some sugar, and some will need protein. And it’s normal to give them all.

We also have different qualities, like normal gas. Some cheap and good, cheap and .. cheap, expensive and good, and expensive and bad. There are numerous combinations out there.

And we also have things that react badly. Imagine starting and diesel engine with gasoline. It will destroy everything.

The same goes and applies to our bodies.

We need to understand that what we eat serves as fuel, and the quality matters in the long run, in order to prevent damages in time. You are allowed to put some junk food in your body, it’s normal. You are allowed to pamper yourself with some expensive, super-nutritious foods too. But most of the time, the regular, not too expensive, not too cheap works just fine.

Leaving car talk aside, you also need to understand that what really affects your body is the way food is cooked. Nobody expects to eat potatoes raw. And really nobody expects to give up on fires. However, there are many alternatives, healthier and more nutritional too. Frying (and deep frying in palm oil apparently is cancerous. This is not fact-checked yet, however, it’s not the first time I heard the hypothesis, and I tend to believe it as the acrylamide takes form earlier in that fat) is the worst heat process you can apply to your food. Has the biggest rate of nutrient destruction from all the heat processing. Try instead grilling and baking, boiling. Baking with fat has its own fair share, but it’s less damaging.

Another thing you must understand is that faster isn’t better. Slow cooking is the key to flavourous nutritious food. Cooking slowly, at low temperatures, allows the food to properly cook and release flavor without losing vitamins and other nutrients.

Seasonal eating. Told it and I am going to tell it every single time. No matter how much we crave something, if it’s not its season, it means, it’s brought by ship, while it was still pretty raw, and it hadn’t time to develop properly. And it’s probably filled with many additives.

Also, you might need to consider choosing regional food. I’m from Romania, my genetics don’t really know how to process papaya, as none of my 4-5 generations before me ate it, in order to create an immune system that works properly with this fruit.

And the last thing on my list is to always have moderation. My grandma suffered her whole life from heart disease, and she didn’t have to keep her diet, not even after her gall was removed. Why? Caused she knew how to eat correctly. She knew what was good for her body, what bloated her, what gave her rash, what increased her pulse, and what increased her Iron (and she really needed it). She wasn’t curious about all the foods she didn’t grow up with (pizza or burgers), but she didn’t eat strange combos of the ones she did. Imagine pasta we all love. She grew up with mac and cheese. However, she wasn’t interested in other kinds of pasta.

Moderation in eating was the key for her and worked pretty well, and from the perspective of the engineer who studies all the chemical transformations in the body (wich are boring but real, check any biochem book for lessons), this is the advice I’ll give you: Give up on diet culture, enjoy yourself and choose to eat anything with moderation in order to achieve any weight or health goal!
In the long run, it’s the only healthy option!

Happy weekend and #adreamerlife!
Cristiana Apreutese