Going For It

My personal eating plan no longer includes constantly counting and tallying every calorie in every morsel of food that I eat - I learned a long time ago that this leads to failure and neurosis on my part.  After so many years, it's become pretty easy for me to maintain a mental picture of when I've gone overboard and how balanced my nutrition was for the day, and I know that staying as active as possible as often as possible is the healthiest way for me to live.

I'm home sick with the flu right now, and I was re-watching a Julia Roberts movie called Eat Pray Love.  It's a quintessential "chick flick" filled with scenic locations and beautiful ideas, based on a book I haven't read which is essentially about the concept of finding oneself in the world.  It's a pretty film and I recommend it, but this one scene I just watched summed up how I want to approach food in many ways.  It's a scene where two characters are sitting in a bistro in Naples, Italy eating what appears to be an incredibly sumptuous brick oven pizza - and one of them stops because she recently discovered that she's gained ten pounds.

This dialogue follows:

Liz: Let me ask you something. In all the times that you’ve undressed in front of a gentleman, has he ever asked you to leave?
Sofi: No.
Liz: No – exactly! Because he doesn’t care. He’s in a room with a naked girl. He’s won the lottery! I’m so tired of saying no, and waking up in the morning and recalling everything I ate the day before – counting every calorie I consumed so I know exactly how much self-loathing to take into the shower. I’m going for it. I have no interest in being obese, I’m just through with the guilt. So, here’s what we’re going to do: we’re going to finish this pizza, and tomorrow, we’re going to buy ourselves some bigger jeans.

I'm not advocating throwing health and good nutrition out the window and neither is the author who wrote the scene, it's simply a statement about how in certain moments in life it's more important to eat and drink deeply of where you are right now than it is to micro-analyze every bite you take.  Life is short, and it grows shorter with every passing day.  I don't want to live it dragging around a useless weight of self loathing anywhere.