What if you were offered a way to improve your nutrition by fifty percent. Would you take it?
You probably would, so get ready: That offer is coming your way right now.
Let’s factor out all the “between” eating we do in a day and focus on the old model of three meals a day: breakfast, lunch, and dinner (or breakfast, lunch, and supper, depending on where you’re from) – one third, one third, and one third. For lunch and dinner, the sky is the limit on what social norms tell us is generally acceptable fare. We indulge in fruits and vegetables, sandwiches, soups and sautés. No one bats an eye.
But those same social norms seem sometimes to be far stricter in the matter of acceptable breakfast fare. Here we often see the menu dominated by animal products, fat, and processed foods: pancakes (yum), sausage (yum), bacon (yum), eggs (yum), biscuits (yum), bagels (yum), waffles (yum). These may be sort of a stereotype of breakfast, but they’re so for a reason: We eat a lot of this yummy but nutritionally dangerous stuff at breakfast time.
So, what if? What if we reclaim the day’s first meal, retaking the breaking of fast in the name of the nutrition our body craves instead of for those yummy, yet fatty, goodies our mouths crave? (My mouth is watering just thinking about these foods; I’m nearly 12 years vegetarian, but I do have a soul.) If we do this, we will lay claim to a fifty percent (not 33.3; it’s complicated) increase in the number of meals available to us during which internalized “norms” tell us we can eat nutritious foods (ideally, whole, plant-based foods).
This is not a call for vegetarianism, but if that’s what you hear and what motivates, then fine. Instead, it’s a wake-up call – literally, as it turns out – that we be aware of the seriously nutritionally crappy food we eat for our day’s first meal.
Your health belongs to you, and you have a right to it. Start your day by showing your gut (instead of your mouth) that you love it. Good morning to you, indeed!
April 15, 2018
What if you were offered a way to improve your nutrition by fifty percent. Would you take it? You probably would, so get ready: That offer is coming your way right now. Let’s factor out all the “between” eating we do in a day and focus on the old model of three meals a day: breakfast, lunch, and dinner (or breakfast, lunch, and supper, depending on where you’re from) – one third, one third, and one third. For lunch and dinner, the sky is the limit on what social norms tell us is generally acceptable fare. We indulge in fruits and vegetables, sandwiches, soups and sautés. No one bats an eye. But those same social norms seem sometimes to be far stricter in the matter […]
April 8, 2018
Imagine, said the sage. We stand on a vast plain covered in feathery grass, and as we look to the west, the Earth continues its relentless rotation toward us; so our star there in space appears to draw closer to the western horizon. Its light filters through the atmospheric dust; there, refracted and reflected, it turns red, orange, pink. It is beautiful; we walk toward the light, the sun, to catch up with it, feeling its brilliance all around us. And we’re running now, the grassy plain speeding by under our feet. The orange sunset now surrounds us like an ocean, and we’re running faster – we hear a laugh escape our chest – now with our arms out as if we might fly. Imagine, […]
April 1, 2018
Sitting in front of the keyboard, watching fingers fly, perhaps something worthwhile will emerge and perhaps it will not. Writing is almost always a roll of the dice. How will the dice land this time? How was the writing last time? People talk about bearing down on their work or on a task. Perhaps it’s true that we do bear down, lean forward onto the balls of our feet, sit on the edge of the chair, furrow our brow, frown a bit for good measure. And our focus? Where is it at such a time? Despite all the ceremonial symbols of concentration, are we actually being mindfully in the present moment, traveling our chosen path of action within that moment around the task at hand? […]