Food On the Table

There is an argument against almost every food, from society or from my body.

I can always say this is too cheap or too convenient, I can always say this is too expensive or too inconvenient.

I can always say this is not the most ideally healthy thing to eat right now. I can always feel guilty about the carbon footprint or the carbs or the fat or the not-enough protein or the animal protein or the migrant workers. I can feel worried about microplastics and hormones and antibiotics and glyphosate, about mold and inflammation and bloating.

Then I remember, I'm going to die, FOR SURE.

I've been eating a strict diet which amounts to eating whole, real foods for a year now, and I do feel so much better cutting out foods which were inflaming me and causing gut issues.

AND it's hard to the point of feeling unrealistic and unmotivating to stay strict about this diet. Most of my favorite foods are not on it. The foods that are on it I repeat again and again, they always require that I cook and clean up, and some days I'm freezing and shaking at 2pm because I haven't been bothered to feed myself yet that day.

(Seriously, tho, what is everyone doing? How are we all eating so much every day, all that it takes to keep us alive? Cooking or paying exorbitant prices to have it cooked for us, cleaning up?? Insane.)

When it happens that I can't get warm due to insufficient calorie consumption, I remind myself of an important concept of self-care which came to me at one of the lowest points in my life: Food On The Table.

Putting food on the table is a success. It might, for some days, weeks, or months, be my only form of success.

When it's a struggle, I remind myself that FOOD on the table is all that is required. Food can come from a box, from a processing plant, from a pint I took out of the freezer, from the window of a building into my car window. My body and brain run on calories and ANY kind of calories are better than no calories at all.

This is especially true for anyone feeding themselves AND dependents.

Food on the table. Whatever it is, however it gets there, if you are getting food on the table, you are a success. There's no strict diet that will keep you and your family alive for eternity.

There's optimization in feeding on what's supremely nourishing (and everyone has a different idea what that is) but there's functionality in feeding on anything at all. Food on the table is a fundament of the functional baseline—first we make it happen, then we make it easier, and THEN we make it healthier, if we want to. We can always drop back to simply making it happen.

A functional baseline is just that—functional. It's how things work when they are working, it's a lowest-standard which covers all the bases.

Food on the table.