Are you feeding yourself in a way that is sustainable
for the sake of your personal health and wellbeing or
are you sacrificing a nutritious diet, and thus your
health, in order to survive in the Rat Race?
There are some worrying statistics being reported in
the media. According to the World Health Organisation
(WHO), obesity has reached epidemic proportions globally:
more than a billion adults are overweight, of which
at least 300 million of them are clinically obese.
Obesity
is rising faster in Britain than in any other Western
European nation and if the present trend continues,
half the population of Britain will be obese by 2020.
In the
USA, the weight of 1:3 adults has reached danger levels.
At the same time, we are throwing away a third of our
food, on average, according to a recent report in Planet
Ark. Yet, whilst enjoying this apparent glut in the
West, we are also undernourished due to the depletion
of the
soil that occurs as a result of factory farming practices.
How do we make sense of this and feed ourselves in a
way that nourishes us and preserves the planet?
Attitudes to food.
How will you know if you’re
sacrificing your health in order to survive in the
Rat Race?
If you believe that food is:
1. Something that you use just to combat hunger.
2. Something that you use just to induce pleasant sensations
(e.g. chocolate, caffeine and alcohol.)
3. Something that you use as a reward for good behaviour.
4. Something that you use as consolation when things
go wrong.
5. Something that you buy from the nearest supermarket
when you can find a few minutes between other more
pressing engagements.
6. Often a takeaway or eaten in a restaurant, especially
when you are stressed or feeling short of time.
7. Stored mostly in your freezer and cooked mostly
in your microwave.
…then the chances are that
you are caught in this dilemma.
I suspect most of us will be able to recognise those
behaviour traits in ourselves. Many of them will stem
from our conditioning; our upbringing in a society where
food is big business and our food supply is dominated
by a few large, highly profitable manufacturers. The
drive of these companies to make a profit appears to
take precedence over any social responsibility towards
the health and wellbeing of its customers.
What are the alternatives?
How can you downshift your eating habits, de-stress
your attitude to food and make nourishing yourself a
more sustainable activity for yourself and for the planet?
Change Catalyst
I’ve noticed during my coaching
that for some people changing their eating habits can
be the catalyst
that motivates them to leave the rat race and live more
consciously. When we examine the values we want to live
by, being in good health often underpins everything else
we wish to change. It can be a very easy first step to
start substituting fresh, locally grown, organic produce
for highly processed food. We can consciously set aside
more time for food preparation to ensure that we nourish
ourselves. Often the benefits of making such changes
are felt very quickly in terms of an improvement in general
health and also savings in the food budget.
Links with Nature
Food is an important link between
us, as human beings, and nature. That can be a difficult
one to remember when
what appears on supermarket shelves as “food” reveals
very few clues as to its natural origins. We become what
we eat, since the food we eat, at a fundamental, elemental
level is what the body uses to replace and replenish
itself. Think very hard about this next time you eat
or drink something – is this what I really want
my body to use as basic building blocks for “me”?
How much of what I’m eating or drinking will my
body regard as foreign or toxic and how much of it will
it recognise as useful, wholesome nutrition?
We can move from the Rat Race mentality of “food
is an emotional band-aid” to the sustainable living
philosophy of “food is nourishment” by making
a few simple changes in our lives, such as:
1. Deciding that our health and wellbeing is high priority.
2. Deciding to nourish ourselves in a way that is in
alignment with our values.
3. Taking time from our busy working lives in order to
plan how and where we buy food.
4. Making time to prepare homemade meals.
5. Enjoying the physical sensations, the creative processes
involved and social opportunities that mealtimes offer.
Next month, in part two of this
article, we’ll
look at the roles that nurturing, spirituality, sensuality
and gratitude play in providing ourselves with nourishing
food.
Suggestions for further reading:
The Science of Cooking – Peter
Barham
Grow Younger Live Longer – Deepak Chopra
www.direct.gov.uk/greenerfood Information,
advice and tips about food, environmental impact and
lifestyle issues.
2.A
Case for Creative Tension. By Aspen Edge.
We had, on two previous
occasions, found ourselves at a crossroads where the
predominant questions
were “Do we feel fulfilled?” “Does
our life inspire us?” “Are we content?” The
answers were in the negative. We realised in the first
instance that our contentment bore no relationship to
the size of our income and in the second instance that,
creating an easy life resulted in loss of ‘creative
tension’ – the challenge of the space between
where we were and where we aspired to be. On both occasions,
these realisations resulted in down-sizing. This process
created the space to re-connect with those values that
were essential to our mental well-being. In other words,
what made us tick.The result was the creation of a lifestyle
that was even more in tune with those values and provided
plenty of creative tension!
Two aspects were pivotal to the success of these changes.
First, creating clarity about where we wanted to be headed.
Second, planning our finances around what was enough.
We had realised that the power
of material possessions was associated with how they
made us feel. Disassociating ‘things’ from
the way they made us feel enabled us to create a statement
of our aspirations in terms of how we wanted to feel,
which left all the possibilities wide open as to how
we might achieve that.
We had also realised that whenever there was additional
income, our expenses rose to meet it, unless we planned
to set aside a proportion of that income. In our case,
it was to set aside sufficient capital to buy us the
time in which to develop income-generating activities.The
value that underpinned this was the desire to have a
debt-free life with the attendant benefits of low-stress
levels!
Both these occasions resulted
in improvement in our quality of life. We live with
a greater sense of fulfilment
and contentment, with as much ‘creative tension’ as
we can handle!
Aspen and David Edge live with their son, Samuel, on
a 16 hectare research conservation farm in the mountains
of southern Spain, where they offer walking holiday accommodation
and environmental services and workshops. See www.holisticdecisions.com
