No great thoughts today. Just a continuous stream of the same (and literally visceral) thought today: food. What I can have, when I can have it. I’ve begun to count calories again today.
I’ve been picking up weight lately. My clothes are tight, my digestion is a wreck and I feel underpowered. I know from experience that if I lose 20 pounds I’ll feel better. I also know from experience that only one way works: to set a calorie budget and stick to it by measuring, counting and recording. I’m ordinarily eat a pretty wholesome, balanced diet. The budget keeps excesses at bay, and puts vegetables first. I love the results; I even love the food. (After a while, I forget about crackers and corn chips: two of my sabotage foods.)
So why do I stop? Because it takes a lot of work to maintain. And I think about food endlessly, especially when I’m resuming and there are tempting foods in the house (and not enough ready-to-eat low energy food.)
The difference now is that I’m prepared to think more about food as a part of the human condition. The fashionable set talk about their preferred foods. (Local! Organic! Thai!) The hungry have to plan carefully to get enough food. The imperiled — I’m thinking of the Japanese right now — upright their lives by securing food.
We celebrate with food. We mourn with food. We worship with food. Jesus taught with food, and my relatives comforted with food.
And so we think — I pray — so we do. But it’s going to be a heluva struggle.
A Benedictine monk once told me that the care of the kitchen was one of the most sacred trusts in the monastery. Care of the kitchen, involves care of the food. Care of the food, involves care of the bodies of all the brothers.