Picture Perfect

Twice in the last few days I have posted a photograph of my breakfast on facebook.  (I know, get a life, right?) It has occurred to me that it is important to not only eat food that is good for me, but also looks good.  I tend to have a love/hate relationship with food, vacillating between viewing eating as a tedious necessity and a overly tempting diversion.  Food is always more than food, even to people who do not struggle with weight issues.  For someone who tends toward the simple in most things, preparing food is not high on my list of favorite activities.  I am inclined to grab what is convenient, requires little preparation (because it is the cleaning up I loathe) and tastes good--which of course is very subjective.

Because I am very much a "visual" person, food has to look good to me, and my best meals are ones that have a variety of color, texture and a visual richness, though creating such sensuous delights is a challenge for me.  I am still awaiting the day when all our nutrients for daily living could be available in one convenient pill (remember the futurists of the 60's predicted this!)  Despite the proliferation of nutritional supplements, science still hasn't produced such a thing.  The genius lady who has a column in Parade magazine was once asked if there was one perfect food for humans.  Her reply: dog food, as it is appropriate for an omnivore mammal, which is what we are.  Though we hear stories of poor people eating dog food (I've never actually known anyone to do this) I seriously doubt that anyone could consistently eat it--even dogs aren't particularly fond of doing that, I suppose.

Photographing my food, however weird that may seem, has actually helped me become aware of what exactly I am eating, and also reinforces to me that most of the time, I eat rather healthfully.  Awareness for me is really the crux of what this blog is all about.  It is an amazing thing to think that there is enough variety in the world that a person might conceivably never eat the same thing twice--at least not the same thing prepared the same way.  And while variety may be the spice of life, it is also true that we tend to eat our favorites over and over again (for better or worse.)  I read in the paper today about a man who just ate his 25,000th Big Mac.  I wonder if there is any food that I have eaten that many times!

I can think of any number of foods that look disgusting to me and I won't eat--mushrooms and oysters come to mind.  The foods I like most; however, are those that are colorful and photogenic--fruits!  There is a reason why so many still life paintings are of fruit--they are a delight for the senses.  Photographing my meals has also made me appreciate the gift that food is--not just as means to sustain biological life, but as a means of sustaining spiritual life as well.  Gratitude to the One who created and sustains all life should be part of every act of consuming food, or why else do we say grace?

A certain mindfulness should accompany each food preparation and eating opportunity.  Indeed it is when we mindlessly consume something that we are often unaware of the amount, the flavor, and exactly why we are doing so. Literally focusing on food through the lens of a camera creates an opportunity to become aware, and awareness begets mindfulness, and mindfulness will lead to balance in all things, not just eating.

Simply Dance

Reading the check-ins from a Catholic on-line weight paying attention group I belong to has made me realize how consistently we fall into a trap of giving up too early.  We strive for perfection, our best, and yet we seem to continually fail--or so we perceive it to be.  What's profound is how wonderful, beautiful people with complicated lives and attention to those they love are sidelined by eating too much chocolate, by failing to exercise, by not keeping track.  I recently finished reading "The Happiness Project," by Gretchen Rubin.  I was hoping to be inspired by it, and certainly I was.  I also seem to be somewhat shamed as this woman's attentiveness to the precepts (as they have become for me) that discipline, focus and sacrfice have rendered a best seller, a #1 bestseller.

I celebrate this woman's success and her timeliness in a market that hungers for something like this.  What I think we hunger for is completion, a sense that we are doing our best. What we fail to keep in mind when we act to improve ourselves is that we can only strive for better.  Best is an illusion, it is a future eventuality I hope, but it is not the "better" of now.  The "better" is achievable, best is not.  Yes, we have "personal bests" and records, but that's not the point.  This is a precept of this journey the author takes.

I don't hope to imitate Rubin.  I do not need to wonder if I am happy.  But reading this book helped me realize I could be moreso, because it is a choice, a choice that perhaps takes discipline, focus and sacrfice.  Still, discerning how that might apply to the point of this blog, I realize that simple "awareness" is not going to help me realize my vision--for if I cannot see a goal as more of a vision, I will lose my passion for it.  And this is precisely the point where I am prone to give in, to give up, to say that I can't commit to profound revelations about this weight loss thing I am reluctant to call a weight loss thing.  I am struggling not to draw attention to the thing I do not want to draw attention to.  Then what doI do?

Simply, do better.  Remember Simple, the S of S.T.R.E.N.G.T.H

Focus on something else, break my own rule and make a rule, or precept, for me. So what is simple and what is doable is to put on workout clothes the first thing in the morning, even if I go back to bed and sleep.  My intention this morning was to get on the treadmill.  But I decided to clean the kitchen first--at least create a more positive environment for when I have to eat again., but I didn't get far.  I decided I needed to listen to Gino Vannelli's "Jehovah and All That Jazz" (which might possibly be my all-time favorite song--at least until no) and I ended up dancing to it three times--and I think jazz music can be difficult to dance to--especially alone)  I needed the healing and abandon I find in this song, its holy irreverance.  I needed the vision of myself dancing, not the one I would dare view in something as flat and one-dimensional as a mirror.  That is not vision, it's not even adquate image. No, no, just the joy that teases movement when the piano rift drifts into the saxophone wail.  Listen, if you have ears.  What a gift to hear the fullness of sound, to clarify a vision it evokes.

I may never get on the treadmill today, and it looks less and less likely, but I've got a couple hours to keep cleaning...and dancing!  I am less inclined to simply give up, to be overwhelmed by household tasks and even a desire to write.  Workout clothes for me are not particularly flattering but they get the job done.  Scant because I get hot when I move, and when I get cool it reminds me, I have to move, if only to cycle the laundry, or to generate enough body heat that when I stand in the garage to fold it I will be grateful for the coolness of the space. 

While dancing, I thought about how my core muscles just needed to be treated better--and blessed with new strength.  And I have long meditated on the pregnant metaphor of core. (it's where the seeds are)  So, of course I made an anagram of C.O.R.E--and this is my copyright too--Cooperate Organically, Respond Enthusiastically?  Putting on workout gear has been an important reminder that I need to to respond enthusiastically, today I chose to dance--with passion, and the gratitude that no one was watching.