Health
Habits
Food
Weight 
Better Than Butternut: Roasted Delicata Squash Recipe
10 Simple Ways To Eat Less Without Noticing
Juicing: Stupid and Pretentious or Nourishing and Enlightening?
10 Tasty Carbs That Won’t Make You Fat
How To Start Working Out When You Don’t Like To Exercise
Focus More on Your Brain and Less on Your Diet if You’re Serious About Losing Weight
Home Court Habits: The Secret to Effortless Weight Control
10 Reasons You Aren’t Losing Weight When You Think You’re Doing Everything Right
How To Burn More Calories Without Breaking A Sweat
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Foodists
Eating Like An Avatar
Sometimes it takes a new set of eyes to see things clearly. Sometimes a new perspective can be enough to change your world.
In the blockbuster film Avatar, advanced neuro-technology is used to plug human consciousness into alien bodies (avatars) and operate them remotely. Scientists use these avatars to explore the planet Pandora and learn the ways of its native people, the Na’vi.
The Na’vi share an intimate bond with their natural habitat, making their behavior seem primitive and incomprehensible to the humans studying them. But when Jake Sully immerses himself in Na’vi culture as an assignment, his experience changes him in ways no one could have imagined.
Behaviors we don’t understand are often the easiest to ridicule and reject. But putting aside your preconceptions and coming to a new world with open eyes can be the best way to improve your circumstances and enrich your life.
Do you have prejudices that are keeping you from eating healthy?
I have certainly had many.
Believe it or not, there was a time I thought all organic food was an elaborate, expensive hoax designed to trick rich people into paying more for food the rest of us could get for a fraction of the price. I just didn’t get it. I hadn’t yet tasted the difference, so I didn’t believe it existed.
There was also a time when home cooking seemed to me like a laughable, time-consuming and pointless affair, better suited to married life or, well, anyone who wasn’t me. Why would I cook when someone else could do it for me?
Weekly shopping at the farmers market was another tough idea to swallow (who wants to get up that early on a Saturday?), as was ignoring free food at social events–one of the most fundamental and revered components of graduate school (it’s free!!).
My problem was that I didn’t yet see the value in these activities, so they didn’t seem important.
But of course, I was wrong.
It is absolutely worth the extra effort and money for higher quality organic vegetables that I am actually excited to eat.
Cooking for myself is by far the most efficient, tasty and healthy way to feed myself.
And shopping at the farmers market and maintaining a high-quality diet is the single most important thing I do to stay healthy; it is also really fun.
But I don’t expect you to believe me. This is not the kind of information you can read on a blog and automatically integrate into your life.
To understand my enthusiasm for farm fresh food and home-cooked meals, you really have to dive in head first and try it yourself.
There’s nothing to lose and everything to gain.
So what’s stopping you?
Become more of a foodie. What a great goal for the new year…
Excellent.
Tony
I’m not sure how I came to Summer Tomato, but I’ve been a subscriber now for a couple of weeks.
I love the segue in this post, especially with the way you used this existential paragraph:
“Behaviors we don’t understand are often the easiest to ridicule and reject. But putting aside your preconceptions and coming to a new world with open eyes can be the best way to improve your circumstances and enrich your life.”
Correlating it to food makes so much sense, though it’s an after-the-fact realization. If I had read this post before I came to understand how food affects me in psychosomatic ways, I would have glossed over it. It’s the paradox of more healthy people going to the gym as opposed to the ones who really need to exercise.
This post really gives that DIY umph. What great motivation at the start of the new year!
Thanks Akshay! So glad to connect with you.
I love the Avatar reference. It’s now my favorite movie after seeing it in 3D. One quote from it that stuck with me was “All energy is borrowed, and one day you will have to give it back.” That’s basically what we are doing when we eat. Borrowing energy from one life form, and transferring it into you. I’m not much of an organic food eater yet, but I’m definitely willing to give it a try. You are what you eat, right?
That’s awesome, let me know how it goes. I’m really more of a fan of non-industrial food vs. pure organics–I’ve just seen so many huge corporations peddle organic foods but miss the spirit of the movement. Farmers markets are my fave 🙂
It’s funny how many people my age just don’t cook. I know my closest friends do not. They’re surprised there’s always food in my fridge and pantry. My husband’s friends came to visit recently (from Belgium) and they were also surprised by this fact, even more so when they saw we live in an area with easy access to lots of restaurants and takeout places. I can’t imagine buying food every day! But it seems to be one of those things of ‘our times’, isn’t it?