Consume or Taste

Some of you may know that this year I have started on a diet to loose a lot of weight. So far it seems to be working (TK pounds and counting). Essentially it’s simply limiting my calories but I have also changed what I eat and even how. That started mostly out of necessity; I needed meals with fewer calories if I didn’t want to just cut my regular meals into a fraction of what I used to consume. So I stared eating more things I hadn’t before as well as developed a taste for things I used not to like. Examples? At home I eat spinach on nearly a daily basis and zucchini is now one of my top foods. For people that have known me a long time that is probably moderately shocking.

But I’ve also started to regard food differently. Quick lunches are no longer hefty sandwiches picked up at Wawa, or tempura called ahead for. Often it will be yogurt and a small bag of baked crisps. When I do plan ahead I can make myself something tasty like a thought out sandwich or a hummus plate, maybe some sort of chicken dish. But often lunch is just fuel.

And I’ve recently noticed that this has made me think about food differently. I recently returned from New Orleans where I would have gorged myself off my diet had I not also walked 4-6 hours each day. But eating down there made me realize that I no longer regard food with the idea of “eat”. Depending on the food I think of it in one of two ways: consume or taste.

When I have a quick lunch I just consume it. It’s mainly fuel to keep me going. If I need a quick snack like a cereal bar I consume that too. But when I get something like anything I had in New Orleans or when I make myself something really nice I taste it. And splitting up my meals into two mental categories has been the trick that has made my diet sustainable. If I went to lunch each day wanting something that was a pleasure to taste then I would soon grow disappointed on most days and probably would have dropped my diet by now. But I don’t have that as a goal. I just want to consume it and then enjoy the rest of my lunch break reading and talking to people. I’m much more likely to want to taste my dinner, when I can spend some time preparing it or mulling over a menu. Having one tasting meal a day keeps the joy in food, because I love food, but also lets me stay on my diet without feeling daily dissatisfaction.

There has been a good amount of compromise in my diet since I am now watching my calories. But like with writing I find that I work better when under some sort of pressure. I’ve experimented more in what I can put in my tasting meals. I find that some salads I consume (generic table salads) but some I have incorporated into tasting meals (arugula, spinach, sun dried tomatoes). Vinegar sauces have become much more common in my dinners. I have also deepened my romance with Sriracha sauces, both the more common pepper sauce as well as the garlic pepper relish. They add spice, flavor and essentially no calories. This is truly the food of the gods.

Maybe I’ll start posting some recipes if people want to know what I’ve been working on. I also welcome any healthful suggestions. But this post is really just for me to get the idea of taste vs. consumption out of me head and onto non-literal paper. It’s a concept I only just discovered I had been using and it’s been amazingly helpful. Maybe someone else will find benefit in it as well.