Thoughts on Food and Eating

For as long as I can remember I have had a confusing relationship with food. In my innocence food was my pat on the back, my comfort, my escape, and my greatest enjoyment. Later it became my obsession, my nemisis and my control. Yeah, it felt as crazy as it sounds.
Sometime around my 8th year I became an eating zombie. I devoured whole bags of Sour Cream and Onion chips (or BBQ, Cool Ranch, Nacho Cheese, etc.) in a single sitting. At every dinner I ate until I thought I might throw up, and sometimes did. And if I did...I ate some more. You get the picture. I used food like people use crack (sugar high) or heroin (what my sister likes to call an eat-a-coma). My experience is unfortunately not uncommon in the United States, and increasingly the world. As children are burdened with more anxiety and a weaker social network to help them cope, along with a natural inclination to choose processed foods, it seems that childhood obesity could one day become something that is considered normal; or at least a natural part of growing up.
Not long after my graduation from high school I began to channel my anxiety through food in a different way, by obsessively counting calories, limiting the types of food I was willing to eat and exercise. A typical lunch went from a turkey sandwich with 1/2 lb of meat and cheese slopped with mayo to a grapefruit. I stopped eating meat. Gradually, I stopped eating on a daily basis. I developed what has become a more commonly recognized, and accepted, eating disorder. But a person can only lead a productive life with those habits for so long and above all else I hold productivity in importance. I needed to make peace with food and with my body and I needed help to get there.
It was not until my early 20's that I actually learned to enjoy food and its nutrients collectively. Thanks to a nutritionist, for the first time in my life, I learned what feeling an appropriate level of full felt like (3-4 on a 0-5 scale).Working on my side was the fact that I had grown up exposed to a variety of healthy foods, fresh fruits and vegetables. Of course, I had also grown up with a love of Entenmann's cakes, French fries and chicken nuggets but I was one step up on anyone who had no desire to eat fresh foods at all. Also, it is astounding how the mind works when it comes to food and fairly easy to recondition yourself to desire whole foods, as your body is already craving the nutrients found in them. Still, I was a diet food junkie and calorie counter until relatively recently. I also continued to exclude meat from my diet (although I eventually added fish) for reasons I will discuss in another entry.
I have now entered into a new phase in my eating life, following the most basic and time tested diet I know of, eating locally and seasonally. There are a number of exceptions to this, which I hope to begin making myself or buying locally(cheese, yogurt, tomato sauce, salsa, pasta, bread, ice cream and beans if I can find them local or grow them on my own.) I am really enjoying the challenge, using vegetables I wouldn't generally buy in the store and learning new recipes for them. Above all else I appreciate the realization that food can be both sustaining and comforting. I can both eat to live AND live to eat and, indeed, have my cake and eat it too.