The Pleasure Diet

All that yummy food in the grocery store aisles, tempting us to indulge.

A gauntlet of frosted cookies and heavenly pastries and foil-wrapped chocolates…

Creamy lattes topped with frothy whipped cream… Sweet smoothies packed with icy goodness…

But if you say yes to pleasure, you know you’ll pay for it. Is the pleasure worth the pain?

Yes!

(You knew I’d say that. 😊)

Because food is one of the ways we love ourselves.

And it’s telling that culture tells us we shouldn’t.

Too many women feel the shame of judgmental eyes when they pick up a pastry or purchase a basket of treats. As if we don’t “deserve” it. As if we have to earn the “right” to eat.

And that stress follows many women for a lifetime. The pleasure of food always comes with pain.

It may seem odd that I write about food, but how much is your sense of attractiveness and lovability tied to your body?

If we don’t feel good about our body, if we don’t think we deserve to eat, then it affects how we show up in our lives.

So no, nutritionists and diet experts aren’t the only people who get to talk about food.

Food is more than calories and nutrients. It’s a relationship.

And it’s one of our most primal, profound relationships throughout our lives.

It can be a healthy relationship that nourishes us and makes us happy…

Or it can be a stressful relationship that drains us and is twinned with pain.

In my book The Pleasure Diet, I track the way a stressful relationship with food can impact our weight.

The way you feel when you eat impacts what your body does with that food: how it digests it, where those calories end up.

Which means that a key component of health is reducing the stress we feel around food.

Not necessarily by “eating anything you want.”

But by eating foods that make your body feel nourished and satisfied.

When your body is happy, you are happy.

Rediscover the pleasure in eating.