A few years ago when I was starting to get tired of the constant dieting, I read French Women Don’t Get Fat. I was intrigued by the book, although it didn’t cause a earth shaking change in my life. One thing I did take from the book is the notion to be picky about what you eat.
This doesn’t mean being an ungrateful guest or making people feel that their food isn’t good enough. What it does mean is to pick and choose what you like best to eat. Savor your food. Insist on the best. While I don’t always practice this 100%, I think I practice this most of the time.
Take for example, breakfast yesterday morning…
While there are plenty of delicious places to eat in Chapel Hill, I could not pass up the chance to hit up th Whole Food breakfast hot bar before my 10 am meeting at UNC.
Although my beloved oats were on the menu, I can make oatmeal any ol’ day of the week. However, I cannot make quiche, tofu scramble, blueberry pancakes, and sauteed spinach and mushrooms. Well, not all in the same morning anyway.
Being a picky eater to me means eating for variety and savoring just a bite or two of the very best.
Later that day, our meeting was catered in for lunch. In this case, there was no room to be picky. It was taco bar or go hungry. I was pretty excited to see guac at the end of the buffet. The used-to-be frozen desserts were very easy to pass up. After a filling lunch, I didn’t want anything else.
Plus, I knew before I headed out of town, there would be a second trip to Whole Foods to stock up on non-perishables.
The bakery had my name all over it.
Rather than eat some okay dessert, I held out for a vegan chocolate chip cookie. Crunchy, salty, sweet. It was everything I wanted right then and was a nice afternoon snack on the drive from Chapel Hill to Charlotte.
I often find that when I succumb to the sweet I can eat now versus the food (sweet or otherwise) that I really want, I feel unsatisfied and end up eating what I want eventually.
Being picky paid off.
Rascal has not learned the value of being picky. While I was in Whole Foods, he was in the car, waiting for me to return and decided to have his own little snack: the gum I chewed yesterday, wadded up in a tissue, and forgot about. He was gnawing on his minty green paws during the entire three hour ride home.
Watching me savor my cookie was all the punishment he needed.