The Damned Picky Eater

Do I really want to expose this much? Granted I've shared mental illness, alcohol recovery, and terminal heart disease. But diet? That's personal.

1. Years ago I cut two whole food groups from my diet. The first I no longer enjoyed (red meat and poultry, sans Brian’s pork ribs). The second I deemed unhealthy (anything white).

2. I crafted a classification of foods called "nutrient rich,” limiting myself to those - organic and whole foods (coffee included) - demonizing ultra-processed, fried, and fast. Foods are declared either health promoting (clean) or unhealthy (precursor to disease).

3. I assess and judge what is on other’s plates.

4. I maintain a certain weight range which my cardiologists say is best for combating heart failure. The determination is my body’s natural set point range. However, I pay strict attention to body proportion, ensuring an hourglass figure regardless of my discomfort with the male gaze. Access to fashion may be the culprit, the fashion industry perpetuating hypersensitivity to body shape and size.

4. While some years ago I disengaged MyFitnessPal app, counting calories and macronutrients are imbedded, rarely exceeding daily 1800 calories. The World Health Organization considers 1200 the minimum for survival. One calorie less is starvation. USDA uses 2000 as a generic target consumption for moderately active American adults. 

5. I decline invitations to join friends at restaurants where menus do not include extensive vegan or vegetarian options. In this way social engagements are often impeded.

6. I bring salads and soup to family gatherings refusing standard southern cuisine, preferring instead to watch people eat rather than partake, hungry though I may be.

7. At most I consume two meals daily with a fruit snack around midnight. Never three meals and many days only one.

8. Unless a tough day demands Häagen-Dazs dulce de leche, I refrain from refined sugar. The exceptions are at one friend’s home. Her dinner party desserts are a delicious treat that I savor. Most fine dining establishments also have incredible dessert options worthy of breaking rules. And See’s chocolate is irresistible to any breathing human. Only dark chocolate as somewhere, some medical journal classified dark as laced with health benefits.

9. I am a dinner party host’s nightmare often suggesting coffee dates in lieu of lunch or dinner. Feeding me is a hassle and ridiculous though it is, I hate partaking in meals with picky eaters.

What to do with this knowledge admitting no desire to change behavior? It derives from the ego boosting feeling of “food superiority.” This is the insidiousness of diet culture. Thank you Sarai, Eugenia, Virginia, Dacy, Gretchen, and Emily. As the Isley Brothers sang, “I’ve got work to do."