We're all really, really hard on ourselves about food

3 things I learned from you all about how you want to be eating and cooking

A quick housekeeping note: Today’s newsletter is free to all; you will not be charged if you had a paid subscription when I went on hiatus in July. Paid subscriptions will remain OFF as I slowly regain a regular publishing cadence, and I will give you ample notice before I turn paid subscriptions back on again, likely around the beginning of 2025. Any questions, shoot me an email at gentlefoods@substack.com.

A couple of weeks ago, I put out a question on my Instagram stories asking you all what your biggest barriers are to eating and cooking in a sustainable way. I had been thinking about how hard it can be for people to go from the sparkle and allure of New Year’s resolutions and quick-fixes (dry January/Whole30/keto/etc.) back to…well, regular old life. I was curious to start a conversation around how we want to nourish ourselves in a way that feels pleasurable and doable year-round—not just in a way that makes us feel virtuous for the month of January—and what challenges we face in claiming that for ourselves. The short answer: We struggle with a whole lot of perfectionism.

Your answers were fascinating and illuminating, and I go deep on them with my friend

Cadence Dubus

in the newest episode of her Busy Body podcast, which you can listen to on her newsletter

After Class with Cadence

. This episode is a follow-up to an episode we recorded back in January, which you can listen to here. That first episode focused on your food anxieties, food myths and fear mongering, and how to handle other peoples’ diet talk when you're simply not about that. In this one, we hone in on some of the ways in which perfectionism, that sneaky old friend, niggles its way into all kinds of thoughts we have and stories we tell ourselves about food.

Cadence and I recorded these podcast episodes because we believe these conversations are important to have and also not happening nearly enough. If you’re a regular reader of this newsletter, you might know that Cadence and I co-host an anti-diet coaching program called Nourish Yourself. It’s a seven-week course designed to equip you with the confidence and information you need to empower yourself around food and figure out what works for your unique body, and includes live group calls and private coaching sessions with Cadence, a live cooking class with me, and much more. If you resonate with what we talk about in these podcast episodes, Nourish Yourself is for you.

The next Nourish Yourself session starts March 10, and enrollment opens February 24(!) You can sign up for the waitlist here to be notified. I really hope to meet some of you there!

Nourish Yourself Pt. 2

While I encourage giving the full episode a listen, today I wanted to share some of the recurring themes that really stood out to me from among your answers, most notable of which was (surprise!) perfectionism:

Is a stir-fry of cauliflower, cabbage, and potatoes “less healthy” because you can’t “see the rainbow”?

We have very rigid definitions of what we think is “healthy,” “good,” and “right.” But these definitions are ours to change and shift.

People shared all kinds of scenarios in their responses: You have a few go-to healthy meals but get bored of them quickly, resent cooking, and then order takeout. You want to eat well, but a colorful plate of whole foods often comes at a price. You need to be excited to eat leftovers at work the next day or you’ll buy lunch and undo the sustainable cooking. You’re worried about getting enough fiber at every meal. On the surface, these are all different concerns. But what I see when I read these is a single throughline in which we can only see the “one right way” to do something. If I have leftovers from a “healthy” meal that I made and add a side of frozen tater tots to round it out and make it feel a little more exciting, does that make it “unhealthy”? Does a plate with one or two colors of vegetable have less worth or value than one that features the rainbow? When we start applying critical thinking to our beliefs around food, we often find there are many valid answers beyond the one we thought was the “right” one.

Are pancakes made with whole-grain flour and kefir and cooked in oil “unhealthy’?

We’re convinced healthy food and pleasure cannot coexist.

Cadence talks a lot in her newsletter about how so much of our modern conception of healthy food is rooted in America’s ascetic Anglo-Puritan roots. We think of healthy food as food that doesn’t inspire us to want more, that doesn’t instill pleasure, and that is restrained. When we eat something that tastes really good, it often triggers a big red flag inside that whatever we’re eating must not be “healthy” and that the pleasure we’re experiencing is going to send us spinning “out of control.” But when healthy food is equated with being boring and restrictive in our minds, it’s really not going to keep our interest for very long.

We’re all really concerned about wasting food but not sure what to do about it.

Food waste is a tricky subject because everyone’s path to waste can look different. Maybe your struggle is that you make too much of a food that’s not very exciting to you, and then you get bored and can’t deal with it anymore and end up throwing it out and feeling guilty. Maybe you buy too many perishables like delicate produce at once without having a plan for how to use them up before they go bad. Maybe you hate leftovers. There’s no single solution that addresses all of these scenarios, but over time we can develop more consciousness about what our personal habits and tendencies are, how we like to eat, and adjust our shopping and/or cooking practices accordingly.

Again, if you’re interested in exploring these ideas more, check out what we’re offering in our Nourish Yourself course.

Thanks for reading. Until next week!

-Chaey