“Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.” ~ Michael Pollan
Just about a year ago, I wrote a post about eating magically. Magic was and is at the heart of everything I do – why on earth wasn’t I also using that as a basis for how I was eating? Despite eating pretty well, I was experiencing a then 9-month long case of hives, and was at the end of my itchy rope. So I took my own advice, spending the past year paying very close attention to the Magic of what I ate and drank.
When I talk about eating Magically it sounds like I spend my days whipping up stardust and moonbeam smoothies while telling you the virtues of living my high-raw and therefore high-vibe life.
I don’t and I won’t do that. (And I’m not raw vegan. In fact, I am unclassifiable.)
I do admit that in the past I have been tempted by the wonder. I have seen articles about the glorious effects of drinking collagen and then gone to Amazon to see how much those little pots of goodness (it turns out they are made of whizzed up cows) were and then laughed at myself and wondered about the state of the world. I have stood in a bookstore and fondled the pages of a cookbook full of recipes for powders and sauces that all appear to have mystical powers, if you have the time and the life energy and the money to spend on all of that.
But when I stop myself and let myself breathe for a few moments (my rule: step away and think about it if it promises a miracle), I can see that not only does the Emperor have no clothes on, but that he/she is ageing and worried about her body just like I am.
For more than 30 years of my life, I struggled with food. I was home from school with ‘tummy aches’ a lot, and as I got older I felt just a little bit sick a lot of the time. I went to the doctor so often with lots of things. Luckily I lived in a country where I could do that. When, totally frustrated, I finally went to another doctor (after a brutal internal scope to check for ulcers) and said, “something’s still not right!”, and he said, “we’ll do a blood test to just rule out Celiac Disease,” my life changed.
Within months of not eating gluten, as my gut healed, I began to be able to eat fruit again. Despite years – years – of scarfing down vitamins, it was when I began to eat differently that I began to feel better.
But it was shopping for food that really shifted things.
When you are allergic to gluten, you have to read every single food label. Every one. And when you start to read what is going into your body, you begin to wonder what the heck all of that tetrahydrowhatisthatizine is doing in your food.
So slowly we began making small changes. When we could afford it, we’d choose organic fruits and vegetables. When something had too many ingredients to pronounce, we put it back on the shelf. We chose to make a few more things from scratch. We stopped eating things with ingredients that we knew were poison (MSG and high-fructose corn syrup were the first to go), and began to choose differently whenever we could.
None of this was complicated or expensive or unusual. It was simply a matter of choosing things that either were – or had the closest passing resemblance to – real food.
And with each choice, the next one seemed a little bit easier. We weren’t perfect, in fact as big food lovers we had lots of ridiculous conversations in the condiments aisle, and lots of nights of just buying whatever we wanted. But as the years went by, we began having less of that and more conscious choices.
And that was when we began to talk about changing our lives.
I don’t think that it was a coincidence that when we were eating more real food and less fake food we began to feel better. I don’t think that it is a coincidence that as we healed our bodies, our thoughts went to wanting more. The more actual food we ate, the more we wanted to do more, see more, and create more.
Then I added Magic to the mix. And you know, the overwhelming feeling I had right from the beginning was relief and expansion.
Eating Magically is not about potions or powders or fads or capital W ‘wellness’. In my opinion that is simply another way to give our power and our connection to our Source away. It’s not about what to eat or what not to eat. It’s about coming at eating from an entirely new perspective.
Remember that in my definition, Magic is: the moments of connection between me and the Mystery/ Source/ the Divine. So then Eating Magically is about seeing the Divine, allowing the Wonder, and opening to the Universe in every bite. It’s about allowing food to remind us of who we are – instead of all of the the ways that we are not.
We were built to eat. We were built to need food. Isn’t it possible that the infinite wisdom that created us also created the nourishment we need in the forms we need it? And what if magical food does not have to be only for the people who can afford little pots of it, because all food is magical?
What if the food we eat is the foundation for every other interaction we have with the world?
with so much love,
This year has taught me about the true power of intention. Not – ‘I want a red bicycle’ from The Secret – intention, but pure ‘this is how I want to feel’ intention.
