JONTILLMAN.COM | Part of the problem since 1976

Food; our attitude towards it and our relationship with it affects every facet of our lives. Alongside sleeping, eating is one of the two things that you have to do. From a biological perspective, just about everything else is optional. Funny how so many of us treat sleeping and eating as if they were optional…

I know I did. Previously, I ate in the same manner that I have seen a lot of folks in my generation eat; no breakfast, some sort of sandwich or something else mindless for lunch around 2pm, at my desk of course, and then dinner whenever I got home from work, having not really ever been concious of the food I had eaten. Not exactly a healthy way to approach eating, but that was what I was doing, and what I see a whole lot of other people doing too.

It stands to reason then that anyone who is trying to become more in tune and directly involved in the stuff of their own lives should look first at their eating and sleeping. Because of the primacy of these two needs to the human animal, it is here that the most far-reaching and powerful changes can be made in ourselves.

Over the last year I have been becoming more and more involved with my food; mentally, emotionally and physically. As a result of this, I have lost almost all of my excess weight (I was 30 pounds overweight), I feel healthy all the time, and my outlook on life has completely changed, in a positive direction. Oh, and I never once counted calories or worried about “good” or “bad” foods, nor did I pay any attention whatsoever to carbs, or fat grams, or whatever the dieting stat-of-the-month is right now.

I did read a lot of books on nutrition (not on dieting) and I spent a lot of time thinking about my relationship to my food. I followed the advice of clinical professionals and I talked to a heck of a lot of people about food and cooking, and eating. Slowly but surely, I became healthier and smarter about food. I developed an aesthetic sense for food, and became unwilling to eat anything substandard.

This journey into food isn’t over. I am sure that it has only begun, but I would like to share with you what I have found so far, and what I find in the future; maybe by sharing what works and what doesn’t work for me someone else will find it useful, or tip me off to something else I could try. So, every Friday, I will post something related to changing my relationship to food. think of it as “Food Friday” and enjoy my one-man meme.

This guide is not for those who seek some magical bullet or time-saving way to become healthier. There is no such thing. You cannot have a healthy relationship to food if you (even partially) view it as consumption. Food is one of the great aims of life, and should be one of the great joys. Elevating the quality of our food and taking time to enjoy it is a simple way to infuse our daily lives with joy. Food, properly viewed, can act as a sort of amulet against exasperation, against the malpractice of those who are too impatient to feel and taste, too greedy to remember what they had just devoured.

This guide is for people who want to be healthier, happier, calmer people, and who are willing to put in the time and effort needed to completely change their lives in order to develop a healthy relationship with food. Towards that end, and realizing that most people in the United States are completely without taste and discrimination, we offer some simple steps to undertake, one after the other, to help you to enjoy your food more, rein in your ballooning body full of empty calories, and maybe even live long enough to actually enjoy your food and your life. The steps are organized in order of increasing distance from the normal habit of modern Americans.

Next Week: Eating By The Clock