Thank you for this concept about the "maximizing" craziness.
I read this today, just after getting off of a paratransit bus, during which the driver and I had been talking about meals we like to make, en route home from my weekly, over-priced grocery trip.
Lately I keep overshooting my weekly food stamp allotment.
As we discussed food prices, the driver, who i had forgotten somehow annoyingly finds time to can her own food and bake bread to save money after working her full-time job, was talking about her elaborate--what I'll call--"food perfectionism journey."
I, on the other hand, have excruciating foot pain, and recently have been searching for reasonably healthy and affordable home-cooked recipes that can get me off my feet in 5 minutes.
Plus who the heck has time or inclination in 2025 to make and can pasta sauce or bake bread to save a few bucks?
That's from my young, over-ambitious, perfectionist hippy-foodie days.
When my feet didn't hurt.
Besides, I can throw together a diced onion, browned ground beef, and a can of pureed tomatoes pretty quickly once a week to last several days, so why would I home-can it--hours on my feet to make extra? Although even cooking it fresh each week is pushing it on time and foot pain. I'm 63.
But what really got me was when she said she has always believed in only buying foods whose ingredients she can pronounce. (Yawn. Cliche.)
I said I used to do that but had gone overboard and gotten neurotic with it.
Her eyes expressed recognition.
I'd told her previously I'm recovering from an eating disorder (ED), caused by dieting.
Or what I'll call my "eating disorder journey."
The food perfectionism and dietary obsessions are everywhere these days!
And it's making us sicker, it turns out.
And not only with rapidly increasing rates of EDs.
In ED recovery, we learn that one of the most common effects of dieting is breakfast-skipping, which I've done for years as part of my "dieting journey."
In the ED recovery world, it's called "morning anorexia" and its taken v-e-r-y seriously.
Eating restriction of any kind is taken seriously in that world, because it usually causes rebound eating or even binge eating, usually at night, when the hunger has grown too much after a long, hard day of dieting. And rebound or binge eating is usually on less-healthy foods than if one had just eaten an extra bagel and cream cheese at breakfast or extra sandwich when hungry for it at lunch.
I just read yesterday that a whopping 25% of Americans are now skipping breakfast.
1 in 4!
And that ample studies have shown that breakfast-skipping is strongly associated with greater likelihood of developing diabetes and heart disease. (Due to all the ensuing bingeing, and grabbing foods higher on the food chain, to fill an overly hungry stomach on the run.)
So, we have doctors and public health officials telling us to lose weight--by dieting, taking appetite suppressants, and exercise-dieting (which also causes bingeing) to prevent diabetes and heart disease, but the dieting (food restriction) causes diabetes and heart disease!
Yet again, two friends just told me their doctors have put them on restrictive diets or appetite suppressants "for health" without first asking one of them if she ate breakfast daily, or determining how the other one was restricting her food intake, first.
The first thing any doctor should ask of anyone of greater size, or of any size with dietary diseases such as high blood pressure or elevated blood sugar is, "Do you eat breakfast daily? If so, before 8 am?"
The #1 known thing we can do to prevent diabetes and heart disease is to eat breakfast 7 days a week, specifically before 8 am daily, the research on tens of thousands of people and multiple studies show.
Even skipping breakfast once a week increases the risk of these diseases.
It helps to eat a full, *heart healthy* breakfast, such as a couple of bowls of whole grain cereal with soymilk or other plant milk, with fruit, and something such as peanut butter toast (or canned baked beans on toast). But any breakfast is key.
In our medical and public health instructions to "maximize" via weight loss, and the dieting, "healthy eating" obsession, and food perfectionism that has ensued (Weight Watchers, Nutri-System, Noom, Slim Fast, organic, paleo, keto, low-carb, high-starch/low fat, local, vegan, farm-to-table, etc.), we have lost sight of the basics (taught in ED recovery) which is to first NORMALIZE eating: eat breakfast, in the early morning, as part of 3 meals per day, plus 1 - 3 snacks as needed to tide oneself over until the next meal.
And to fill up at each meal or snack.
Eating 3 meals, plus snacks, per day, at consistent times, is the starting point and foundation of ED recovery.
The goal of which, for plus-size ED clients, isn't to lose weight, but to restore NORMAL, non-dieting, non-restrictive eating.
That means, first and foremost, to fill up on 3 meals a day, especially breakfast.
And we're taught in ED recovery, it doesnt matter if the food is "perfect." Just, on a consistent meal schedule, 3x/day, sling all or most of the food groups (whole starches protein, heart-healthy fat, fruit and vegetables, and dairy or non-dairy alternatives, and tasty extras, including dessert, on the table and let everyone assemble their own breakfasts or sandwiches and enjoy foods that are tasty, such as ranch dressing to go with the carrot sticks, so that everyone wants to eat.
So I was happy and proud today to reach an "eating disorder recovery journey" milestone, to impulsively buy some cheap Jiffy blueberry muffin mix, to quickly and easily make muffins to have for an easy breakfast item tomorrow, which happens to have ingredients I can't pronounce.
Which I then felt affirmed in doing, by your article rejecting "maximizing," and instead embracing returning to NORMAL: which in my case is simply eating breakfast before 8 am. (Which I haven't done in years.)
The perfect is indeed the enemy of the good.
I'm going to tell the bus driver about my muffin-eating with ingredients I can't pronounce next time I see her.
Has anyone else here had it with food and eating "maximizing" and perfectionism?
Edit: I meant to write that "eating any *types* of foods at breakfast is key."
Filling up at breakfast is important.
It can take a long time to get the breakfast habit and be able to eat much at breakfast, but by staying at it, eventually one will be able to eat more at breakfast time, because gradually eating more at breakfast gradually reduces night time eating, and increases morning hunger.
Thank you for this concept about the "maximizing" craziness.
I read this today, just after getting off of a paratransit bus, during which the driver and I had been talking about meals we like to make, en route home from my weekly, over-priced grocery trip.
Lately I keep overshooting my weekly food stamp allotment.
As we discussed food prices, the driver, who i had forgotten somehow annoyingly finds time to can her own food and bake bread to save money after working her full-time job, was talking about her elaborate--what I'll call--"food perfectionism journey."
I, on the other hand, have excruciating foot pain, and recently have been searching for reasonably healthy and affordable home-cooked recipes that can get me off my feet in 5 minutes.
Plus who the heck has time or inclination in 2025 to make and can pasta sauce or bake bread to save a few bucks?
That's from my young, over-ambitious, perfectionist hippy-foodie days.
When my feet didn't hurt.
Besides, I can throw together a diced onion, browned ground beef, and a can of pureed tomatoes pretty quickly once a week to last several days, so why would I home-can it--hours on my feet to make extra? Although even cooking it fresh each week is pushing it on time and foot pain. I'm 63.
But what really got me was when she said she has always believed in only buying foods whose ingredients she can pronounce. (Yawn. Cliche.)
I said I used to do that but had gone overboard and gotten neurotic with it.
Her eyes expressed recognition.
I'd told her previously I'm recovering from an eating disorder (ED), caused by dieting.
Or what I'll call my "eating disorder journey."
The food perfectionism and dietary obsessions are everywhere these days!
And it's making us sicker, it turns out.
And not only with rapidly increasing rates of EDs.
In ED recovery, we learn that one of the most common effects of dieting is breakfast-skipping, which I've done for years as part of my "dieting journey."
In the ED recovery world, it's called "morning anorexia" and its taken v-e-r-y seriously.
Eating restriction of any kind is taken seriously in that world, because it usually causes rebound eating or even binge eating, usually at night, when the hunger has grown too much after a long, hard day of dieting. And rebound or binge eating is usually on less-healthy foods than if one had just eaten an extra bagel and cream cheese at breakfast or extra sandwich when hungry for it at lunch.
I just read yesterday that a whopping 25% of Americans are now skipping breakfast.
1 in 4!
And that ample studies have shown that breakfast-skipping is strongly associated with greater likelihood of developing diabetes and heart disease. (Due to all the ensuing bingeing, and grabbing foods higher on the food chain, to fill an overly hungry stomach on the run.)
So, we have doctors and public health officials telling us to lose weight--by dieting, taking appetite suppressants, and exercise-dieting (which also causes bingeing) to prevent diabetes and heart disease, but the dieting (food restriction) causes diabetes and heart disease!
Yet again, two friends just told me their doctors have put them on restrictive diets or appetite suppressants "for health" without first asking one of them if she ate breakfast daily, or determining how the other one was restricting her food intake, first.
The first thing any doctor should ask of anyone of greater size, or of any size with dietary diseases such as high blood pressure or elevated blood sugar is, "Do you eat breakfast daily? If so, before 8 am?"
The #1 known thing we can do to prevent diabetes and heart disease is to eat breakfast 7 days a week, specifically before 8 am daily, the research on tens of thousands of people and multiple studies show.
Even skipping breakfast once a week increases the risk of these diseases.
It helps to eat a full, *heart healthy* breakfast, such as a couple of bowls of whole grain cereal with soymilk or other plant milk, with fruit, and something such as peanut butter toast (or canned baked beans on toast). But any breakfast is key.
In our medical and public health instructions to "maximize" via weight loss, and the dieting, "healthy eating" obsession, and food perfectionism that has ensued (Weight Watchers, Nutri-System, Noom, Slim Fast, organic, paleo, keto, low-carb, high-starch/low fat, local, vegan, farm-to-table, etc.), we have lost sight of the basics (taught in ED recovery) which is to first NORMALIZE eating: eat breakfast, in the early morning, as part of 3 meals per day, plus 1 - 3 snacks as needed to tide oneself over until the next meal.
And to fill up at each meal or snack.
Eating 3 meals, plus snacks, per day, at consistent times, is the starting point and foundation of ED recovery.
The goal of which, for plus-size ED clients, isn't to lose weight, but to restore NORMAL, non-dieting, non-restrictive eating.
That means, first and foremost, to fill up on 3 meals a day, especially breakfast.
And we're taught in ED recovery, it doesnt matter if the food is "perfect." Just, on a consistent meal schedule, 3x/day, sling all or most of the food groups (whole starches protein, heart-healthy fat, fruit and vegetables, and dairy or non-dairy alternatives, and tasty extras, including dessert, on the table and let everyone assemble their own breakfasts or sandwiches and enjoy foods that are tasty, such as ranch dressing to go with the carrot sticks, so that everyone wants to eat.
So I was happy and proud today to reach an "eating disorder recovery journey" milestone, to impulsively buy some cheap Jiffy blueberry muffin mix, to quickly and easily make muffins to have for an easy breakfast item tomorrow, which happens to have ingredients I can't pronounce.
Which I then felt affirmed in doing, by your article rejecting "maximizing," and instead embracing returning to NORMAL: which in my case is simply eating breakfast before 8 am. (Which I haven't done in years.)
The perfect is indeed the enemy of the good.
I'm going to tell the bus driver about my muffin-eating with ingredients I can't pronounce next time I see her.
Has anyone else here had it with food and eating "maximizing" and perfectionism?
Thank you!
Edit: I meant to write that "eating any *types* of foods at breakfast is key."
Filling up at breakfast is important.
It can take a long time to get the breakfast habit and be able to eat much at breakfast, but by staying at it, eventually one will be able to eat more at breakfast time, because gradually eating more at breakfast gradually reduces night time eating, and increases morning hunger.