Food is for Fuel and Fun

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Transcript 

 Today, I want to talk about a concept that I like to call food is for fuel and for fun. Basically, food, yes, is meant to be a source of nourishment and nutrition. But it's also a source of enjoyment.

Sometimes we can get so focused on what's healthy that we lose sight of the bigger picture. My belief is that when healthy becomes stressful or it takes us away from enjoying celebrations with our family or happy hours with friends, it's really not healthy anymore.

If it helps, I like to think of my meals and foods as fitting into different buckets. So you have your healthy bucket, which would be your food is for fuel bucket. And that is obviously like all of the foods that are nourishing for your body, or “healthy". So like fruits, veggies, your good proteins, your good fats. All of that fits into the healthy bucket.

But you also have other buckets. So not everything you eat has to be perfectly healthy. And these buckets are the food is for fun part of the “food is for fuel and for fun” concept. This mindset really helped me lose the guilt associated with eating things that weren't as perfect or healthy.

If this flexible bucket way of eating helps you relax and enjoy happy hours where you otherwise might not be able to enjoy that moment, think of your cocktail as fitting into your social bucket. What about like the cupcake at the office? Yeah, if you're having birthdays every day at the office, having a cupcake every day is probably not the best, but if it's allowing you to enjoy the moment and participate in a celebration with your coworkers, allow it! If you're at the movies and you want to enjoy popcorn, go for it! It goes into the fun bucket. You get the point.

So create some buckets of things that are meaningful for you, that aren't all just health and wellness. And see how all the different foods can fit into different buckets. And you'll find that this helps eliminate the black and white thinking around food, either healthy or unhealthy. They can all be healthy. They just are healthy in different ways. So see if that helps.