When my mother broke her leg some years ago, everyone had a theory about how she could best help herself. But she knew what she needed to do and once the operation scars had healed, she started walking. Whenever the pain got too sharp, she walked. When the weather made her bones feel stiff, she walked. At first, my mother was only able to do a few minutes at a time. But she didn’t give up. Now, my mother walks for hours, up steep hills and through sand. Though she was over fifty when she broke her leg – in two places nonetheless – she is in better shape than many people half her age. This tiny woman is a physical powerhouse and though she looks fragile, she could probably walk any marathon, God knows she’s trained for it.
For a while, I made fun of the fact that no matter what ailed us, my mother’s answer to everything was WALK. If someone had a migraine, or if their stomach hurt, she would advise them to go for a walk. When people complained about constipation or mood swings, my mother’s cure-all – a walk, of course – would be the first thing she would recommend.
Many people don’t even start down the road to health because it feels too overwhelming. They don’t want to overhaul their diet, change their lives, give up as much time as they think they need at the gym in order to really achieve results. So they do nothing at all.
But really all it takes is baby steps, one at a time. If you feel you are drinking too much coffee, and the thought of cutting it out completely makes you break out in cold sweat, try cutting your intake by half. Are you aware that your life is too stressful but unable or unwilling to quit your job and move to Thailand? Why not try simple breathing techniques that you can do in the subway, or when stuck in traffic? And guess what the best way is to sneak a little exercise into your life? Take a walk!
Baby steps can mean parking your car a little further away so you add a couple of blocks on foot. It can mean substituting just one part of your plate with a green vegetable once a week, or reading a piece of fiction instead of a work report before going to bed.
When I was trying to decide whether to go back to school to study Holistic Health, I met a woman who had never eaten a fruit or a vegetable in her life. She was in her twenties and unable to eat anything that wasn’t white or beige. She didn’t cook and was addicted to fast food. I couldn’t quite believe it: she appeared in relatively good health – nothing like what I would have imagined someone with her eating habits would look like. She quickly admitted, however, that she was hopelessly constipated and that her skin was like a deep-fat fryer.
“Don’t try and make me see what I’m missing!” she exclaimed in her charming South London accent. It turned out that her entire family and circle of friends were driving her mad with their constant nagging. Although they meant well, their attempts to make her see the error of her ways were having the opposite effect. So I tried a different tactic.
“If you were to try one thing,” I asked cautiously, “what do you think it would be?”
She answered almost immediately, thereby proving that she had, in fact, thought about it – a great sign: “Strawberries.”
“But I wouldn’t know where to start,” she continued quickly, “I mean, I wouldn’t know what to expect.”
So we sat down and walked through all the questions she had. She wanted to know what a cucumber tasted like, the texture of a strawberry, the wetness of a tomato, what the crunch sound of an apple would feel like in her mouth. This woman had never eaten anything that wasn’t doughy – like bread or French fries -- or solid meat (chicken breast only) or cheese. She didn’t know what biting into a ripe peach felt like, when the skin tears to reveal the sweetness of the flesh, or that syrupy tartness of summer berries.
And I had never had to describe any of it before. It was like talking to an alien. But later that night, I got one of the most gratifying phone calls I have ever received: unwilling to share her triumph with her pushy family yet, the young woman whispered down the phone “I did it, I tried a strawberry! I came home and went to the refrigerator and took one out and stared at it and then I just put it in my mouth. I couldn’t think about it too much because I wouldn’t have done it, but I did it!”
“And how was it?”
“Interesting. Strange. But I liked it. I think I’ll try it again.”
If a baby never took that first step, it wouldn’t take the second, or the third. But a baby doesn’t say to itself that jogging feels too overwhelming so why try at all. On the contrary, babies are perfectly happy with each tiny foot they are able to put in front of the other.
Nervous about taking that first step on your own? Why not schedule an exploratory first session with The Picky Foodie? For more information, email me at: Gabriela@thepickyfoodie.com (don’t forget to mention this newsletter for a 10% discount)
And don’t
forget to check out the Friday Night Dinner Blog for this week’s simple recipe:
seasonal vegetable stew.
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