Intuitive Eating

Once I started studying food, gastronomy history, food as a weapon, I began to really look at what I’m eating and the impacts of our food production. This is especially important as we look to the future in which there very may be food shortages due to the increased impacts of climate change on our earth. Personally, I want to acknowledge food and the land it came from, especially when I’ve had a history of punishing myself with food.

I want to distinguish intuitive eating as something as far away from the world of eating disorders as possible. Something that has disturbed me among, YouTubers for example, is that some YouTubers who are claiming to be spiritual and intuitive eating, have mentioned a past of eating disorders. And if you look at the videos where it’s like ~what I eat in a week~, you can see the resemblance of how they’re controlling their intake of food. As someone who has had an eating disorder in the past, I don’t want to go anywhere near that territory.

Gardening changed my perspective.

After years of severe depression and anxiety, I honestly thought nothing but writing fiction, poetry, and essays could really help me. My mother knew the extent of my problems, and really was the only one who did. My father always called me crazy and has told me multiple times to kill myself, so that’s a breakdown of the life I was living. But one day, my mother ordered my father to go to Home Depot to pick up cement blocks and wood. And she made two medium-sized squares with it and then dug them out. She came inside and told me “Your garden is ready.”

She took me to local farms, Walmart, and Lowe’s to pick out the plants that I wanted in my new garden. At first, I was a bit lost, but, eventually, I filled the space up completely. I didn’t understand how this was going to help me at first. I thought it was kind of stupid, but, as I began to water and take care of these plants, I understood the significance of what I was doing. Being out in the sun and the heat made me feel better about the world because I had these creatures to take care of. It really gave me a reason to live.

Gardening also taught me the significance of fresh, organic ingredients. My strawberries weren’t the dirty ones from the grocery store, and I grew my own fresh herbs. Soon my mother began to demand my cilantro be fresh cut at the dinner table each day because it was so delicious compared to what we would buy at the local grocery store. And so I really began to value what it takes to grow something as well as having fresh ingredients at your whim.

Living abroad was a culinary adventure.

I mainly cook Korean food when at home. I am not Korean; I am Iranian-American. Once, before living in Korea, specifically in Anyang-si, I was a really picky eater who literally had not eaten Korean food before. But man, after I left Korea, I wanted to eat Korean food all the time even though I couldn’t find it in the side of Baltimore I lived in. When I was in New York City, studying at the Fashion Institute of Technology, I basically lived in Koreatown. It was my favorite place to be and I ate all the japchae and bulgogi I wanted at places like Woorijip.

And then I moved back to Baltimore. H Mart and Lotte were an hour away, but whenever I went there like once every three months, I stocked up on all the vegetables and ingredients I needed for Korean, Turkish, Indian and Japanese dishes. These Korean grocery stores were my breeding ground for discovering new dishes that I could test out and add to my rotation whenever I had, say, a bag of bean sprouts. And a lot of these dishes were vegetable-based, which was something I specifically wanted from my intuitive eating routine. Korea was the place I learned to do all of this and break out of the borders I’d imposed upon myself.

Learning to cook from television & reading.

Chef’s Table on Netflix really changed my life. So did Samin Nosrat’s Salt, Fat, Acid, and Heat and Michelle Zauner’s food memoir Crying in H Mart. It was these texts that forced me to critically look at what I’m making and break down the ingredients. I started making almost everything from scratch; I made udon, broths, my own bread, even random Russian drinks that were historically consumed during the Czarist era. And guess what? I subbed out unhealthy things that I found on labels from store-bought versions, and it still tasted so, so delicious. There were some failures, but, all in all, I did this successfully.

Some quick recommendations: Chef’s Table (Documentary Series), Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner (food memoir), anything by MFK Fisher (she was a prominent food writer), the writings of Laurie Colwin, Samin Nosrat’s Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat.

I eat what I want when I want.

I now mainly eat whole, plant-based foods with the occasional meal of chicken. I cook everything for my family, so I’m in charge of dinners every day but Sunday. And this has been hard to learn considering my past, but eat when I want and whatever I want. I’ve forced myself to eat slower to savor the taste and flavors of a dish, and that’s helped me not overeat nowadays too. I used to always eat too much because I ate quickly and would feel like shit because I was like “oh I’m going to gain so much weight.” I also didn’t appreciate food for what it was when I did this.

At the end of the day, limitations can be more harmful than helpful. Just be very aware of when you’re overstepping, but don’t punish yourself harshly for it.

Planning menus out in advance.

This is my final tip. I bought one of those big journals from Walmart and began outlining the week’s menus. Part of this was because I wanted to use up all the ingredients. we had in the house; my father is a hoarder and thus we have three freezers completely packed with meat. But then I began to realize how this was helping me; if I made up a recipe and tweaked it at the last minute, I would write it down and could return to it if my family absolutely loved it. I recommend a dry erase board on the fridge too, especially if you have picky eaters, so they know what we’re eating before it’s put in front of them and they refuse to eat it. At the end of the day, making menus in advance helps you in the future in case you forget anything, as well as the other people in your household. So prevent the headache!