CYE Episode 1: “Is Eating for Pleasure Ok?”

On this first episode of Change Your Eating, I discuss the topic of “eating for pleasure”. Is it ok to eat simply for pleasure?

I have a wildly crazy question. Is it okay to eat for pleasure?

Why is that even a question? Pleasure is one of the most amazing things that we have in our entire life. The only way to have an optimal life is to have pleasure in life. But what we do is we call it ‘cheating’. We have ‘cheatniques’.

Cheating does not sound good to me. But an optimal life does have pleasure eating. So maybe we need to just refrain the way we’re talking about that and put it in a slightly different context. The context that we might want to think about is why we’re eating.

Awareness is the key of all change. If we think about why we’re eating every time we eat, then we’re going to be more aware how that is affecting us day after day. The context would be, “Are are you eating for nutrients, pleasure or an unmet need?”

Nutrients, foods got nutrients in them. They have calcium, magnesium, vitamin A, B-vitamins, vitamin C. What does it have in it? Basically, usually that’s produce, that’s whole food. It’s stuff that was growing on a farm or a garden and somehow made it to the produce section of the store. Pretty much to me, any of that food has nutrients in it.

So most of the time, we should mostly be eating plants, maybe some lean meat that’s lean and grass-fed and that kind of thing. So we mostly should be eating nutrient foods, small volumes and most of the plants. That’s nutrient-eating.

Pleasure eating, how does it fit? Well, pleasure is one of those most amazing things that we have. And we probably shouldn’t do it very often. Otherwise, that takes away from the pleasure because it gets the routine and it probably damages us in some way.
There really should be a pattern to it because then that conditions your brain for pleasure. In other words, your brain already is able to skip a few steps because it knows how the thing ends. You want to enjoy pleasure as if it’s the first time you’ve ever experienced it. And you want to experience it as it unfolds. And you want to go for quality.

So if you’re in a restaurant and chef is a particularly good chocolate cake pastry chef and he makes the chocolate cake exactly the way you like it, moist and creamy, I think you’d be absolutely crazy not to eat some. So go for quality. Don’t go to the gas station and eat a Milky Way.

That’s what pleasure eating is all about. You shouldn’t do it often. You shouldn’t do it with a particular pattern. And you should go for quality.

Just remember it’s totally okay to eat for pleasure. You don’t want to do it often. You don’t want to do it with a pattern. And you want to pick quality. And then you’re going to enjoy it much more than you’ve ever had in your entire life.

So until another podcast, I’d like you to remember, if you want to feel better today, eat better today.