Thursday, September 3, 2009

Chew-a-thon? Hip Chick Guides you through chewing

I stumbled across Jessica Porter's book, "The Hip Chick's Guide to Macrobiotics" quite some time ago in one of my failed attempts to get real and serious about weight loss and healthy eating. OK, "failed" is really too harsh of a word, but I was in this space where if I could just find the right book, the right program, the excess weight would just fall off over night. Yeah and we know how that turned out don't we??

I've been attracted to the concept of Macrobiotics for some time. What exactly is "Macrobiotics"? Well, I'm still not too sure but it involves eating organic and locally and bringing balance into you world via food. Oh and do I ever need balance! Read Jessica for a better description. Not to mention that a Macrobiotic diet involves some quirky Japanese food that I adore - seaweed? Yah! Miso soup?? Double Yah!! Japanese pickles?? Holy Moly Yah!!! But of course, lacking in integrity, I spent like two weeks reading the book and formulating meal plans, only to shelve the book after a week of eating brown rice having spent stupid amounts of special food I'd never eat. C'est la vie.

The book is fantastic. It's funny, heart warming and chock full of recipes and philosophy. Big thoughts AND good food? How can you go wrong?

Not too long ago, I discovered that Jessica has a blog. And she's embarking on a Chew-a-thon. One of the key philosophies in Macrobiotic eating is thoroughly chewing your food. Like chewing each mouthful 100 times. That's a lot of chewing.

Now, as I stated before, I love food. I love to read about it, cook it, and of course eat it. And I notice, I don't really chew my food. I don't savor it. It goes in my mouth and my fork is already ready for the next bite to be plopped in. I love food so much that before I'm even done, I'm anticipating, and expecting, and waiting for the next bite. As I become aware of myself, and my body and especially my physical and emotional reactions to food, I've noticed that when I don't chew well, I get a kind of heartburn, especially when eating bread. Weird huh?

So when Jessica mentioned this Chew-a-thon, I checked out her blog again and her adorable video on chewing. So I'm going to jump on the chew-wagon and actually enjoy my food for once!

Oh yeah, and Jessica is on Twitter - @macrohipchick

1 comment:

Mike Kiss said...

I am starting a running website - www.50in100.com which is going to challenge people to run a half marathon in all 50 states in under 100 hours. As I would love to add a blogging feature to the site I was wondering if you would consider letting me take over the 50in100 blog site. I will provide a reasonable fee ($20) for your troubles. This is no joke, I am very serious and would like to hear from you soon.
Thank you,
Mike
mikeakiss@gmail.com