Food Part One: I Eat Food

Welcome to part one of what will be a several-part series of posts where I talk about food. Not in the 'aw hell I love lamb' way (though that's coming, I'm sure) but in my favorite way to talk about food : What it does for us, and more importantly and interestingly, what it does for our economy, society, etc. I love food politics, it's absolutely one of my favorite topics to discuss, and one I feel very strongly about. So buckle up, we may get political, and feel free to shoot back with comments. I like discussing things!

So, my former relationship with food, for perspective. Not a good one, but not devastating, it wasn't killing me, at least not physically. I struggled with what was sort of bandied about as an eating disorder for a time, a hyper-controlled way of eating as a means of coping. To deal with all the terrible feelings, I was put on a medication that heavily affected my liver and put the kibosh on the best thing about being 16 - the ability to eat Doritos dipped in sour cream and never gain a pound. 

Wait, this is like, a thing? I just used to dip my Doritos in straight up sour cream. Look, you don't need this fancy Dorito dip, you can do bad all by yourself.

I spent the next just-shy-of-a-decade trying to find a way to eat that didn't make me feel like crap. I tried vegetarianism and filled the meat shaped hole with cake, I tried getting rid of sugar which always ended with a late night binge, I tried caring and not caring and the problem was that I had this creeping case of anxiety. My mind, like the metabolism, I just sort of chalked up to being ruined by bad prescriptions at the age of 16 and didn't do too much for it either. This year I decided to get my shit in order. Fixed the brain, which made fixing the body easy, and figure this food thing out. 

Now let me explain this isn't the part of the story where I try fifty magical miracle diets and none of them work. I kind of gathered that from the beginning. I didn't need magical diet rules, I'm a damn adult and I just needed to be responsible for what I put in my own body. And sadly, most of us have completely forgotten about the gift it is to give ourselves and our loved ones awesome food every day.

So the answer, at least for me, was a very simple piece of advice that to this day is my favorite quote about food, ever. Are you ready for the complex and most cutting edge information from Michael Pollan, possibly the greatest food-thinker alive?

"Eat. Not too much. Mostly plants."

Oh god damn. It's so perfect that every time I hear Dr. Oz or some other hack hocking acai berries or blueberries or dark chocolate or gluten free pasta as the new diet miracle, I want to mail them an ass-kicking, but instead I just repeat gentle Michael Pollan's brilliant advice like a soft mantra and it makes me feel awesome.

The kicker is this : what you may consider food, Mr. Pollan does not. And I leave you to consider this now, these simple words, and next time we'll get into what's food, what's not, and whether we should go Paleo or just get Medieval on this mother.

This blog is pretty hideous right now, but I want you to like, love me for my mind, you know?

Sorry. The best relationships always start out with an apology, right? Right?

I am Tini, 26 years of age, married, working, fairly lucky.

This place is called The Invincible for a few reasons. I want to be able to talk about my successes and feel like a boss. I want to be able to talk about where I've come from and how and why it didn't grind me into a soft mushy paste. And I want to be able to talk about topics I like to talk about, like comic books and such, which is what brings me to The Invincible as a title. One; because it's an obvious Iron Man reference if you know me, and two; because the way it refers to him is the way i refer to it personally as an ideal. The guy's not invincible because he's got a metal suit, that thing gets trashed all the time. He's invincible because of his mind, he can think his way out of anything. Isn't that a nice ideal to aspire to?

See, don't I have good ideas? Right?

If you've ever watched the first episode of a new talk show, where the host gets up in front of the audience and desperately pleads for them to realize why their talk show is different ("We're gonna talk about LIFE, and RELATIONSHIPS, and stuff, yanno? We're gonna GO THERE! Where other people don't GO! That's where we're going! THERE!") you can sense my discomfort with this whole first post.

Look, I did it! Here it is! I'm open to suggestions. Bestow them upon me.

Coming soon: posts about feminism, fitness, comics, articles I read, and likely at least one where I give up and just post pictures of baby sloths