Today is the first day of Lent. I have never observed the holiday, but I remember being jealous of the kids at school who did. There is something captivating about voluntary deprivation. Not to diminish the religious significance—periods of fasting span several faiths at different levels of extremity—but Lent always seemed a social badge of honor that had less to do with Jesus and more to do with a twelve-year-old’s ability to turn down a Milky Way. One of the two vegetarian cast members is giving up potatoes. I asked him if he thought that wise given that we are about to enter the food desert stretch of our tour and he is often cornered into ordering french fries and a side salad for lunch. He said he’d make do.
Eating on tour is a challenge. We cram hummus into hotel fridges, power through boxes of granola bars, and worship at the altar of hot meals. When I have the opportunity to grocery shop, I get overwhelmed. The most useful things to buy are microwavable, but I find myself caught in the chokehold that “frozen food is bad.” A pervasive food rule.
Though wellness may be the new diet frontier, restriction remains its stalwart. I won’t delve too deep here as there are many folks who have written about wellness-as-dieting with much more authority, covering fatness and fatphobia, “clean eating,” post-quarantine body panic, etc. Personally, I have flip-flopped on my opinion about my own eating habits. It’s weird not to know how I feel about how I eat. I do know that until it was pointed out to me, I was eating with a lot of rules. Certain kinds of sugars were acceptable, carbs from bread and pasta were to be avoided, brown eggs instead of white (to this day I couldn’t tell you why), no frozen food, the list goes on…the rules all boiled down to Good Food vs. Bad Food, what actions should be taken to rectify a foray into the Bad, and if you could have a treat for being Good. It’s calculus: yesterday I cooked vegetable laden meals with grass-fed meats, today I can have purple Doritos.
During the first quarantine summer, I had the distinct privilege of living with five friends in a beautiful home in Maine. We had just finished two months of remote college and had graduation on Zoom. Half of the group had plans for the fall, the other half, including myself, had just been tossed into a sea of unknowns. In my case, the entire field I was planning to enter, theater, had just disappeared. Given the circumstances—jobless, living rent-free with people I love—I fell into a kind of leisure haze. We woke up sans alarms, listened to the dulcet tones of Jim Dale over coffee, dispersed for the late-morning, convened in the afternoon for walks, or chats, or spike ball, and then made giant delicious dinners and drank a lot. Dinner became the only defining event of my days. We worked our way through various cookbooks, testing recipes that required at least six hands. I perfected an almond whipped cream that was dished out at least twice a week. We ate so much pasta. We cooked fresh lobster which I will never do again because it was a huge bummer. The days were listless, the martinis were endless, and eating was so pleasurable.
At first, I figured it was the act of cooking, which admittedly was a large part of the enjoyment; I like the challenge and sharing the fruits of my labor with others. But, it wasn’t until I lived with my first roommate in New York, that I realized my relationship to eating, food, and my body was most contentious when I insisted on playing by the rules. This roommate made it clear that we would treat food neutrally in our household. Early after I moved in I complained that I really wanted ramen noodles but I had already eaten some the night before. My roommate asked why I couldn’t eat them again and I didn’t have a good answer. I wanted them again. I had them in the cabinet. Thus began the revolution: I could eat ramen two nights in a row and not do anything to make up for it.
When I am feeling most harmonious with food and eating, I don’t think about whether certain foods are good or bad. I think about taste and fullness and, dare I say, fun. However, since we’ve been on the road I’ve become increasingly food anxious. I firmly believe that all rules belie anxieties, i.e. we don’t run around the pool lest we slip, hit our heads and drown—fair concern, solid rule. In my case, because our schedules change every day and I don’t know when, where, or what I will eat, I fall back on my rules. I’m hyperaware of all the “bad foods,” so much so that in an effort to stop thinking this way, I am consciously eating foods I think are Bad in order to prove that I don’t think they’re Bad. It’s a mess.
Sometimes it is good to work outside in and take steps you don’t quite believe. I imagine that’s part of the reason so many people, Catholic or not, give things up for Lent. Some may find it a spiritual, clarifying practice, or one that tests fortitude in the face of temptation. As I encounter diet/wellness/thin-as-moral-good culture, I am attempting to do the opposite: abandon restrictions, invite more. There is more to be said about this, I’m just starting to untangle, but for now…
Break all the rules! I especially support this "We cooked fresh lobster which I will never do again because it was a huge bummer." I cooked fresh lobster once, and I too, will never do it again. No one prepares you for the trauma.