Is This The Hardest Time In History To Be Healthy?

Originally posted February 7, 2015

I am simultaneously reading books on veganism and ketosis.

I'm reading about how a completely plant-based diet is the way to health, and how a diet full of healthy fats (including the animal kind) and barely any grain is the way to long-lasting health, bodily synergy, and homeostasis.

I've been counting Weight Watchers Points for about a month, and have lost almost 10 pounds.  I feel better.  I look better.  I feel healthier and I want to stay feeling that way.

And yet I've noticed that I'm eating a lot of not-quite-real food.  Puffed-up cracker-y things schmeared with Laughing Cow wedges - crunchy yumminess for only three points!  But pointless food.  Filler food.  I'm-hungry-and-I-can't-eat-another-carrot-so-this'll-do-'til-dinner food.  

It's I don't want to be fat and unhealthy and ugly (welcome to my sometimes-brain) and so I'm going to be militant or at least semi-strict food.  It's aren't I good? food.  It's martyr food.

It's fear food.  

And it's got me thinking: I think this is the hardest, most confusing time ever to be healthy.  

We have access to everything.  Low-fat.  Vegan.  Gluten-free.  Nut-free.  

Sugar-free brownies.  Paleo pumpkin muffins.  Gluten-and-dairy-free macaroni and cheese.  

We can count calories.  We can count Points.  We can go Paleo and we can go vegan.  And, somewhat mysteriously, we can find copious amounts of science-based evidence to prove that every single one of these options is the healthiest one.  

We can do yoga.  We can do Insanity.  We can 'change our bodies in 60 days!' and we can take the long view.  

I find myself pinging from thing to thing.  I find myself wrapped tightly around uncertainty, vacillating between stringency and malaise because can't I just eat some damn food and not have it be a thing?  I want to have self-control and I want to enjoy my life.  I want to eat to live and I really like living because I get to eat.

Do you think about these things, too?

*E