Displaying items by tag: The Main Meal

When I first started blogging in 2013, I had not yet published my book, “The Main Meal: The New Perspective on Weight Loss.” The book had been in various stages of writing for many years by then, but once I made the commitment to finish and publish it, I began to blog about what the Main Meal of life meant to me. Those early blogs are no longer available on the internet, so I’ve decided to offer them here 3 or 4 times a year. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed the writing.

When I first started blogging in 2013, I had not yet published my book, “The Main Meal: The New Perspective on Weight Loss.” The book had been in various stages of writing for many years by then, but once I made the commitment to finish and publish it, I began to blog about what the Main Meal of life meant to me. Those early blogs are no longer available on the internet, so I’ve decided to offer them here 3 or 4 times a year. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed the writing.

When I first started blogging in 2013, I had not yet published my book, “The Main Meal: The New Perspective on Weight Loss.” The book had been in various stages of writing for many years by then, but once I made the commitment to finish and publish it, I began to blog about what the Main Meal of life meant to me. Those early blogs are no longer available on the internet, so I’ve decided to offer them here 3 or 4 times a year. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed the writing.

Good Food and Bad Food - 2013

One of my first statements on this blog, and one of my most strongly held beliefs, is that there are no 'good' foods or 'bad' foods. Food is just food. Allowing food to be neutral, neither good nor bad, is the first step in shedding the guilt associated with eating. But there is so much more to it than that.

When I first started blogging in 2013, I had not yet published my book, “The Main Meal: The New Perspective on Weight Loss.” The book had been in various stages of writing for many years by then, but once I made the commitment to finish and publish it, I began to blog about what the Main Meal of life meant to me. Those early blogs are no longer available on the internet, so I’ve decided to offer them here 3 or 4 times a year. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed the writing.

When I first started blogging in 2013, I had not yet published my book, “The Main Meal: The New Perspective on Weight Loss.” The book had been in various stages of writing for many years by then, but once I made the commitment to finish and publish it, I began to blog about what the Main Meal of life meant to me. Those early blogs are no longer available on the internet, so I’ve decided to offer them here 3 or 4 times a year. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed the writing.

If we’re not living the dream, or if it feels like we’re not living the dream, why aren’t we? What’s stopping us? In this series of blogs discussing The Main Meal of our lives, we’ve spent time defining what the main meal is for us. We’ve outlined our dream life, the life we desire to live in every moment. We saw that we are the ones who create the menu. We get to choose how to balance our energy among the various aspects of our lives, from recreation to career, from spending time with family to spending time in volunteer activities, from education to spirituality. Then we made up the guest list. We decided who we want to share in this feast with us. So, if we know what we want, we know how much of each aspect we’ll give our attention to, and we know who to share it with, why wouldn’t we want to be living it now, right away?

This Main Meal, this life we are living, is our banquet. We get to make up the guest list. We can invite anyone we want, and we can choose not to invite anyone we don’t want. Our guest list includes the actual people who make up our circle of friends, family, co-workers and acquaintances, as well as the people whose voices make guest appearances in our thoughts. Choosing who to include is usually easy. Choosing who to exclude can be more challenging. In both cases, we set ourselves up for success and joy when we are thoughtful and deliberate about who sits at the table with us.

Unless it’s a chain restaurant like McDonald’s or Denny’s a chef gets to plan out a menu that the customers can choose from. In planning the menu, chefs will choose the main dishes, sides, appetizers and desserts that play to their strengths and creativity. While they consider what offerings will satisfy the most palates, the ultimate goal is to design a menu they love to cook, and to provide their customers with a menu that will delight them. The most important part of that equation is the chef’s love for the ingredients and the process of creating interesting, exciting, and delicious dishes.

In the next few blogs, I want to spend a little time exploring what the “Main Meal’ really is for each of us, what we do with our ideas about it, and how we live it out. Back in 1997 when I first had the thought, “If you think it’s about the food, you missed the main meal,” I had some specific thoughts around what that meant for me. In the course of writing the book, “The Main Meal: The New Perspective on Weight Loss,” and in the years since I founded the Main Meal Weight Management Support Group, those meanings have expanded quite a bit. The people who take part in support group meetings and who come to me for Mindful Weight Coaching, each have their own idea of what the Main Meal is for them. So, I thought it might be good to explore some of those meanings at the beginning of this year.