You are NOT What You Eat

Releasing toxic beliefs about food

Photo by Edward Guk on Unsplash

As a kid, I lived in New York, Costa Rica (or South Mexico Part IV, according to Fox)…and Texas.

When my family moved to Texas, we all immediately gained weight. And yet, everyone seemed to always be concerned about losing weight in a way I hadn’t experienced in Costa Rica.

There were fast food joints everywhere.

And meat.

BBQ, burgers, chicken-fried steak, bacon, corn dogs…you name it. There was a ton of it.

Looking back, I realize two things about the Texan mentality of food:

• The belief that eating meat was a part of your identity
• The need to hold onto the calories in/calories out model to justify eating fast food

“You are what you eat” is supposed to mean that if you eat junk food, you’ll feel like junk, and if you eat healthy, you’ll be healthy.

But there’s another way to interpret this, and in certain American regions, it translates into “eating meat is a part of your identity, and if you stop, your testicles will fall off and Hillary Clinton will put them in a jar.”

I exaggerate, but you get the idea.