8 Ways to Make Healthy Feel-Good Food
Can you think back to your earliest memory of pleasure with food? Retrospection always brings more insight to our miseries and joys. I remember eating raw cookie dough straight from the bucket after selling 3 bins of it to my mother, as a fundraiser for the school. Is it just me, or should kids NOT be selling cookie dough? Despite my beliefs now, I have imprinted in my mind a pleasure-filled moment when I think of cookie dough.
Logically most people can come to the conclusion that cookie dough isn't healthy. But, it’s okay in moderation right? Especially because it makes us feel good. The holidays are here and they bring traditions and festivities, most encompass food, and they are not always health-centered.
I find the holidays to be rather triggering at times. As a survivor of PTSD, I am becoming more and more aware of how stress and other flooded feelings can bring up my trauma. It usually looks like me not functioning very efficiently, my boundaries start to disappear, I'm less engaged with my surroundings, and my immune system acts up. Stress, in the form of situations AND processed food, has a disrupting effect on our feel-good emotions. Even though we think they will make us feel good based on our early childhood experiences, the real feel-good foods are nourishing and whole.
Creating healthful food culture during stressful times can then permeate into supporting our mood and behavior. We can then find ourselves celebrating with salads, roasts, and soups; with fatty dressings and hearty sauces rather than overindulging on toxic sugar.
Feel Good by Eating these 8 things:
bone broth soups made from grass-fed/free-range organic bones
homemade cultured vegetables added to tuna/chicken salad
sugar-free organic bacon and Brussels sprouts
homemade crustless quiche
mustard green salads with roasted vegetables
sautéed beets, turnips, and beet greens
roasted winter squash slathered in organic grass-fed butter (ghee, tallow, lard, or coconut oil)
homemade dressings with cold-pressed olive oil and raw unfiltered apple cider vinegar