A little over a year ago, I went on an elimination diet. My motivation was two-fold; I wanted to lose the weight I gained from lockdown, and I wanted to see if my diet impacted my chronic pain levels. I did lose the weight, but my chronic pain didn’t change. However, the experience transformed my relationship with food.
I don’t like cooking, and that hasn’t really changed. I used to focus on eating for nutrition and sustenance rather than flavor, which, as you can imagine, led to many disappointing meals. My daily meals would consist of poorly seasoned meat, boiled vegetables, and salads without dressing. I just didn’t care to make anything different. Truthfully, I didn’t care to make anything at all.
My commitment to the elimination diet meant no gluten, unnatural sugars, dairy, and more. The point of this is to eliminate any foods that are most commonly associated with sensitivities and allergies. It also meant that I had to rethink my meals for around five months.
Diets are an obvious example of the scarcity mindset. We think about all the things we can’t eat, and that’s what makes them so hard to stick to. When I first brainstormed ideas for meals, the best I could come up with was salads. I just kept adding more and more vegetables and fruits to my salads in an effort to make them less repetitive and boring. When I began reintroducing eliminated foods, I started adding everything but the kitchen sink.
At this point, my social media algorithm was offering me more diet content, and I came across a nutritionist named Kylie. She helped me see healthy eating differently. Instead of continuing with a scarcity mindset, she emphasized the idea of adding instead of subtract. She’d always ask: “What can I add to make my meal healthier?”
Now when I make meals, I carry an abundance mindset. I throw in leftovers, things about to go bad, and things I think might just be interesting to try in all my dishes. Salads, wraps, stirfrys, and sauces—nothing is safe from my chaotic cooking impulses. One food that has taken me by surprise is a discovered love for avocados. Being a healthy fat, I feel great throwing it on my salads and toast (I know I’m late to the avocado toast fad but I’m glad I finally showed up!). The texture is also really helpful for holding Everything Bagel seasoning, which I also sprinkle on a bunch of things.
Listen, I said at the start of this post that I don’t like cooking. I’m no master chef, and I certainly am no expert at how to make good food, but sometimes more of a good thing really is more of a good thing. My careless and lazy meal prep has allowed me to be more adventurous with my palate and more excited about eating. I bet that sentence has never been written before, but it's true. I rarely feel bad about eating “unhealthy” foods because I can confidently say that my diet is filled with an abundance of healthy foods. My meals are so abundant with beauty and color that they’ve inspired gratitude for my own health and wellbeing. There’s no saying no to anything in it. I get to eat that meal. I struggled to enjoy salads for a long time, but now they’re a creative experiment for me. The results are in, and the way to make salads taste good, is to just keep adding more.
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