I did a thing!
The reactions you get when you tell people you're buying a motorcycle are evenly split between excitement and horror. Truth be told, I think I feel both, but I love big experiences, so I got it. I'll be cruising this baby through the mountains this summer—hopefully, long stretches of forest roads with good smells and minimal traffic.
I found it on FB Marketplace, which meant traveling to Charlotte, NC, to collect it. In other words, a lot of time in the car for this dedicated city woman who mainly walks, bikes, and takes the bus.
On my way home, I stopped for lunch at a fancy-looking gas station. It was big, new, and airy. The door had some ads for healthy grab-n-go. Fantastic, I thought. I'm hungry, which made getting home in time for dinner easy.
Then, I walked in.
It was basically 4000 square feet of this: aisles and aisles of ultra-processed foods with some alcohol thrown in. I perused the menu for made-to-order food. Not one thing fit into my real food category (unprocessed or heritage foods), and I struggled to find a moderately processed item (about 20% or less of my total intake).
What I hoped would be an easy stop turned into a concerted search.
Even the open-refrigerated cooler with the 'fresh' items had, well, not much fresh food. A sandwich with highly processed meat might've been made that morning, but it's in no way healthy. Grapes, sure. However, they've been so genetically modified to be sweet that I think of them as a treat.
Finding something I felt okay about eating took almost twenty minutes—emphasis on okay. Part of that was a bathroom break, and the other was that I had accepted the marketing on the sign as true, so I just thought, if I keep looking, I'll find it.
What did I walk out with?
One of those stupid Liquid Death seltzers and a pretzel hummus cup. Neither of these is amazing, more like the least bad of the awful. Hummus is generally healthy, but I don't care for the industrial oils they use in these meal cups.
Needless to say, I was famished once I got home. Thankfully, my kitchen was full of real food, and I happily assembled a hearty salad.
On my way home, I had time to think, and what occupied my brain was what percentage of the people going through this store recognized it as an obesogenic environment? That this place actually skewed their sense of what they were eating/
Environment is everything.
It's tempting to read my story and think I have super-human discipline. That's not the case. I deeply understand how to eat to maintain a healthy weight, and one pit stop of junk on junk isn't enough to knock me off course.
But what if I worked there or regularly worked in environments with similar offerings? What if my workplace had a breakroom filled with ultra-processed foods? Or if I felt like I had to buy the kids junk, and now it's in the house, so I'm eating it.
Then, I'd have to quantify the real effect of environment and take action on that. One huge takeaway from my long-term, stable weight loss is that you don't fix yourself. You fix your environments.
If I had to eat from convenience shops regularly, I'm sure the environment would shift my perception of junk. When 98% of the offerings are ultra-processed, those sandwiches look like fresh food. They're not. At best, highly processed.
Ask yourself:
- Do the parties and get-togethers I attend mimic this food environment? In other words, what percentage of the total offerings is nourishing?
- What do I buy for others in the household that I eat because of a mistaken belief in willpower?
- Is my workplace food environment a non-stop parade of junk? Could it be moved away from my direct access?
- Do I have to hunt and peck through the menu of my favorite restaurant to find something moderately healthy, and do I feel deprived when I order it?
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Yours in joyful eating and living,
Rebecca ✌️
