I realize that I think about food more than the average bear.

Once in awhile, I’ll hear of someone else who wakes up thinking excitedly about the meals of the day and any upcoming meals to share with folks and new recipe ideas and how to best plan for them.

I’m not always excited to make food. There are certainly days where I can’t think of one thing to make and have to peruse my own food blog to get ideas for yummy food. :o) And there are days when I cook all day and invent reasons to cook all day even though we are two and it could be much simpler.

But as joyful as food preparation and planning and partaking is for me, it is also fraught with challenges — all in my mind. I learned how to count calories in high school and this began a dark side of eating for me that I fought for quite some time and still do to some degree. Unfortunately, in this life, food is also inevitably tied to appearance, and that balance is the trickiest. Food issues look like being too aware of every bite, but they can also turn into too concerned with quality. For awhile there as a family, we got so concerned with our food sources and quality that it turned into another type of obsessing that felt very hard and became work and allowed much of the fun of eating to vanish like the scrapings off a plate after a meal.

Overthinking a thing turns it from joy into anxiety, don’t you think? Whatever the thing may be, some of us can take a thing that is meant to be a gift and knead it like so much dough and suck all the fun right out of things.

BALANCE. It’s one of my favorite words because it reminds me to cut the crap and find some middle ground to all of it.

Because at the end of the day, a body could suffer through fermented, probiotic, organic veggie laden, just-plain-nasty-tasting green drinks and forego the pleasure of a certain fizzy cola at a movie for their whole life and then get hit by a tree branch walking through the woods. I mean, we’ve gotta do our best and learn discipline and make smart health choices…aaaaaand still stop when the red light is on at Krispy Kreme darn it (not that we have a Krispy Kreme anywhere within hundreds of miles of this nowhere-land in which we live, but if we did…good heavens, I’d be stopping once in a while!).

So, I’ll mostly choose organic, and I plan most days what goes in my mouth, but tomorrow, on Super Bowl Sunday, I’m gonna eat some things that I may or may not admit I ate. Let’s just say that I’m pretty sure THE Mac isn’t free-range. ;o)

Anybody else relate with the struggle? As always, relate away in the comment section.

Happy Game Day, friends. ENJOY your food today!