Poutine

Poutine is a dish made of fries, cheese curds and gravy. Extra points if the cheese curds are squeaky on your teeth. There is some intense debate about where exactly in Quebec it originated, but it is now available just about everywhere in Canada. The only thing that makes poutine better, of course, is adding bacon.

Guest illustrator: Marie Poliak

A Lifetime On The Hips? Nah. Challenging Popular Weight Loss Mantras

Is this reminder really so friendly? (Answer: nahhhhh man).

Challenging some popular weight loss mantras….

Fact: French fries do not get stuck to your ass. I’ve eaten lots of french fries and seen others eat them. No fry bums. Research also supports the fact that french fries do not spontaneously appear on the rear after consumption.

Fact: A moment on the lips does not mean forever on the hips. Like, at all. Not even a nanosecond. What you’d have to consume in one moment to affect change in your body size will probably choke you and kill you before you’d notice.

Fact: Hunger hurts… and starving doesn’t WORK.

Fact: Tons of things taste better than skinny feels IF your body isn’t down with being your idea of skinny (naturally skinny bodies aside of course). In fact, if your body isn’t cool with being as thin as you like, almost anything will taste better to it than the state it’s in.

Fact: Calories CAN make you happy. Your ability to regulate your mood depends on you getting enough. Not enough calories can make you depressed. And… well, dead.

Fact: If it tastes good, it’s probably not going to kill you. Unless it’s delicious rat poison. Your body is designed to handle the occasional cupcake without making you die (allergies aside). If your body’s working the way it should, it’s designed to handle the bad in bitty amounts. Otherwise, our species would have died out LONG ago.

If you find yourself using weight loss mantras that demonize food often, consider the relationship you’ve developed with nourishing your body. A healthy relationship with food needs to move beyond weight gain, beyond fat loss, beyond fitting into an ideal. When you start to view food as a means through which you can attain and sustain a healthier body that allows you to DO more, LAUGH more, MOVE more, LOVE more, LAUGH more and PLAY more, foods transcend beyond merely good or bad.

Eating to fuel your body, feel awesome AND enjoy your food. That’s the secret. Eating not-so-healthy-food every now and then for no other reason than “I wanna” and balancing those times with healthier times (which can be over the course of a day, a week, a month etc. We all have periods of time when our diets aren’t pinnable). That’s the secret. Making conscious decisions to get more out of the foods you’re eating, even with a few treats: that’s the secret. And above all, making the best decisions for YOUR body - not just your ego - is the secret.

Making food the enemy makes transitioning into a healthier lifestyle much harder than it has to be.

Maybe time for a change?