This particular Friday started off semi-productive: breakfast with the parents, they followed me home to help me domesticate my apartment, took a nap, edited one of my blogs, took out the trash, cleaned makeup brushes... Ok, I’m just looking for things to do now. Anyone who lives alone finds themselves at one point or another imagining what it’s going to be like when you do have a visitor, a guest, maybe a future roommate. It motivates the cleaning process and it’s rare.
If you’ve read Hey Bobby then you already know I’m on this kick to become a healthier eater. Isaiah 1:19 says, “If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the good things of the land.” For me personally, that line just stuck in my brain as I’ve tried everything from trainers to supplements to starvation, drugs, inappropriate cardio, even resulting in medical consultations of the aesthetic kind. Why can’t I lose weight? I do believe a lot of it has to do with the way our culture was trained to eat, but it very much boils down to accountability. I was inconsistent with the goal and gave in too easily to temptation… mostly cheese and chocolate.
Realizing my habits is step one. When I’m desperate, what’s my thought process? I go for the convenience, like money grows on trees and I can just dash anything I want. Well, after feeling the need to literally cultivate the land, being given a free training session with Absolute Athlete Coach Cary Hiner, him telling me to eat more vegetables, and Hey Bobby from the Food Bank instructing me on the Plant Based diet - I’m finally getting the hint.
I’ve had this urge to literally cultivate the land since I’ve started reading Hebrews and in verse 6:7 - “For the ground that drinks the rain that often falls on it and that produces vegetation useful to those for whom it is cultivated receives a blessing from God.” Which I read on September 5th and struck me due to my birthday present on August 22nd… Rain. Cultivating my faith, going deeper with his word, also... just the undeniable urge to plant literal soil. Why that thought, that urge, happened when I read it... he's a mysterious guy our LORD.
God sets us up without us even knowing it and when it comes together, wow, beauty of the ethereal kind. Just yesterday, I pulled my cookbooks out from the pantry. To be clear, the books are used for décor - I haven’t cooked for myself since 2016 when the motivation was to feed others. I didn’t start dabbling until I moved into this apartment and even then didn’t really try until I lost my job and I had time on my hands. Also for the record, I had time on my hands, but money makes it luxurious to have your food prepared and delivered. When a girlfriend asked about Keto, I remembered I was given a book from an old boss back in '19 so I went to look for it so she can borrow it and...
Snap! I have a Vegetarian Recipe book, “How in the world did I get that one?” Stunned, I looked at the title of the book and for the life of me I can't remember how it came into my possession. After some serious pondering, I have this memory that it came to me by chance. When I was living in LA at the Sherman Oak Apartments, someone dropped off a stack of books to my door by accident. A book on Karl Lagerfeld, a Sweet Tooth recipe book, and I think one of these cook books. That was back in 2015 and judging by those throwback photos, I did not care about my diet. LA made me eat my feelings, it can have that effect on some.
Next to the Vegetarian Recipe Book, I also have 100 Days of Real Food, by Lisa Leake and it's literally Godsent - thank you! As I read the first page I was immediately sucked in due to her background of ignorant nutrition, we were just raised that way, samesies! I get interrupted by a call from my cousin and I read to her some lines and she goes right into re-educating me on composting. So some how this I don't cook because I'm cute and I have others to cook for me girl is stocked with nothing but healthy décor cookbooks of which were all given to me.
Very Interesting...
Look out Cultivation World! Audrey is hunting for garden beds, soil, and like minded hippies to farm with. I’m so excited to cook some real food and eat real food and farm real food! I’m sure my future partner will be pleased that I learned how to cook something beyond pasta. Thank you Yeshua!
Written on 9/24/21
Coach Cary Hiner, Absolute Athlete
100 Days of Real Food
Lisa Leake
Release Date: August 2014
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers