Wealth is relative. At this point, I have a good income, but I wouldn’t really consider myself wealthy. Still, there is no denying that I am much better off financially than I was in my younger days.
The biggest thing that has changed is my relationship to food. As a poor person, my main concern was maximizing my caloric intake while minimizing how much money I spent. My priority was keeping myself adequately nourished. If a cut of salmon filet cost $10 per pound, then I just wouldn’t be eating any salmon. I would classify it as “rich people food” and move on. And when I saw restaurants where some plates cost $30 or more, often for a tiny amount of food, it seemed like the height of folly that anyone could pay for such a thing. Where was the rest of the food? And didn’t people realize that they could get a lot more food for a lot less money?
But now, when it comes to food, affordability is not something I even think about. I’m rich enough to afford anything I want to eat. You don’t need to be very rich for that, but it’s a huge change in my circumstances. Even as recently as a year ago, I had to think about the cost of every cut of meat that I wanted to buy. Now, the only question I need to ask is whether I want it.
It turns out that this is a great way to gain weight. And after gaining about a pound a month for 6 straight months, I started to change the way I thought about eating. I had to unlearn my lifelong habits. I started to prize taste over quantity. I started learning to throw food away when I had eaten enough. And I started to appreciate small plates at fine dining restaurants. My priority had become not overeating.
And today, I am happy to pay for tiny portions. I don’t need the extra calories.
EDIT: Some people are wondering why I throw away food, rather than saving it for another time. The answer is that I don’t throw away all food; it’s just that I used to never throw away anything. So, if I forgot to refrigerate my rice and left it out for more than 24 hours, I would just eat it. Now, the risk of food poisoning with B. cereus is a higher consideration than the wasted food.
Another thing I’ll do sometimes is try something that comes in a pretty package. I just opened this 10 minutes ago:
It seemed like a good idea at the time. But, in truth, it tastes like the monstrosity it is. Am I going to save it? No. I detest the taste. I don’t need the calories. And I can’t cook with it or do anything else. It’s going into the trash.
Picture Source Wikipedia
Thanks for Reading
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