Every time I think about working out or going to the gym, food quietly starts changing shape.
It stops being something flexible and lived-in, and starts behaving like a system to follow. Protein moves to the centre. Meals become functional. Choice narrows. The goal isn’t nourishment anymore, it’s compliance.
Then comes the grocery aisle.
Rows of products offering structure. Exact numbers, clean labels, and clear ideas of what “eating right” looks like. High protein. Optimised. The language is confident, almost moral. Once you notice it, it’s hard to unsee: these aren’t just foods being sold, they’re ideas about how one should live.
That’s where the discomfort begins.
Because food, somewhere along the way, stopped being part of life and started behaving like a belief system.
Belief systems have rules. They divide choices into right and wrong. And slowly, almost invisibly, they turn habits into identity.
Eating stops being something you do.
It becomes something you are.
This is where things get heavy, not because people care about food, but because care turns into judgement. Of others, and of ourselves. Plates become statements. Choices become signals. And the space for difference quietly shrinks.
What makes this especially confusing is that it often travels under the name of “consciousness”.
But there’s a difference between being conscious and being performative.
Consciousness is attentive. It notices context. It adapts.
Performance needs certainty. It needs to be seen. It needs rules that don’t bend.
This isn’t a rejection of discipline.
It’s a rejection of dogma.
Discipline listens. Dogma insists.
Dogma assumes a life that behaves neatly. Consistent routines, predictable responses, stable energy. Real lives don’t work that way. Bodies don’t either. What supports you in one phase of life may exhaust you in another. Culture, stress, sleep, movement. All of it matters.
Still, certainty is tempting.
Clear rules feel safer than ambiguity. One oil. One ratio. One correct way to eat. Certainty promises control, and when life feels messy, control feels comforting.
So we compensate.
We pour energy, money, and attention into one “right” thing, hoping it will make up for everything else we can’t manage. But no single choice carries that much weight. Food doesn’t operate in isolation.
This is where the quiet cost shows up.
People begin measuring themselves against standards that were never designed for their lives in the first place. Food stops being supportive and starts becoming evaluative, a daily test you’re either passing or failing.
Most people aren’t eating badly.
They’re eating anxiously.
The question worth asking isn’t “What’s the best way to eat?”
It’s “Does this way of eating actually fit into my life?”
When food fits into life, it doesn’t demand defence. It doesn’t need announcing. It doesn’t need to become identity. It just does its job, it nourishes, it sustains, it allows you to move on.
That’s the kind of consciousness worth returning to.
Not loud. Not rigid.
Just attentive, adaptable, and humane.