A Perfectionist goes to the Nutritionist

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A perfectionist goes to the Nutritionist

Today I went to see a Registered Dietician, which is a covered benefit of my health plan (thanks, Board of Pensions!), and she welcomed me and sat me down and asked me why I was there. 

Well, the entire drive over I'd been thinking of how to answer that question - "why are you here?" - so I was well armed. I don't know why I thought she would ask it with sharp hostility, or why I needed to use the "well armed" metaphor for my answer, but I'm always ready for a battle, so I had great answers to all her questions. I wanted to see her so that I could learn all kinds of ways to eat Better and optimize my health and be a nutrition ninja and experiment with rigorous diets like going gluten-free or dairy-free or sugar-free or anything else appropriately extreme. Because I am good - in fact, I'm pretty terrific - at trying harder and smarter and more intensely... so all she'd need to do would be to give me big assignments, and then she could sit back and be impressed as I delivered results in the form of Perfect Health. In two months or less, I'm sure. 

She didn't say yes to any of those ideas. 

We had a baffling experience, instead, where she asked me lots of detailed questions about what I eat and in what amounts, and then she repeatedly told me that I was doing a great job. Baffling, I tell you, because other than the suggestion to eat more Omega-3s (which, she said, everyone in America should eat more of) and drink an occasional kombucha, she didn't actually think I needed to improve my diet. What?? And my perfectionist mind kept popping back in with reasons why I wasn't doing good enough -- isn't there a lot of cholesterol in all those eggs I eat? -- and she kept answering with these soft, kind, supportive answers. It wasn't baffling in the puzzled sense, but more like an acoustic baffle; you know, like those soft tiles on the walls of recording studios that take all your noises and gently make them disappear. She warmly and calmly dismissed objection after objection and told me I was doing great. 

Finally she found the prescription that I needed. She recommended more Vitamin P... as in, p for pleasure. I'd never heard of such a thing, but apparently it's important. Vit.P. might be found in generously buttered toast for breakfast, chocolate chip cookies for afternoon snacks (they could be proteiny cookies, or they could just be cookies), and bowls of ice cream after dinner. Coconut milk in your oatmeal, and ricotta cheese on your pancakes. More goat cheese on your salads. All good sources of vit. P.! The curious thing is that guilt has an inhibiting factor on the absorption of vit. P., but when you have enough vit. P. it actually can enhance the absorption of all other nutrients by enabling relaxation of the digestive system as a whole. She gave me a good long spiel about how other countries can be so much more relaxed about their diets (take France or Italy) and here in America we're always chastising ourselves for enjoying anything, or worrying about things we shouldn't worry about. 

I'm really good at chastising and worrying. Kind of amazing, actually. I've internalized all of America's social conditioning around food. So this assignment isn't the easiest for me. I'm glad and grateful that it came as an assignment from a person with a degree, and diplomas on the wall, because I respond well to assignments from authority figures. Vitamin P, here we come!