Food is a universal experience. All animate life on earth requires it in some form. For humans, as with many other animate lifeforms, food constitutes external fuel sources that we consume, digest, and turn into energy. But food is so much more than that! Food is an indication and performance of culture. The specific dishes we eat are often determined by our geographic location, the cuisine of our region, and what we enjoy eating and sharing with others. Mealtime practices are also determined by our culture, both socially and on a smaller scale. In your culture, do you sit at a table to eat? On the floor? Are elders served first? Does the cook eat last? Are there specific mealtimes to which you adhere? Are there certain holidays you commemorate with meals? What about fasting? Do you observe any fasting rituals or practices?
 
Simply put, our cultural relationships with food are very complex. Our personal relationships with food are equally complex. How we relate to food as individuals is embedded within our broader cultural context. We learn how to eat and how to engage with food by observing those around us and by participating in a culture of food from birth. As we grow, we may choose to adjust what we learned about food as young humans. We may actively invest and re-invest in a particular way of engaging with food, or we may passively continue to engage with food in the ways to which we have been accustomed. For example, if as a child you had an older sibling who loved cooking for the family, who always set the table and invited the family to share a robust and meaningful meal together every evening, you may find yourself perpetuating that practice in your own family structure without necessarily examining why you curate mealtimes in this way. Or, perhaps during your formative years you watched a friend struggle with an eating disorder, and thus every time you eat a meal you very consciously express gratitude for the ways you are able to eat and enjoy food without disordered thinking.
 
Food goes beyond our personal table as well. Traditionally, many Indigenous people have hunted, fished, or gathered specific food sources that still play important roles in their living cultures. In some states, Indigenous sustenance rights are protected within state law, meaning these peoples can continue to hunt or harvest the food sources they always have on the land that is rightfully theirs. In some places, dominant culture regulations encroach on these practices. This demonstrates that there is no way to remove an individual’s eating practices from the broader context, from the way their family, community, government, nation, society, and beyond engages with food and mealtime.
 
Food is so big. Food is so important. How can we take this recognition and implement it in daily practices surrounding our own mealtimes? Why should we do so?
 
Weightlifting is a weightclassed sport. However, we are not the only athletes nor the only humans who think very clinically about the food we put into our bodies and how it fuels us. Integrating this precise approach with the above-mentioned recognition that food plays such a huge and important role in our lives and cultures can be tricky. I began counting my macros when I picked up weightlifting as my primary sport. However, I participated in wrestling, another weightclassed sport, when I was in high school. At the time, I had almost no access to the types of knowledge and support I have now regarding making weight and planning my food intake. In high school, I remember being constantly hungry. When I wasn’t wrestling in the winter, I was rowing in the fall, spring, and summer. I was hungry when I was restricting my food for wrestling, and hungry when I was expending the insane amount of calories it took to be a competitive rower during the remainder of the year. I was growing. I was going through puberty. I was hungry. I did my very best to eat healthily and ethically, but as a teenager I didn’t possess the same perspective on the role food plays in our culture as I do now. While I felt like I was always hungry and always shoveling food into my face, I never had a doubt that food would be available to me. I was never food-insecure. I never worried that I wouldn’t be able to access foods that were traditionally important to my family and my people. I held, and still hold, privilege that enabled me to remain ignorant of many of the ways other people struggle with food in our world. I feel fortunate that, though I was a wrestler, I never developed disordered eating practices. As an intense athlete, I knew I needed food to fuel myself, and I loved how strong my body was. Being asked to disclose my weight by my wrestling coaches, teammates, and referees at every turn made me realize that this number associated with my body didn’t hold any power over me. I wanted to make weight and be competitive, yes. But I also had pride in what my body was able to do. Especially as a young woman, I am grateful for the ways my ego was held intact by my sports, my family, and my community.
 
Now, as a weightlifter and an adult, I am constantly examining my relationship with food, with my sport, and with myself. I am very aware that many people live in hunger and in food insecurity. I am aware that animals are mistreated and killed so we can eat them. I recognize that plants, too, give their lives for us to consume. I know there is a broad system of inequity that takes advantaged of underserved groups in order to extract cheap labor in the agricultural industry. I do my very best to relate to my food in the most ethical way possible. I also count my macros and restrict my food intake. I have experienced abundant guilt in moments where, when offered a plethora of free food (for example, at a bridal shower), I have had to refuse much of the offerings in order to meet my nutrition goals. I am aware of the abundance of food in my life and have complicated feelings towards willfully remaining hungry, at times, so I can meet my weightclass goals.
 
In the context of these complicated feelings, I have developed certain modes of thinking that help me to reconcile the ways I try to be both an ethical, compassionate person and a strong, lean weightlifter. I credit much of this thinking to the community I have formed around myself, to the individuals in my life who have taught me about using food to fuel my workouts, how to forage for wild foods, how to honor the lives of the animals who have died so I can nourish myself on their bodies. The most impactful notion, for me, is the recognition that food is so big and that it is embedded in a complex cultural context. Furthermore, I recognize the inherent value of all life on earth, including animals, plants, and the inanimate elements of our environments. By simply reminding myself of these truths, I find myself engaging with my food in a more meaningful and appreciative way.
 
In practice, I have specific ways of honoring these truths. When traveling, I allow myself to set the scale and macros aside if a food-based experience will allow me to experience the local culture and relate to the people within it in a revealing and meaningful way. I try to use mealtimes to connect with others, to use shared food as the element that brings myself and my loved ones together. When sharing meals with friends and family, we set aside digital distractions and attempt to be fully present with each other and with our meal. I have a certain community where, before every meal, we explicitly thank the food before us for its death, because through it, we live.
 
Where these practices become a bit more complicated are when I am eating alone. As a weightlifter, I’m used to training alone. Not only am I often in the gym by myself (or with only my small dog beside me!), but even when surrounded by others, I occupy my platform alone. Additionally, I weigh my food, track my macros, and cook and eat my meals in complete solitude quite often. In these situations, I try very hard to acknowledge that even when eating alone, I am always in relationship with myself and with my food. Even if I am eating alone, I try to leave all distractions aside, to offer gratitude for my food, and to be thankful for the role food plays in my life. Sometimes, I wish I could eat more during a given meal, or I wish I could eat more calorie-dense food. But regardless of what type of restriction I may be in as I navigate my weight, I genuinely endeavor to feel and express abundant gratitude that I am in a position to have the complicated relationship I have with food. It is a privilege that I can restrict my food intake by choice, that I have time to engage in sport, that my body is safe and well enough to compete. This is a gift, and when I sit before a plate, I offer thanks for this gift and honor the relationship I hold with myself and food that sustains me.