Posts Tagged ‘pregnancy’
Natalie Portman & I
I’ve been struck by how much press has been devoted to Natalie Portman’s decision to give up being vegan during pregnancy. I guess the media loves a good story, but the hype on this does seem a little out of proportion.
We definitely live a world where everyone and everything is defined by sound bite adjectives. We’re all on information overload and in order to keep up we generalize, compartmentalize, and abbreviate. It’s easier to think of a “healthy lifestyle” as something defined by a set of rigid principles and apply the label to yourself (be it vegan, raw, 80/10, paleo, etc.). I realized awhile ago that I needed to get past this line of thinking, a difficult process in that it’s been my rationale for more than half my life. Is avoiding animal products better for the planet, YES! BUT, there are no gold stars awarded for living 100% vegan or raw. This is not my path to enlightenment.
But back to the Natalie Portman story… According to the articles, one reason she started eating eggs is that she craved baked goods from regular bakeries. I also went through the starchy-sweet phase for quite a long time. I had no idea how much the hormones would throw off my regular pattern of eating. The very sight of salad during my first trimester made me nauseous. To trick myself into eating veggies, I had to steam them until they were limp and then slather them in soy-free Earth Balance. For a week during our team cross country camp in Bend, my diet staple was gluten-free banana bread from Strictly Organic Coffee. I even stock-piled it to take back to Portland. I also craved whole milk yogurt, hormone-free rotisserie chicken from Zupan’s, the occassional scrambled egg and more sweet potatos than I ever thought possible to consume.
Whether it’s our bodies telling us we need iron, protein or some other nutrient combination, I think it’s best just to go with what sounds good… especially if it isn’t just fast-food and jello! Labels can wait, they will always be there in case we want to run back to them.
