The context for this post is having learned how to do mindfulness meditation during the pandemic with a reputable mediation app. In that process I learned to manage anxiety by reducing the aversion to being anxious. I learned to live with anxiety as just a phenomenon, something that can be experienced as a physical sensation rather than a scary emotional state, and one that I could live with.
At the outset of the nutrition modification of the last few months, I found myself strategizing about how I was going to get really tantalizing, interesting meals when on low-carb. I found myself thinking in terms of equivalents to really tasty (addictive) carb-full meals like chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast.
The reality is that it is much more helpful to not consistantly battle the fact that you are going to be eating whole foods like meat, protein, and fat. It's helpful to just acknowledge that the dynamic range (difference between the highest and lowest values) of excitingness of the meals has got to come down. Just kind of embrace that new range, and stop fighting it.
What I learned is that the pallete adjusts. A really luxurious meal of prime rib, brocoli, and caesar salad with anchovies feels, in terms of pleasure response, just as beautfiul as gorging yourself on those pancakes, with much more satiety longevity, and much fewer downsides in terms of mood and energy.
One learns to move about that range with more adeptness using spices, salt, umami...etc. As with the anxiety, the boringness of low-carb is much more tolerable when you kind of just acknowledge it and stop fighting against it.
