After a year of collecting recipes from our Bootcampers, recruiting friends to do recipe testing and trading personal training for design and illustration services, I’m so psyched to introduce our Food Feels Good community cookbook! Have a look at the Forward to learn a bit more about our food philosophy, check the back for some awesome resources about everything from food politics to disordered eating and then dig in to some delicious recipes!
(from the forward of the Food Feels Good Cookbook)
Warning! Gluten ahead!
None of these recipes will promise to make you lose weight or look like a celebrity or be bikini ready in 3 weeks. Be warned that they might contain fat and meat and dairy and deliciousness. These are a collection of recipes chosen by people like you; busy people with families and jobs who like to make and eat food that makes them feel good.
I know you want to be buff and beautiful and have a flat stomach. And you’ve probably heard that people who cook are more likely to have a healthy body weight and live longer. In fact, the decline in home cooking closely tracks the rise in obesity and all the chronic diseases linked to diet. Research even indicates that children who enjoy home cooked meals with their parents do better in school and are less likely to drink, smoke and suffer from eating disorders.
This book was designed to evoke a time when people cooked at home about twice as often as we do now. Cookbooks were not glossy hardcover kitchen decor but smudged with lard grease, chocolate fingerprints and years of wear. Those 1970’s cooks may have been making jellied ham salads, but at least they were making their own and not outsourcing their food to industry. And they were a lot thinner and healthier than we are today.
You may think that a cookbook by a Personal Trainer and a Nutritionist should be a bit more prescriptive. If you want food advice, I would quote my favourite food writer, Michael Pollan, in saying: “Eat real food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” And then I would add: Eat with people you love. And pay attention to how it makes you feel (physically, emotionally, psychologically).
If you want some ideas from active and awesome people such as yourself, check out these recipes.
Oonagh Duncan
Personal Trainer, Fitness Educator & founder of Fit Feels Good