The Viable Alternative

Summer has officially arrived in my part of the world and I couldn’t be more thrilled and happy because this is my favourite season! Woohoo!!

Anyhoo, some time back, I wrote a blog titled, “9 Ways You Can Find Your Strength As a Sheltered, Emasculated Man,” and one of the things I suggested in this blog was to learn how to cook for yourself.

As first glance, it seems like an odd suggestion because cooking can be considered feminine. Many men, when it comes to looking for “wifey material,” have a requirement that the girl knows how to cook. Also, when men want to compliment a meal that they had, we often say, “It’s just like Mom’s cooking.”

Along with clothing and shelter, food is considered as one of our basic needs, but not only because we need it to survive, but also because on an emotional level, it makes us feel loved, nurtured and cared for.

To highlight this, consider the phrase, “A way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.”

Food not only involves the emotions of being loved, nurtured and cared for, it also engages our other senses of taste, smell, touch and sight and when you’re truly connected to your body, you’re able to really appreciate and enjoy food on a visceral level.

In my honest opinion, food is feminine because it involves the sensual.

The problem however is that in this day and age in this society, we’ve grown to have a dysfunctional relationship with food because there’s so much unhealthy food out there that’s promoted and consumed that’s causing a huge health crisis. Then, because many men don’t know how to cook for themselves, if they’re single and living alone, they’re forced to go to outside places to get their food where they have little to no control over the ingredients that go into this food.

Food is the building block of health, and many of these holistic, integrated or functional medicine doctors who help cure a lot of these “incurable” chronic ailments often tout that “food is medicine.”

Overcoming emasculation involves taking responsibility over your life. This includes learning about and choosing to consume foods that give you health and vitality, and then taking back your power by learning to cook for yourself the foods that you personally enjoy instead of giving that power over to an establishment or business that may not have your best interest at heart.

And even if that business or person has your best interest at heart, how much more empowered would you feel if you learned to cook that for yourself in a way that you enjoyed instead of depending on that person or business?

To overcome a feeling of emasculation, you have to learn to build a healthy relationship with the feminine part of you as well as the masculine.

Learning how to cook for yourself will teach you how to provide that nurturing, care and love to your own self rather than depend on it from a woman like your Mom or a woman you’re dating. This will give you more balance as a masculine man and help fuel and support the masculine part of you.

In my personal experience, since I learned how to cook for myself, I’ve found it to be an amazing, empowering feeling to be able to cook healthy food for myself that tastes good. On one end, it leaves me with a sense of sovereignty and independence, and on the other end, it’s a way that I show love to myself.

This is The Viable Alternative.

Hope this helps,

Ike Love