So following my weekend of poor eating, I have gotten obsessive about my healthy eating. I created a food blog: Stuff I Eat . The goal is to take a picture and upload it to my blog of everything I eat, including snacks and non-water beverages. So far it has helped keep my eating in check because I tend to mindlessly snack on walnuts or fruits. There is such a thing as too much walnuts or fruit, by the way, haha.
I’m also keeping track of my exercise habits, as well as what we spend at the grocery store.
I don’t calorie count. I’m not a good calorie counter anyway. Weight Watchers promoted bad behavior with me. I just ate empty calories because they were worth one or two “points” each serving and I was always hungry.
Brett and I did well for three weeks straight. I was feeling better. Hell, I lost 10 pounds. Then the 4th of July holiday came and my willpower was tested. Keep in mind that I wasn’t hungry when I ate this stuff. I was just eating because I was anxious, angry, irritable, etc. Being around my family is emotionally taxing, especially since my immediate family (though less so) and extended family struggle with obesity and emotional and/or dysfunctional eating. While my parents and my sister are supportive of what I’m doing, it’s obvious that my extended family is NOT.
When I told them about changing my eating habits (NOT dieting), I was immediately met with opposition. I got excuses of, “Oh, that’s so expensive,” or “I’m already x amount fat, so what’s the point in changing what I eat” or various other things. Losing weight isn’t easy, and I personally know that changing how and what you eat is fucking HARD. I have accepted the fact that I will ALWAYS be fat by medical standards, but that isn’t an excuse for me to say, OK, I’m going to drink whole milk, eat hashbrown casserole, potato chips, red meat, sugar, and simple carbs all the time.
Before talking more about my frustrations with my family, I will explain this eating plan that Brett and I are doing.
It sounds cheesy, but we’re mostly following the Drs Mike Roison and Mehmet Oz plan in the You: On A Diet book. The fundamental basics are to cut out refined sugar (and in my personal opinion, artificial sweeteners), simple carbs, most red meat, and anything high in saturated fat, as well as “eating to lose,” meaning constantly eating small meals/snacks to maintain a satiated feeling throughout the day and eliminate blood sugar spikes and dives.
We’ve finally detoxed off of sugar and simple carbs after about a month. Considering I have PCOS and insulin resistance, it was especially crucial for me to remove sugar and simple carbs from my diet. This was the hardest part for me and I spent many days in emotional disarray. I felt like I was experiencing something similar to what drug addicts and alcoholics experience when detoxing off those substances.
We eat more vegetables, fruits, and whole wheat things than we ever have. We also take a multi-vitamin, vitamin D3, a probiotic, and fish oil twice a day. Next thing on the list is to consistently exercise every single day, if only for a 30 minute walk around the nature trail at our apartment complex.
When I eat this way, I feel a lot better emotionally and physically. I have more energy, my mind is less foggy, and my emotions are in check. It is bizarre and disturbing to experience the emotional and personality changes I have when I put something highly processed into my mouth. My parents and my husband will attest that I am a different person when I eat sugar and simple carbs.
So for those of you wondering what the fuck it is we eat, a typical day looks like this:
- Breakfast: two slices turkey bacon, the Egg Beaters equivalent of two eggs, one slice Ezekiel bread with organic natural peanut butter, and one iced chai tea with 2% milk, agave nectar, and vanilla extract.
- Morning snack: a piece of fruit and a small handful of walnuts.
- Lunch: a Boca “chicken” patty on a 100% whole wheat sandwich “thin” (you need to check these out if you haven’t already!), with lettuce, sugar free ketchup, spicy mustard, tomato, etc. Maybe a salad with some sort of protein on it like beans or turkey with a dijon vinaigrette, or maybe even a soup.
- Afternoon snack: sautéed veggies, a piece of fruit, or walnuts, or even some homemade guacamole.
- Dinner: usually just a variety of cooked vegetables with baked (coated with curry powder, paprika, etc) chicken, or whole wheat pasta, or vegetable pizza on a whole wheat crust with low-fat mozzarella cheese. Things like that. My favorite meal is sautéed peppers and onions with paprika, chili powder, cumin, and cayenne pepper sprinkled of them, with whole grain brown rice, salsa, fresh homemade guacamole, low-fat mozzarella cheese all on a whole wheat tortilla. It’s very delicious and I don’t even need meat in order to be satisfied.
- Evening snack: usually popcorn with a low calorie flavor sprinkler or whatever as we watch a couple of episodes of The X-Files.
- Or sometimes in lieu of a “real” dinner after we walk for 30 minutes, we will have a smoothie consisting of low-fat, no sugar plain greek yogurt, a banana, blueberries, orange juice, and protein powder. It actually does hit the spot and fill us (or at least me) up.
There you have it. We don’t have a lot of meal choices, but that makes meal planning and eating a WHOLE lot easier.
Going back to my family situation:
I am an emotional eater as well, and tend to eat things because I have emotions or memories related to them. In the past, I never pegged myself as an emotional eater, but now I see that I am. So as you can imagine, it was very hard for me to be around “comfort” foods like barbeque, potato salad, hash brown casserole, chocolate chip cookies, etc, without wanting to eat them. I stayed the course for a while, all the while pining for things I had forbidden myself to have. Eventually I caved. It started with a small handful (about 3-4 chips) of almost every one of the FIVE BAGS OF CHIPS my aunt brought to a cook out of only seven people. Then she brought the chips on the boat as we went out to see fireworks on the river. So of course I, and Brett too, ate way more chips than we should have. I’m sure we put away a whole bag between just the two of us.
The next day I felt like shit. I had a headache all day, didn’t sleep well, and was grumpy. I didn’t get in a 30 minute walk the night before either. I hate the guest bed at my parents’ house too. We went out to Cracker Barrel with my grandmother where I ate as sensibly as you CAN eat at CB. I had bacon, egg beaters, and two slices of “wheat” toast. I’m sure it was packed with sugar and high fructose corn syrup, but there’s not much a healthy eating person can eat there.
Then, there was the picnic. Buckets of fried chicken, pork bbq, NO fresh vegetables, cookies, various fatty cheesy casseroles and concoctions. My mom roasted a turkey breast for Brett and me, I made taboulleh salad (my new favorite thing, btw), and we cut up lots of fresh fruit for desserts. I did well at first. I ate the things we brought. Then I started thinking I would do OK if I had tiny little portions of each of the “bad” foods I had told myself I wouldn’t eat, so of course I got one little scoop of potato salad, one little scoop of bbq with sauce, an angel biscuit (I think these are southern things, so I don’t know how to explain it to any northerners), and one little scoop of hash brown casserole.
After it was all said and done, I’d had another little scoop of potato salad and a big heaping pile of hash brown casserole. FAIL.
And the whole time I was struggling with whether or not to eat this shit, Brett was silent (and suffering/struggling just as much as I was), and my cousin was telling me, “It’s JUST [xx]. It’s OK to have a little,” as she piled more crap food on her plate as well. It was almost as though she was justifying her own behavior, hoping it would only be perceived as justifying mine.
I did not eat ANY cookies, for which I am infinitely grateful. Totally disregarding the fact that I was stuffed for the first time in a month, I expressed my desire to eat a cooke, my cousin retrieved one for herself and said, “MMMM” while staring at me and taking a huge bite.
At that moment, I became angry and became fully aware of this dysfunctional relationship with food that my entire family has. I don’t know what it is that snapped inside of me, but I was bolstered with almost militant-like strength and willpower to change my fucking life and this horrible relationship with food.
When I returned to my parents’ house, I ranted and raved to my mother and Brett about how anyone in the extended family hates anyone losing weight. I ranted to my sister via text message. I spewed lots of emotional things about emotional eating, and how I was sick of being so dysfunctional.
Brett and I left to come back home to Middle Tennessee and I slept a majority of the way. When we got home, we got drunk, watched X-Files, ate lots of popcorn, and slept in late the next day. We continued our poor eating by eating at Buffalo Wild Wings since it was cheap and I was hung over. That was yesterday. And yesterday was hard. I had no energy, no motivation, and I was incredibly depressed.
BUT TODAY IS A NEW DAY!
I am encouraged. I am ready for a life changing experience. I will not stray again for I hated the way I felt after eating poorly. Only healthy things will enter my body and give me fuel for life, exploration, learning, feeling, and loving. Without that healthy stuff, I can’t do any of that. I can’t live. I can’t function.
I am going to regain my fertility, lose weight, and live the fucking way I was meant to live. I am young. I am vibrant. This is just the beginning of all the life changing things happening.
