The First 100 Pounds (21 - 30)

There's a little more swearing in this post than usual. If that sort of thing bothers you, you probably want to skip this post. And, you know. The rest of this blog.

The standard warnings still apply: I'm still not a medical professional, and I don't pretend that this is some sort of program. It's what I did, what I do, and what has worked for me. It doesn't even necessarily make sense. Your mileage may vary, and your doctor should have a say in the matter. What the hell do I know about this? I'm a poet, people. Get professional advice.

I also want to remind you (and myself) that some of these realizations/developments/changes were 16 months or more in the making. Process, process, process.

If you want to start from the beginning, you can do so here. Here are 21 – 30:

21. I MADE SMALL DIETARY ADJUSTMENTS

Not huge ones, not all at once. I dropped down from 1% milk to skim. A chip fiend, I started looking at what was in chips, and choosing ones made with ingredients I could pronounce. I also started getting the individual bags, which goes against everything I believe in from a packaging standpoint, but is a necessary step in teaching me about portions. Once those portions are ingrained, I'll go back to bigger bags and divvy them up myself (please note that in no way am I promising to give them up), but at the moment, I don't trust myself with big bags of anything but pretzels which, for some reason, don't trigger the kind of mindless eating that potato chips or tortilla chips do. Basically, I identified troubling parts of my diet—that is, parts that troubled me, that I was unhappy about—and I changed them, one at a time. I'll talk about more of them later in some detail, but the point here is just that I made them and, more importantly, that they were SMALL.

22. I MAKE MY OWN FOOD

Well, a lot of it, anyway. I know this sounds like the exact opposite of a "small dietary adjustment," but it came in stages. My big shift in thinking started with bread. I'm not sure why I wanted to learn to make bread. Part of it was that I found it intimidating, and I'm sometimes contrary that way. Part of it was that I was following a food blog written by a woman who was making a lot of bread at the time. I started making most of our bread products (loaves, English muffins, pizza dough, bagels…you name it), and I was feeling proud of myself for eliminating much of the high fructose corn syrup from our diet. I don't think I'll immediately get diabetes if I ingest a milliliter of HFCS—I just think that if I'm buying whole wheat bread and using it to make sandwiches with locally-sourced cheeses and organic vegetables, maybe it shouldn't be full of preservatives and sugars of…let's call them questionable origins. I switched out the Miracle Whip (which I grew up on—no need to go hating the Whip) for mayonnaise. I started reading labels. And at some point, I realized that continuing to buy, say, a bag of jelly beans and eating myself into a diabetic coma might not be congruent with worrying about how much HFCS was in my bread. It took longer than that, and it went through several stages, and I still eat some processed food (not a lot, as it appeals to me less and less), but that's the gist of it.

I didn't make it a black-and-white issue—I already have too many rules like that in my life, and the problem with them is that when I fall off the wagon, I've got a built-in excuse for staying there. If it's an all-or-nothing situation, it's easier to go with "all." But if I make it a priority to make our food, then it doesn't matter if my schedule gets busy and I have to buy a loaf of bread. It's okay when we lose power for a week (like we did after Hurricane Irene) and we actually (gasp!) order out for pizza. The world doesn't end, and neither do I. Making this change in my thinking is, I'm starting to believe, the most important step I took in this process. And I did it by accident.

23. I EAT THE YOLKS

There will always be someone telling you that some kind of food is unhealthy (and I'll tell you that, later, too). I like egg yolks. I like them solid, I like them runny. Yes, they have cholesterol. Yes, they have fat. They also have Vitamin A, calcium, and iron. And both B-6 and B-12. A little fat can help keep me satisfied longer. And they're fucking delicious. I don't eat 27 eggs a day (I eat maybe 2 a week), but when I do? I eat the damn yolks. There are plenty of other foods like this, but you get the picture.

24. I THINK ABOUT WHAT I EAT

I try to eat mindfully these days. That means thinking about why I want what I want. It means shopping well and keeping healthy food in the house, but it also means considering a menu when I go out to eat. Do I want sweet potato fries today? Do I really want them? When was the last time I had them? Do I want them enough to make them worth the calories? What has the rest of my diet looked like lately—plenty of veggies, lean protein, the right amount of carbs? If I'm in doubt about the answers to any of those questions, it can make for a tough decision, but one that gets easier.

25. I EAT IT ANYWAY

Sometimes. Because sometimes I just want food because it's appealing at the time. What I think of as "normal people"—people who have a healthy relationship with food—sometimes eat things just because they taste good to them. They don't try to mentally calculate the calories of every meal they eat, and they don't debate the nutritional value of feta cheese over bleu cheese or skip the cheese they really want because it's going to add calories. Normal people sometimes eat sweet potato fries two days in a row. Normal people eat when they're hungry and stop when they're full, and normal people do not always eat all of their servings of vegetables. My diet is already tons better than it was two years ago, which was better than it was five years ago. Balance, people. I'm talking about balance. But if you're going to eat it, make sure you enjoy it.

26. I MAKE ROOM FOR ICE CREAM

Damn straight I do. I live in the land of Bliss Brothers Dairy, which makes some of the best ice cream I've ever had, in a part of the country where we do not toil under the misguided notion that ice cream is a seasonal food. I love ice cream. I don't eat it every day, or even every week. But when I do eat it, I enjoy the hell out of it. I don't add up its calories or skip a meal to make up for it (although having a sundae for dinner one night in the summer is a long-standing tradition that I refuse to abandon, it's got nothing to do with limiting calories) or think about how long it will be before I can have the next one. I have two rules about eating ice cream: first, I need to really want it, which means I need to have been craving it for a while (often more than a week). I don't respond to my first craving for ice cream, pretty much ever. Second, I need to really enjoy it. If I want sorbet, that's fine, and that's what I'll get. But if I want a full-fat peanut butter cup ice cream cone or a sundae with whipped cream and walnuts? Then that's what I'm going to get. And I'm going to appreciate it, because when it's gone, it's gone. It's not a mistake, it's not "bad" food or "bad" behavior. It's fucking dessert and it's awesome and if I try to tell myself that I'm never having it again, I've set up another all-or-nothing scenario, knowing full well that after enough time of nothing, I'm going to revert, no-holds-barred, to all.

27. I EAT MORE PLANTS

It's one of the dietary adjustments I made. It wasn't difficult for me, as I was already eating more vegetables than most people I know—I love vegetables. Raw, steamed, roasted, sautéed. I'm in. I'm not a huge fan of fruit, but I do what I can. At least two days a week, I keep vegetarian. That started accidentally, and it's not a rule by any stretch of the imagination, but it works for me. And rarely a day goes by that I don't get my full five servings or more of vegetables. Fruit…sigh. Fruit is a challenge.

28. I EAT WHEN I'M HUNGRY

I get hungry a lot. If you're running 25 or 30 miles a week and climbing hills for another ten or fifteen, plus going about your regular activities, you're going to get hungry. My body is working hard, with the workouts and the building of muscle and all. I make sure to get three full meals a day, and usually two snacks. If I get hungry on top of that, and I know it's actual hunger, not thirst, I eat—I just try to choose my snacks well.

29. I DRINK A LOT OF WATER

Thirst can masquerade as hunger. I drink a lot of water—it's easier when you don't drink soda—and probably half the time, having enough water in my system makes the hunger pangs go away. (If it doesn't, I revert to number 28). I know you probably hear it a lot, but water makes everything function in your body: your organs, your digestion, everything. Yes, I have to pee a lot. If that's my biggest problem in life, I'm doing just fine.

30. I DRINK A LITTLE WINE

Every couple of nights, I have a glass. There are reports that it's good for you, but I don't care. I like a glass of red with dinner, and I seldom have two, or even one glass two nights in a row. Relaxing is a good thing, and if people tell you that alcohol is liquid fat, tell them to shut up. Wine is liquid awesome. (So is sweat, but don't drink that, because it's gross.)