My relationship with food has always been complicated. For most of my childhood I was a picky eater--the kind parents hate to raise. I hated anything that (I have now discovered) makes food taste good, including any kind of sauce and most condiments. I hated onions, tomatoes and peppers. I separated my meat from my spaghetti noodles and asked my mom to give me the meat before she added the tomato sauce to it. I loved cheese and milk, but if you combined them to make a sauce, no way was I eating them. Highly suspect. I remained this way until college.
When I married my husband in 2006 we decided to be vegetarians. We were both interested to see the effects it would have on our bodies and wanted to be more healthy in general. As far as the rules we abided by, we allowed ourselves sea food and dairy. I was introduced to lentils, lots of beans and rice and produce. I developed a love for loose-leaf tea and began using this as a substitute for Dr. Pepper. After a year of being demi-veg, Asher and I had each gained about 20 lbs. We missed the ease of buying/cooking with meat and decided that we needed a slightly more drastic change.
Upon moving to Dallas, TX in 2007 we began the Rotation Diet--a strict low-calorie diet that puts you on a 3-week "rotation." Week One had three days of 600 calories for women and 1200 calories for men, and four days had 900/1500 calories. Week Two moved up to 1200 calories for women and 1800 calories for men, then Week Three went back to the 600/900 and 1200/1500. The diet eliminated just about everything (bad and good, it seemed). Low sugar, low fat, low carb, extremely low sodium. I was too hungry to keep this up for long, so I would do one 3-week rotation and then take a few months off to maintain the fifteen or so pounds that I lost each time.
Over a period of about a year-and-a-half I went from 225 to 160. I learned a lot from this diet, especially about sodium, but my body had a lot of damage as I essentially crash-dieted once every few months. Through regular exercise and a somewhat healthy diet, I've maintained the 65lb weight loss ever since.
What I have now is a "somewhat healthy" diet.
I try to avoid foods that are high in fat, sugar and sodium. I enjoy fresh produce. I don't eat frozen meals except the very occasional (once a month would be a lot) frozen pizza and frozen veggies. I eat multi grain and whole wheat bread instead of white. Brown rice instead of white. I haven't had a drop of soda since July 2007. I drink lots of water. I eat breakfast. I buy organic milk and cage-free eggs. I take a multi-vitamin. I get candy at the movies every once in a great while when I go. I finally like most of those foods I didn't like as a child (save sour cream, mayonnaise and olives).
Popular nutritional consensus says that most of these things are pretty good. Over the last few months, though, I've been quietly pursued by the idea, however cliche, that "good is the enemy of best."
While whole wheat and grains are fine, a lot of my food isn't as good as it could be. Dead. Processed. Refined. Industrialized. Oxidized. Depleted. From what I've gathered, nutrition hasn't changed much in the history of humanity, but food has. The pressure to be innovative with food changes both its composition and the way it's marketed. There's a staggering amount of research to sift through, and it's important to be critical as some of it's biased, some of it's interpreted incorrectly, and some of it is great.
I don't pretend to have the know-how to sift through it all correctly. But I want to try.
So here is where I start the research to make the move from good to best, or at least to better, with what I put in my body.
I've begun with the book Real Food: What to Eat and Why by Nina Planck. She grew up on a real-food farm in the US, became a vegan/vegetarian for years, then while living in London working as the speech writer for the US ambassador to England made her way back to real food and started the first farmers' markets in London in 1999. The book is a compilation of the research she did after years of being unsatisfied with her vegan lifestyle, and it ultimately brought her to a place of being an advocate for real food.
I've got a number of good friends who have, in their words, discovered the joy of a fully nutritious diet through real food. Right now I'm learning about the difference between traditional whole, raw milk and industrial homogenized milk. Pretty fascinating! More details to come as I read them.
No comments:
Post a Comment