Holy cow! I started lifting heavy 12 weeks ago! How time flies. I am shocked at how much I've fallen in love with weight lifting, how it has changed my body, and how it has changed me psychologically. It's pretty effin cool.
About a week ago, I had a fitness assessment at my gym. It's free for members, and included using the BodPod, which is pretty much a rocket ship shaped like an egg that uses science and lasers to measure your lean body mass. I knew going into it that I would also do a mile run and a push up test in my fitness assessment, along with some other measurements.
My expectations vs. my reality
Body fat percentage: Expected 30-25%. Measured 22%
Mile run: 9:30. Measured 8:42.
Push ups: 12. Measured 16.
So I exceeded my expectations in every area! I told the woman who measured me that my goals for the year are to bench 100, squat 150, and do a pull up. They now include an 8 minute mile and 20 pushups in a set. I can do it!
The coolest thing was getting my true metabolic resting rate. It was 1349 just to keep me alive. She said that even if I were sedentary, I would still need to take in about 1700 calories just to live. This was so eye opening. Any time I diet, I tend to limit myself to 1500 calories a day, no matter how much I exercise. Ridiculous! Ain't nobody got time for that. So I bumped up my consumption, and I'm much more interested in getting in macros than worrying about calories. It's been an amazing shift in my thinking.
That's what I mean by a psychological change. Not only do I look forward to going to the gym, but I've stopped thinking in terms of losing weight/cutting calories and started thinking in terms of making gains/getting stronger/getting in all my macros. I'm more worried about not eating enough protein than I am worried about eating too many calories. I am more interested in the weight on my squat bar than I am the weight on the scale.
I'd be lying if I said that there isn't a definite aesthetic component to all this. I started weight lifting in the first place because I wanted to gain muscle and burn fat and look like all the fitness competitors I follow on Instagram. And I still do it for those reasons. But now I also do it because I am in a competition with myself to get stronger, to rep for my girls in the weight room, and to feel a huge sense of accomplishment when I leave the gym. Talk about progress!
Monday, June 17, 2013
Thursday, May 2, 2013
In Again Out Again Finnagan
My dad always says that, mostly about their cats or about baskets that just sit on the hoop and don't go in. But at the moment, it describes my situation.
Recently I've been reading some really cool Tumblr blogs, my favorite being Health and the Fat Girl. I want to say that I'm pretty ashamed of some of the stuff I've written on this blog. Some of it might come off as fat-shaming, and I'm sorry about that, because these blogs have opened up my eyes. The other night I was talking to a (similarly fitness loving) friend, and I told him that anymore I see fat people as brave. To live in a world that hates fat people and to have the courage to say, "Fuck it, I won't let you ruin my life just because you don't like the way I look" is pretty damn ballsy. If you follow that link, you'll find links to lots of really compelling articles- many of them debunk myths that I "knew" to be true, like that fat people always eat more than thin people and fatness is a bigger drain on our health resources than anything else. These are excuses I hear a lot of people make as to why they feel being overweight is bad- because it is "unhealthy." So it was pretty eye-opening to read that maybe that assumption is just... wrong. Whether or not some big study comes out tomorrow to prove that fatness is directly responsible for world wars, the fact stands that IT'S JUST FAT AND IT'S NOT A BIG DEAL. YOUR WEIGHT DOESN'T AFFECT ANYONE SO EVERYONE NEEDS TO CHILL.
But sadly, the image here describes my truth. I really do think all women are beautiful. In fact, recently I heard someone say that, "You fall in love with a person, not the vessel in which they move through life." Since then, I have made a concerted effort to not judge ANYONE on their appearance, which has extended to not comparing my body to other women. But it's hard. Really hard. It's ok with me for any other person to have whatever body they were born with, and I think they are all beautiful. But that kind of unconditional acceptance does not extend to my own body, most of the time.
About ten weeks ago I made a huge change in my working out. I began lifting heavy and making a true effort to eat clean, and I've loved it. I feel powerful and strong and I actually look forward to working out every day. I have to admit, though, that I went into it to change the way my body looks. And though I have seen so many changes other than that (better sleep being number one, but feeling more hydrated/no daytime sleepiness are close behind), it's been the changes I see in the mirror that I was most excited about. I ate too little and became really preoccupied with food. Inevitably it led to binging and unhappiness and I just wasn't listening to my body, which was saying, "Bitch, you cannot work out this hard and not feed me."
It seems sometimes like being an athlete/wanting to be fit is incompatible with having a normal relationship with food, but I'm determined to try. I've been reading a lot about "unconditional permission to eat." Can't remember if I've written about it before, but I know I've thought about it. For me, this means that I am going to eat when I'm hungry. Sounds so simple but SO MANY of us struggle with it. I know for me, I have a big time restrict/binge mentality. It's walking the line or going HARD at the junk food. That not only is bad for me physically, but it's bad for me mentally, and not just because it puts me farther away from my goals. I want to get past this cycle, and be able to trust my body to tell me when I'm hungy and what it needs, without undoing the progress in muscle building I've made. So for now, I'm "out again." Still eating clean, but trying not to be so focused on calories. I'll probably still keep track of macros to an extent, but essentially I am saying, "As long as it's an unprocessed food, I can eat it till I'm full, and have more later if I get hungry again." (Unless it's a special meal, in which case you better believe I don't be givin a FUCK if it's healthy or unprocessed or full of lard or whatever.)
If you've followed my blog before, you know I will probably repent and fall off this wagon at some point too and start over. But I do want to take a time out and remind everyone who reads that every body is beautiful, and eating is a good thing, and you don't have to look like people say you should look or eat the way they say you should. It's your life!
Recently I've been reading some really cool Tumblr blogs, my favorite being Health and the Fat Girl. I want to say that I'm pretty ashamed of some of the stuff I've written on this blog. Some of it might come off as fat-shaming, and I'm sorry about that, because these blogs have opened up my eyes. The other night I was talking to a (similarly fitness loving) friend, and I told him that anymore I see fat people as brave. To live in a world that hates fat people and to have the courage to say, "Fuck it, I won't let you ruin my life just because you don't like the way I look" is pretty damn ballsy. If you follow that link, you'll find links to lots of really compelling articles- many of them debunk myths that I "knew" to be true, like that fat people always eat more than thin people and fatness is a bigger drain on our health resources than anything else. These are excuses I hear a lot of people make as to why they feel being overweight is bad- because it is "unhealthy." So it was pretty eye-opening to read that maybe that assumption is just... wrong. Whether or not some big study comes out tomorrow to prove that fatness is directly responsible for world wars, the fact stands that IT'S JUST FAT AND IT'S NOT A BIG DEAL. YOUR WEIGHT DOESN'T AFFECT ANYONE SO EVERYONE NEEDS TO CHILL.
But sadly, the image here describes my truth. I really do think all women are beautiful. In fact, recently I heard someone say that, "You fall in love with a person, not the vessel in which they move through life." Since then, I have made a concerted effort to not judge ANYONE on their appearance, which has extended to not comparing my body to other women. But it's hard. Really hard. It's ok with me for any other person to have whatever body they were born with, and I think they are all beautiful. But that kind of unconditional acceptance does not extend to my own body, most of the time.About ten weeks ago I made a huge change in my working out. I began lifting heavy and making a true effort to eat clean, and I've loved it. I feel powerful and strong and I actually look forward to working out every day. I have to admit, though, that I went into it to change the way my body looks. And though I have seen so many changes other than that (better sleep being number one, but feeling more hydrated/no daytime sleepiness are close behind), it's been the changes I see in the mirror that I was most excited about. I ate too little and became really preoccupied with food. Inevitably it led to binging and unhappiness and I just wasn't listening to my body, which was saying, "Bitch, you cannot work out this hard and not feed me."
It seems sometimes like being an athlete/wanting to be fit is incompatible with having a normal relationship with food, but I'm determined to try. I've been reading a lot about "unconditional permission to eat." Can't remember if I've written about it before, but I know I've thought about it. For me, this means that I am going to eat when I'm hungry. Sounds so simple but SO MANY of us struggle with it. I know for me, I have a big time restrict/binge mentality. It's walking the line or going HARD at the junk food. That not only is bad for me physically, but it's bad for me mentally, and not just because it puts me farther away from my goals. I want to get past this cycle, and be able to trust my body to tell me when I'm hungy and what it needs, without undoing the progress in muscle building I've made. So for now, I'm "out again." Still eating clean, but trying not to be so focused on calories. I'll probably still keep track of macros to an extent, but essentially I am saying, "As long as it's an unprocessed food, I can eat it till I'm full, and have more later if I get hungry again." (Unless it's a special meal, in which case you better believe I don't be givin a FUCK if it's healthy or unprocessed or full of lard or whatever.)
If you've followed my blog before, you know I will probably repent and fall off this wagon at some point too and start over. But I do want to take a time out and remind everyone who reads that every body is beautiful, and eating is a good thing, and you don't have to look like people say you should look or eat the way they say you should. It's your life!
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Low Carb Kool Aid
I want to make one thing clear really quick before I write the rest of this post: NO AMOUNT OF PSEUDO SCIENCE WILL EVER CONVINCE ME WHEAT IS BAD FOR YOU. A lot of people who follow a low carb diet, ESPECIALLY people that follow a Paleo diet, will tell you that wheat is bad for you and point to all sorts of studies that are probably all funded by the Crossfit Society or something. Wheat is only bad for you if you have a gluten allergy. It provides quick energy, fiber, and is heart healthy.
That said, recently it made a lot of sense to me when I was reading an article about why low-carb diets work for quick weight loss and the author said, "Think about it- they use grain and corn to fatten up livestock." Good point. Short version of the science part: when you eat a lot of carbs at once, your body burns the carbs for energy first before burning fat. Protein is essentially the least efficient source of energy for you body- it burns slower and your body has to use more calories to metabolize it. Google it if you want a deeper explanation. Largely, it's psychological- carbs and sugar tend to be the things we crave and when you just eliminate them from your diet, you aren't bingeing.
All that said, I kinda drunk the Kool Aid on the whole low carb thing. I realized I just wasn't getting the results I wanted to see with my current diet. I was monitoring my calories and working out really consistently, but I just wasn't seeing the kinds of changes that I wanted. I recently joined Instagram and my new hobby (ok, obsession) is looking at pictures of women who do the bikini/fitness competitions. Their muscles= so hot. A lot of them shared their nutrition plans, and a lot of them were low carb/high protein/lotsa veggies. So I decided I would try to limit my carbs, up my protein, and start lifting heavier. Currently I try to keep my carbs around 130 g a day (lots of sources will say the true sweet spot for weight loss is between 50-100g a day but that is just too low for me) and I've been hitting the weights four times a week (1 heavy leg day, 1 heavy upper body day, 2 intense ab days, and 2 sessions of Body Pump where you lift a somewhat lighter weight but lift for a lot longer. Eg: on heavy leg day I squat 75 lbs. At Body Pump I squat 45 lbs.) I have only been doing this with serious dedication for about 3 weeks, and I'm pleased with the results. Nothing major YET but I see tiny differences. I promised myself I would stick with it for ten weeks and if I'm not pleased, I'm treating myself to a personal trainer.
The thing I like best about this low-carb diet is that I don't feel hungry and angry and depressed. I really don't feel deprived, which is a miracle. In fact, psychologically, it's given me "permission" to eat so that I can almost follow a more "intuitive eating" approach, which I would really prefer (too bad my intuition tells me to eat three cupcakes and a giant pretzel. Can't trust that bitch.) For example, though I still use MyFitnessPal to track my carbs/fat/protein, I don't stress when I go over my calories because I know that if I stay within my carbs everything will be fine. I actually added an extra 100 calories to my normal goal because hey, I'm hungry.
An anecdote: the past two weeks, I was traveling a TON for work. I always gain weight when I travel, because I try to track my calories then eventually say fuck it and just eat whatever with the promise that when I get home, I'll go to food confession and get food born again or some such bullshit. Well, I'm over that cycle because it's just not worth it, so I decided that I would just low carb it. I ate in restaurants in the Bible Belt, full of butter and crap, but I ordered burgers without buns, fajitas but skipped the tortillas, and ate eggs for breakfast instead of cinnamon rolls. When I got home, I had actually lost a pound. That is unheard of for me.
They say the best diet is one that you can follow. Well, I'm following it and (currently) very pleased. Bring on the mashed cauliflower.
ERIN'S TWEAKED MIRACLE MASHIES
Miracle mashies may be copyrighted by HungryGirl- you should google her recipe. But I don't believe in "light buttery spread" so I tweaked it. Here ya go!
1 yukon gold potato of a normal size
1 head of cauliflower
1 clove of garlic
1/4-1/3 cup almond milk
1 tablespoon low fat Philadelphia cream cheese
Fill a big pot with water and put it on the stove to boil. Meanwhile. peel and cube the potato, and cut the head of cauliflower into florets- they don't have to be small. Mine weren't.
Once the waters is boiling, toss in the potatoes and cauliflower. Make sure the water returns to a boil before you turn the heat down and put a lid on it. Let it cook for about 15 mins.
When the veggies are soft, add almond milk, cream cheese, and garlic. Mash and mash. Add salt and pepper to your taste.
It is VITAL that you add the potato. Just one potato is not gonna hurt you, and it make all the difference with the taste and texture. Enjoy!
That said, recently it made a lot of sense to me when I was reading an article about why low-carb diets work for quick weight loss and the author said, "Think about it- they use grain and corn to fatten up livestock." Good point. Short version of the science part: when you eat a lot of carbs at once, your body burns the carbs for energy first before burning fat. Protein is essentially the least efficient source of energy for you body- it burns slower and your body has to use more calories to metabolize it. Google it if you want a deeper explanation. Largely, it's psychological- carbs and sugar tend to be the things we crave and when you just eliminate them from your diet, you aren't bingeing.
All that said, I kinda drunk the Kool Aid on the whole low carb thing. I realized I just wasn't getting the results I wanted to see with my current diet. I was monitoring my calories and working out really consistently, but I just wasn't seeing the kinds of changes that I wanted. I recently joined Instagram and my new hobby (ok, obsession) is looking at pictures of women who do the bikini/fitness competitions. Their muscles= so hot. A lot of them shared their nutrition plans, and a lot of them were low carb/high protein/lotsa veggies. So I decided I would try to limit my carbs, up my protein, and start lifting heavier. Currently I try to keep my carbs around 130 g a day (lots of sources will say the true sweet spot for weight loss is between 50-100g a day but that is just too low for me) and I've been hitting the weights four times a week (1 heavy leg day, 1 heavy upper body day, 2 intense ab days, and 2 sessions of Body Pump where you lift a somewhat lighter weight but lift for a lot longer. Eg: on heavy leg day I squat 75 lbs. At Body Pump I squat 45 lbs.) I have only been doing this with serious dedication for about 3 weeks, and I'm pleased with the results. Nothing major YET but I see tiny differences. I promised myself I would stick with it for ten weeks and if I'm not pleased, I'm treating myself to a personal trainer.
The thing I like best about this low-carb diet is that I don't feel hungry and angry and depressed. I really don't feel deprived, which is a miracle. In fact, psychologically, it's given me "permission" to eat so that I can almost follow a more "intuitive eating" approach, which I would really prefer (too bad my intuition tells me to eat three cupcakes and a giant pretzel. Can't trust that bitch.) For example, though I still use MyFitnessPal to track my carbs/fat/protein, I don't stress when I go over my calories because I know that if I stay within my carbs everything will be fine. I actually added an extra 100 calories to my normal goal because hey, I'm hungry.
An anecdote: the past two weeks, I was traveling a TON for work. I always gain weight when I travel, because I try to track my calories then eventually say fuck it and just eat whatever with the promise that when I get home, I'll go to food confession and get food born again or some such bullshit. Well, I'm over that cycle because it's just not worth it, so I decided that I would just low carb it. I ate in restaurants in the Bible Belt, full of butter and crap, but I ordered burgers without buns, fajitas but skipped the tortillas, and ate eggs for breakfast instead of cinnamon rolls. When I got home, I had actually lost a pound. That is unheard of for me.
They say the best diet is one that you can follow. Well, I'm following it and (currently) very pleased. Bring on the mashed cauliflower.
ERIN'S TWEAKED MIRACLE MASHIES
Miracle mashies may be copyrighted by HungryGirl- you should google her recipe. But I don't believe in "light buttery spread" so I tweaked it. Here ya go!
1 yukon gold potato of a normal size
1 head of cauliflower
1 clove of garlic
1/4-1/3 cup almond milk
1 tablespoon low fat Philadelphia cream cheese
Fill a big pot with water and put it on the stove to boil. Meanwhile. peel and cube the potato, and cut the head of cauliflower into florets- they don't have to be small. Mine weren't.
Once the waters is boiling, toss in the potatoes and cauliflower. Make sure the water returns to a boil before you turn the heat down and put a lid on it. Let it cook for about 15 mins.
When the veggies are soft, add almond milk, cream cheese, and garlic. Mash and mash. Add salt and pepper to your taste.
It is VITAL that you add the potato. Just one potato is not gonna hurt you, and it make all the difference with the taste and texture. Enjoy!
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
The last time that I recommitted myself to not counting calories, something weird occurred concurrently: I lost my taste for some of my favorite convenience foods. The two I relied on most were protein bars (mostly Luna bars) and Lean Cuisines/microwaveable lunches.
At work we only get a half an hour break, which is sort of criminal but has the bonus of making it nearly impossible to waste your money by going out for lunch every day (don't worry, we still have the option of paying $9, or $8.50 with our discount, in the cafeteria for an "artisan" turkey sandwich, meaning they put pesto on it.) I turned to microwaveable lunches because they're cheap, easy, and the nutritional stats really aren't bad- generally a fair amount of protein and fiber with some micronutrients thrown in. I still don't think they are a terrible option for you, but I started to realize how much sodium and sugar and, frankly, weird ingredients that I can't identify they contain. I started to get the feeling that they (conspiracy ahead, please disregard if you don't like woo woo) were engineered specifically to make me crave their products because of the stuff they contain. Overall, I just thought it might be healthier to pack my lunch with something that wouldn't survive the nuclear holocaust.
The main options have been: leftovers from the night before, pasta salad, pita pockets stuffed with cheese and apple and turkey, and salad with whatever protein I can find. Now, I have not sworn off all convenience foods- who the hell has time to make EVERYTHING from scratch? I guess I could order a wife from Russia to do that for me but she might be prettier than me and my apartment is too small. So I do rely on some packaged stuff but I try to make sure they don't contain weird stuff. Like my new friend, Trader Joe's Tabbouleh! Nothing but bulgur, parsley, garlic, lemon juice, tomatoes and some other spices. Nom. I'm currently eating it on a salad with mixed greens, persian cucumbers, mini bell peppers and Gruyere. Tasty. Just crying out for a giant bowl of figgy pudding to make up for the healthfulness (yes, I'm craving figgy pudding and I don't know why.)
Let's go to Trader Joe's!
At work we only get a half an hour break, which is sort of criminal but has the bonus of making it nearly impossible to waste your money by going out for lunch every day (don't worry, we still have the option of paying $9, or $8.50 with our discount, in the cafeteria for an "artisan" turkey sandwich, meaning they put pesto on it.) I turned to microwaveable lunches because they're cheap, easy, and the nutritional stats really aren't bad- generally a fair amount of protein and fiber with some micronutrients thrown in. I still don't think they are a terrible option for you, but I started to realize how much sodium and sugar and, frankly, weird ingredients that I can't identify they contain. I started to get the feeling that they (conspiracy ahead, please disregard if you don't like woo woo) were engineered specifically to make me crave their products because of the stuff they contain. Overall, I just thought it might be healthier to pack my lunch with something that wouldn't survive the nuclear holocaust.
The main options have been: leftovers from the night before, pasta salad, pita pockets stuffed with cheese and apple and turkey, and salad with whatever protein I can find. Now, I have not sworn off all convenience foods- who the hell has time to make EVERYTHING from scratch? I guess I could order a wife from Russia to do that for me but she might be prettier than me and my apartment is too small. So I do rely on some packaged stuff but I try to make sure they don't contain weird stuff. Like my new friend, Trader Joe's Tabbouleh! Nothing but bulgur, parsley, garlic, lemon juice, tomatoes and some other spices. Nom. I'm currently eating it on a salad with mixed greens, persian cucumbers, mini bell peppers and Gruyere. Tasty. Just crying out for a giant bowl of figgy pudding to make up for the healthfulness (yes, I'm craving figgy pudding and I don't know why.)
Let's go to Trader Joe's!
Monday, October 8, 2012
Xtreme Coopining
I've felt like a bit of a fraud since I'm not as into sugar free/diet food stuff. For the most part, I've given them up in favor of eating only stuff I really like, which generally translates into not eating as much as I once did so the calorie intake is probably pretty much the same. I even purposefully seek out the Greek yogurt with some fat (which can be hard to find.) But I still love food and like to blog occasionally, so let's just agree that on those occasions I will just write about food, whether it be healthy food or not. Sounds good to me.
So today I wanna talk about grocery shopping, and more specifically, the best way to save your broke as some money by using coupons. There is great controversy on the pronunciation of the word "coupon." I believe in my heart that the proper way is "coo-pon", but other pronuciations include "cue-pon" and, on the "warsh" and "pitcher" end of the scale, "coopin." I kinda like "coopin", so much so that I wrote coopin on the front of my coopin envelope and henceforth will always refer to them as coopins.
I really can't remember if my mom used them when I was a kid- I think she did and I probably found it mortifying so I've blocked it out. I started using them when I moved out of my parents' house a few years ago and experienced what it is to buy all of your own crap. Here's how it is: lame. Enter coopins.
I read a message board that snarks on TV shows, and they love to hate Extreme Couponing. Lots of people on the board claim that coupons don't really save you any money, and they refer a lot to "coupon math" with a fair amount of derision. I just think they aren't doing it right. It took me awhile to get good at it, but now I'm a coopin queen. Here are some tips:
1. Coopins won't help you if the generic is cheaper. Don't be a dummy- your coopin for 50 cents off Campbell's chicken stock isn't doing you any good if the generic stuff is a dollar cheaper anyway. Make sure it's actually saving you money. BUT don't forget that sometimes the generic sucks, so know your limits.
2. Coopins work best when combined with sales. I think Kroger is the best grocery store because their prices are better AND the Kroger plus card can save you a shit ton of money, especially if you coopin. Most of the time, I won't use the coopin unless it's also on sale with the plus card, because in general, generic is always cheaper (though I prefer not to buy generic for boring philosophical reasons and if you wanna hear them, leave a comment.) A good example is AlmondBreeze almond milk. Regularly, it's like $3.59 a carton, but it's often on sale with the plus card for $2.99, and they put out coopins all the time for $1.00 off. So really, you've saved $1.60. Most of the time, if it's not on sale too, I won't even buy it. Which leads me to the next tip:
3. Know when to say, "Not this week." Be patient. Wait till it's onsale unless it's something you need desperately. This also lends itself well to not buying food you'll waste just because you have the coopin. That doesn't help you.
4. The circular is my friend. I get the Thursday paper now, and literally the only part I read is the Kroger ad. I take a look, sit down with my giant binder of recipes and my coopin envelope, and plan my meals for the week. It saves a tremendous amount of money and cuts down on food waste. For example, last week I saw that top sirloin was on sale and immediately thought of a recipe I had for mushroom-sirloin skewers that I hadn't made yet because top sirloin is fucking expensive! But it wasn't that week, so I made it, and all is well. This is especially useful for meat: if you have room in your freezer, ALWAYS check what kinds of meat are onsale and stock up if something special (this week it was center cut pork chops) is a good price. Also helpful for canned pantry items.
I have more but this is getting boring. I used these tips to do my grocery shopping today, which will make me lunch every weekday, breakfast every morning, snacks, and 3 dinners with lots of leftovers, plus a few pantry stocking items & the porkchops that were onsale. My receipt says that I saved $26.60 with my plus card and coopins- 29%. Keep in mind that I buy at least 50% organic, and this is all pretty healthy food, and I'm pretty happy with it.
Good luck with your coopins!
So today I wanna talk about grocery shopping, and more specifically, the best way to save your broke as some money by using coupons. There is great controversy on the pronunciation of the word "coupon." I believe in my heart that the proper way is "coo-pon", but other pronuciations include "cue-pon" and, on the "warsh" and "pitcher" end of the scale, "coopin." I kinda like "coopin", so much so that I wrote coopin on the front of my coopin envelope and henceforth will always refer to them as coopins.
I really can't remember if my mom used them when I was a kid- I think she did and I probably found it mortifying so I've blocked it out. I started using them when I moved out of my parents' house a few years ago and experienced what it is to buy all of your own crap. Here's how it is: lame. Enter coopins.
I read a message board that snarks on TV shows, and they love to hate Extreme Couponing. Lots of people on the board claim that coupons don't really save you any money, and they refer a lot to "coupon math" with a fair amount of derision. I just think they aren't doing it right. It took me awhile to get good at it, but now I'm a coopin queen. Here are some tips:
1. Coopins won't help you if the generic is cheaper. Don't be a dummy- your coopin for 50 cents off Campbell's chicken stock isn't doing you any good if the generic stuff is a dollar cheaper anyway. Make sure it's actually saving you money. BUT don't forget that sometimes the generic sucks, so know your limits.
2. Coopins work best when combined with sales. I think Kroger is the best grocery store because their prices are better AND the Kroger plus card can save you a shit ton of money, especially if you coopin. Most of the time, I won't use the coopin unless it's also on sale with the plus card, because in general, generic is always cheaper (though I prefer not to buy generic for boring philosophical reasons and if you wanna hear them, leave a comment.) A good example is AlmondBreeze almond milk. Regularly, it's like $3.59 a carton, but it's often on sale with the plus card for $2.99, and they put out coopins all the time for $1.00 off. So really, you've saved $1.60. Most of the time, if it's not on sale too, I won't even buy it. Which leads me to the next tip:
3. Know when to say, "Not this week." Be patient. Wait till it's onsale unless it's something you need desperately. This also lends itself well to not buying food you'll waste just because you have the coopin. That doesn't help you.
4. The circular is my friend. I get the Thursday paper now, and literally the only part I read is the Kroger ad. I take a look, sit down with my giant binder of recipes and my coopin envelope, and plan my meals for the week. It saves a tremendous amount of money and cuts down on food waste. For example, last week I saw that top sirloin was on sale and immediately thought of a recipe I had for mushroom-sirloin skewers that I hadn't made yet because top sirloin is fucking expensive! But it wasn't that week, so I made it, and all is well. This is especially useful for meat: if you have room in your freezer, ALWAYS check what kinds of meat are onsale and stock up if something special (this week it was center cut pork chops) is a good price. Also helpful for canned pantry items.
I have more but this is getting boring. I used these tips to do my grocery shopping today, which will make me lunch every weekday, breakfast every morning, snacks, and 3 dinners with lots of leftovers, plus a few pantry stocking items & the porkchops that were onsale. My receipt says that I saved $26.60 with my plus card and coopins- 29%. Keep in mind that I buy at least 50% organic, and this is all pretty healthy food, and I'm pretty happy with it.
Good luck with your coopins!
Sunday, August 12, 2012
I'm BAAAACK!
Excuse the really lame title of this post. But it's been a long while. I think it's been such a long time because I thought, "No one really cares what diet I'm indulging in or what I'm putting into my mouth. I don't take pictures of my food or post the incredibly boring meal I'm having on Facebook, so why make a fuckin blog about it?" (Seriously everyone on my timeline, lay the hell off of the status updates that say "Chicken salad with roasted red peppers on ciabatta for dinner!" as if you deserve a medal for actually getting in your kitchen and cooking something for yourself. Big deal. People do it all over the world, all the time. Yes, I realize I used to do just that on this very blog but I've grown up and realized nobody cares.) But I'm posting tonight because something on TV caught my eye.
I'm currently settled in my chair in front of an episode of Extreme Makeover: Weight Loss Edition and Lord, is it pissing me off. Did anyone ever think that our culture places such a premium on thinness that just being a normal weight is not ok, so people who have perfectly normal bodies just give up and let themselves go because, hey, I won't ever be perfect, so fuck it? Clearly that doesn't explain the fact that people make a lot of horrible food choices and are sedentary and are just misinformed about nutrition and what they're REALLY putting in their mouths. I know that.
But come the hell on. I think a lot of my own issues with my body stem from this very idea. For a long time, I was always on the slightly heavy end of normal weight for my body. I thought this was totally unacceptable and I don't think I've ever really gotten over it- I needed to be THIN because THIN was the best weight to be. Conversely, I am at exactly the normal weight for my height (smack in the middle of normal BMI) and when people call me skinny, I have to acknowledge that it's Just Not True. Just like normal weight is not Fat, normal weight is not Skinny just because nobody is a normal weight anymore. And I still sometimes feel seriously crappy, like my totally normal body weight is just too big, because it isn't skinny, and damnit, I want to be skinny. But I also want to eat cake sometimes and not be totally neurotic about every bite I put in my mouth and be a complete prisoner to food, so FOR NOW (it's always just for now) I am going to move the hell on with my life. I quit counting calories. I feel better. Can we just accept that our frames/body types have a lot to do with genetics, and that some of us are naturally more thin and some of us are naturally a bit more stocky and that it's ok? Can we? Obese= not normal but variations in frame/weight= totally normal.
Back to the TV show. Two things are bothering me. 1: this lady has lost 77 pounds. It's time for her weigh in. Sprightly young gay trainer is very optimistic that she will be down to 250 pounds. She steps on the scale. Breathes are held, prayers said, commercial break is shown, and when we come back, she weighs 258 pounds. Everyone is absolutely HORRIFIED. Let alone that she lost 77 pounds, which is incredible. Nope, she is a FAILURE and WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH SALLY??? I think losing 77 pounds means that Sally deserves a damn minute to celebrate. Give her a damn minute.
But Sally isn't off the hook with me, which leads me to thing that is bothering me number 2. This quote: "I don't know how I'm going to work, look for a job, AND work out." Really, lady? I work a LOT. Some may say I'm a serious workaholic. I work my day job and I am rehearsing all week and I have shows every weekend. And I make time. I think the RDA of exercise is 45 mins 3 times a week. I know this lady spends 45 minutes 3 times a week either sitting around, watching tv, playing on the computer, or doing something else to waste time. You have time to work out. Walk, ride your bike, hula hoop. Move your ass. The fact that this lady is CRYING because she can't do 20 minutes of stationary bike is too much for me. I don't care if you are fat, thin, or normal- you have 45 minutes 3 times a week. The benefits are numerous. Do it.
I'm currently settled in my chair in front of an episode of Extreme Makeover: Weight Loss Edition and Lord, is it pissing me off. Did anyone ever think that our culture places such a premium on thinness that just being a normal weight is not ok, so people who have perfectly normal bodies just give up and let themselves go because, hey, I won't ever be perfect, so fuck it? Clearly that doesn't explain the fact that people make a lot of horrible food choices and are sedentary and are just misinformed about nutrition and what they're REALLY putting in their mouths. I know that.
But come the hell on. I think a lot of my own issues with my body stem from this very idea. For a long time, I was always on the slightly heavy end of normal weight for my body. I thought this was totally unacceptable and I don't think I've ever really gotten over it- I needed to be THIN because THIN was the best weight to be. Conversely, I am at exactly the normal weight for my height (smack in the middle of normal BMI) and when people call me skinny, I have to acknowledge that it's Just Not True. Just like normal weight is not Fat, normal weight is not Skinny just because nobody is a normal weight anymore. And I still sometimes feel seriously crappy, like my totally normal body weight is just too big, because it isn't skinny, and damnit, I want to be skinny. But I also want to eat cake sometimes and not be totally neurotic about every bite I put in my mouth and be a complete prisoner to food, so FOR NOW (it's always just for now) I am going to move the hell on with my life. I quit counting calories. I feel better. Can we just accept that our frames/body types have a lot to do with genetics, and that some of us are naturally more thin and some of us are naturally a bit more stocky and that it's ok? Can we? Obese= not normal but variations in frame/weight= totally normal.
Back to the TV show. Two things are bothering me. 1: this lady has lost 77 pounds. It's time for her weigh in. Sprightly young gay trainer is very optimistic that she will be down to 250 pounds. She steps on the scale. Breathes are held, prayers said, commercial break is shown, and when we come back, she weighs 258 pounds. Everyone is absolutely HORRIFIED. Let alone that she lost 77 pounds, which is incredible. Nope, she is a FAILURE and WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH SALLY??? I think losing 77 pounds means that Sally deserves a damn minute to celebrate. Give her a damn minute.
But Sally isn't off the hook with me, which leads me to thing that is bothering me number 2. This quote: "I don't know how I'm going to work, look for a job, AND work out." Really, lady? I work a LOT. Some may say I'm a serious workaholic. I work my day job and I am rehearsing all week and I have shows every weekend. And I make time. I think the RDA of exercise is 45 mins 3 times a week. I know this lady spends 45 minutes 3 times a week either sitting around, watching tv, playing on the computer, or doing something else to waste time. You have time to work out. Walk, ride your bike, hula hoop. Move your ass. The fact that this lady is CRYING because she can't do 20 minutes of stationary bike is too much for me. I don't care if you are fat, thin, or normal- you have 45 minutes 3 times a week. The benefits are numerous. Do it.
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Why I cooked a turkey burger on the stove instead of eating out in one of the culinary capitals of the world
I'm blogging for my apartment in NY today! I guess it isn't really mine, but it is for the next week because that's what my badge says. My friend was nice enough to sublet me his apartment while he is touring with Tokyo Disney, but the management will only let him sublet for two weeks at a time- which is the perfect amount of time for me, because if I miss work for longer than that I'll have to be scouring the Kroger for organic ramen. He was nice enough to do this for dirt cheap, so I am attempting to see how much money I can save.
One of the best things about this trip is that I have a kitchen, so I can cook. So shortly after arriving I walked up to Columbus Circle (I'd never been before- I don't think I've been that far uptown since I first visited NY when I was in junior high- I'm a lower-Midtown girl) to go to Whole Foods. In my last post I talked about how freaked out I am about non-organic stuff, so I thought this would be the best way to stick to that eating plan. I knew I'd still want to eat out sometimes (hello, it's New York, I need bagels and pizza and Crumbs cupcakes) so I mostly picked up stuff for breakfast and dinner. I get some Peace cereal, almond milk, Applewood farms turkey burgers (organic, no hormones- nom nom!), Willshire bacon (no antibiotics!), ground lamb (didn't say anything on the pack about how it was raised, but this was Whole Foods so I'm hoping it was humane), tons of organic produce, salad dressing, etc. (Side note- I couldn't believe that I was the only one I saw leaving the store who had brought her own bags- but this is NY, not San Francisco.) This is NY so stuff is more expensive, but it only set me back $81- that would last me maybe 2 days if I were eating out. So it's win-win! I'm saving money, I know where my food is coming from, and I know the nutritional info so I don't have to guess. I know having a kitchen isn't always possible, so I'd suggest researching chain restaurants (or local places, because those are best, but I know they aren't always around) that use organic or local ingredients- Chipotle is a big one, and tasty, too.
Patrick is coming to visit next week so all of this will be blown out the window (Shake Shack, here we come), but I at least feel like I've done damage control on my environmental impact.
It wouldn't be me without an obsession with working out, so rest assured that I brought Jillian Michaels Yoga Meltdown with me because it requires no weights and very little space (which is exactly how much space I have- this place is about 180 sq feet.) I've also been dancing my ass of at the Broadway Dance Center (5 and a half hours of classes yesterday!) Thus, I feel not a single pang of remorse for eating whatever the hell I want when I allow myself to eat out.
I'm off the the Village to hang out at The Strand (18 miles of books- holla!) Enjoy your weekend.
One of the best things about this trip is that I have a kitchen, so I can cook. So shortly after arriving I walked up to Columbus Circle (I'd never been before- I don't think I've been that far uptown since I first visited NY when I was in junior high- I'm a lower-Midtown girl) to go to Whole Foods. In my last post I talked about how freaked out I am about non-organic stuff, so I thought this would be the best way to stick to that eating plan. I knew I'd still want to eat out sometimes (hello, it's New York, I need bagels and pizza and Crumbs cupcakes) so I mostly picked up stuff for breakfast and dinner. I get some Peace cereal, almond milk, Applewood farms turkey burgers (organic, no hormones- nom nom!), Willshire bacon (no antibiotics!), ground lamb (didn't say anything on the pack about how it was raised, but this was Whole Foods so I'm hoping it was humane), tons of organic produce, salad dressing, etc. (Side note- I couldn't believe that I was the only one I saw leaving the store who had brought her own bags- but this is NY, not San Francisco.) This is NY so stuff is more expensive, but it only set me back $81- that would last me maybe 2 days if I were eating out. So it's win-win! I'm saving money, I know where my food is coming from, and I know the nutritional info so I don't have to guess. I know having a kitchen isn't always possible, so I'd suggest researching chain restaurants (or local places, because those are best, but I know they aren't always around) that use organic or local ingredients- Chipotle is a big one, and tasty, too.
Patrick is coming to visit next week so all of this will be blown out the window (Shake Shack, here we come), but I at least feel like I've done damage control on my environmental impact.
It wouldn't be me without an obsession with working out, so rest assured that I brought Jillian Michaels Yoga Meltdown with me because it requires no weights and very little space (which is exactly how much space I have- this place is about 180 sq feet.) I've also been dancing my ass of at the Broadway Dance Center (5 and a half hours of classes yesterday!) Thus, I feel not a single pang of remorse for eating whatever the hell I want when I allow myself to eat out.
I'm off the the Village to hang out at The Strand (18 miles of books- holla!) Enjoy your weekend.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Freaked out about food
It's almost Halloween! Hands down, my favorite holiday. I like scary stuff and fall stuff and short skirts- all of which abound. Last night we carved punkins and had a weenie roast at my parents' house (those are the punkins Patrick and I did- his is the kitty, mine is the ghetto Jack the Pumpkin King.) This is a family tradition, but this year I had to bring my own hot dogs and buns because I have become a certifiable food crazy.
It started with this book: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingslover (get it here: http://www.amazon.com/Animal-Vegetable-Miracle-Year-Food/dp/0060852569/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1320015388&sr=8-1 ). Kingslover is usually a fiction writer but this book chronicles her year living off nothing but locally grown, organic food in her small Appalachian community in Virginia. It is absolutely fascinating- the way she talks about the delicious food inspires food envy the likes of which I have not experienced since I read Julia Child's My Life in France.
It's also an amazingly compelling argument for eating locally and organically. The stats that scared me most were just how much of what we eat starts as mass-produced corn or soybeans. If they aren't directly putting it into our food in the form of syrups and additives, they're pumping our livestock full of it. I love animals but I'm not a vegetarian- but this book has definitely convinced me to do my best to purchase organic, free-range, or grass fed whenever possible. The other scary thing is the sheer amount of fossil fuels used to transport our food so that we can have strawberries in January. According to the book. for every 1 calorie of food in our grocery stores, 87 energy calories were burned to bring it there! That is really scary to me. I won't quote the book or give you every argument in there because you should just get it for yourself and read it (it's pretty popular so it should be at the library.)
I've always been nervous about the hormones and chemicals pumped into our food, but never enough to really read labels. I thought I was doing a good job of eating healthily because I pay attention to sugars, dietary fiber and protein, and I buy probably 60-75% organic produce. But boy oh boy, when you read the labels, you see all sorts of icky stuff they put in there- there is high fructose corn syrup in everything! The way I see it, there are 2 main reasons to go organic/read your labels/eat locally:
1. You are nervous about the additives, chemicals, hormones in food.
2. You are morally opposed to 6 big agrabusinesses getting all the money by running small farmers out of business and growing mass amounts of corn and soybeans that are inedible to humans and only used for feedlots.
I am both of these things. So today I went grocery shopping and only bought stuff that didn't have high fructose corn syrup, didn't have additives, and was organic and all-natural (except the laundry detergent and mascara. I don't know what the hell is in that stuff. Also, there may or may not be high fructose corn syrup in the toilet paper I bought.) I also bought some meat and animal-product substitutes because sometimes that's cheaper than free range, but I'll discuss that in another post. It was a little more expensive, sure. But not by that much. And in my opinion, if you're only buying stuff that's good for you, you're actually saving money on all the stuff you aren't buying, like chips and donuts. So in the end, it evens out. Also, if you watch your coupons or visit sites like http://coupons.com/, you can find a lot of good deals on healthy, organic stuff. Trader Joe's is great too, and Marsh usually offers organic produce for the same price as regular. Kroger, my chain of choice, has almost everything organic that they have regular and it's generally less than a dollar more.
I also really believe that the hormones in our food are making us fat. I think I've said this before, but when I look at pictures of my mom from when she was my age, she is so skinny. Like, her bone structure is so much smaller, and I really believe it's because she was developing in an era when our food wasn't so pumped full of crap. So I'm going to see if, by eating the same things but using organic instead of regular, I will lose any weight.
I'll leave you with an image of me and my adorable cat, Petunia. She is very friendly and takes after me- the other day she bitch-slapped the other cat for getting too close to her food.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Dumb Diets
I am so fascinated by the diets people try. Some have a pretty high success rate, like South Beach (boyfriend lost 30 lbs earlier this year on it- and, a quote from my friend Craig: "Diets don't work. They're all bullshit. Except South Beach, I lost a ton of weight on that.") Others sound awesome yet are not- like the Hollywood Cookie Diet. If eating cookies were a diet, I'd be in the starvation ward right now getting fed through a tube because I'd weigh 80 lbs. No matter the diet, I'll at least peruse the book even if I have no intention of ever following it, mostly because I'm always intrigued by the science and philosophy behind these diets. One I picked up recently is http://www.amazon.com/Dr-Gundrys-Diet-Evolution-Waistline/dp/0307352129/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1319691980&sr=8-1 - Dr. Gundry's Diet Evolution. My good friend Kimberly told me about this when I visited her in San Francisco. The philosophy is that, with the modern diet and methods of exercise, we are activating "killer genes" which make us gain weight and cause a whole host of other health problems. Our current diet, heavily based on grains, sends a message that "winter i
s coming" and causes our bodies to hold onto fat. The diet advocates eating essentially like you eat when you do South Beach phase 1 or 2 (little to no grains products, protein, tons and tons of green veggies and no sugars other than those found in some fruits.) This supposedly tells your body "winter is now" and forces it to burn fat for energy. The longer you do the diet, the less meat you eat until you are mostly getting protein from tofu, tempeh, and seafood.
s coming" and causes our bodies to hold onto fat. The diet advocates eating essentially like you eat when you do South Beach phase 1 or 2 (little to no grains products, protein, tons and tons of green veggies and no sugars other than those found in some fruits.) This supposedly tells your body "winter is now" and forces it to burn fat for energy. The longer you do the diet, the less meat you eat until you are mostly getting protein from tofu, tempeh, and seafood.I have some really mixed feelings on this after reading some of the book. Kimberly lost lots of weight doing it, and in theory it should work- protein is actually the least efficient way for your body to get energy, because it has to work hard to metabolize it (you burn something like 16% of the calories from protein you consume just by metabolizing it.) And if you are already a vegetarian and really like veggies, than this could really work for you. However, I do not want to live my life eating rabbit food. What is the point of living forever if you can't have cupcakes sometimes (meaning twice a week)? I also have a hard time believing that our "genes are killing us" when we feed them sugar or dairy or grains or fruit- haven't people been eating bread and honey and apples and cheese since Cleopatra was riding around in her litter? Haven't Japanese people been eating white rice since the days of the samurais, and they're outliving us all?
What really disturbed me about the book, though, was the chapter where he advocated fasting on alternate days and skipping meals to further put stress on your body and keep your metabolism on its toes. He even admits that it's against conventional wisdom to skip meals or not eat when you're hungry. My opinion is this- unless you have absolutely iron willpower, there is no way in hell you will succeed on a diet that leaves you starving half the time. The best advice I've heard on this topic is: "the best diet is the one you can actually do." There is no better way to set yourself up for an epic binge than to wait until you're ravenous to eat. I have no doubt that this diet works, provided you can actually do it. And who the hell can do it? Not me. I went to bed hungry Monday night and two hours ago I polished off two bowls of death by chocolate ice cream with Butterfingers crumbled on top out of residual hunger.
Furthermore, I am really disturbed by the idea that, if you just push through it, you'll like the feeling of being hungry and it will make you feel "clean" and "pure." That's the same thinking that they advocate in Skinny Bitch. Let me say that there is nothing morally superior about your ability to not eat. It just makes you hungry and me annoyed with you. There are far better diets, or ways of eating, than to eat nothing but romaine. I'll discuss them later.
That's all for now, but I'll leave you with a picture of me and my new favorite cup. I love cups. And I love Hello Kitty. Where can one go wrong?
Monday, September 26, 2011
On whole foods and nakedness
In less than a month, I have to be naked in front of 400 people.
Not completely naked. I get pasties. And I think my stomach will be covered. But still.
PBS gave my work some nice funding to put together a history of burlesque show in conjunction with the Ken Burns documentaries about Prohibition. I have wanted to do burlesque since I first heard of Dita von Teese and learned what the neo-burlesque movement is about, so I jumped at the chance.
Actually, I'm not that scared about being naked in front of people. The cool thing about burlesque these days is how body positive it is. And really, I don't hate my body. Not the way I did, say, this time two years ago (that was truly awful and I wouldn't wish it on anyone.) I'd say the feeling I have is closer to resentment. I resent my body for not being able to run faster. I resent my body for having cellulite. I resent my body for being hungry again an hour after I eat. But really, it is a perfectly good body. It has served me well. It lets me dance and walk and wrestle and skate and all manner of cool things.
But I realized I have this dumb fantasy of getting onstage in my skimpy clothes and everyone gasping in awe at my Greek God-like body. I know that isn't going to happen, and I definitely know it isn't going to happen in less than a month. But I can attempt to feel good about my body when I get up there. The way I traditionally do this is to diet. Can't help it- dieting is kind of fun to me. It gives my obsessive brain something to do- planning meals, shopping for the best deal, etc. I love that shit.
Recently I picked up a cookbook about whole foods. I always hear famous people talking about "well, my diet is mostly whole foods." Yeah, asshole, mine too- a whole pizza, a whole donut, a whole hamburg. But by reading this cookbook, I think I have a better grasp of it- it essentially means using less processed, pre-packaged stuff, using more veggies. I think why this sounds hard is that, as I have learned, lots of people can't cook. Not just, they aren't very good or don't know how to make many things- they just plain can't cook. They must have never been hungry enough to learn (my dad once asked me, "How did you learn to cook?" to which I replied, "One day I was hungry and all we had were ingredients." It really is that easy.)
I already cook dinner every night so I thought I'd give it a shot. For the first time in years, I'm going to cook tofu for a main dish. I'm looking forward to it. But eating whole foods isn't really my diet- counting calories is. Counting calories is really the only thing that works for me, because I can't do South Beach or any of that stuff because if I don't have ice cream and tacos I'll go crazy and murder my family. But I find that eating this way makes it a little easier to keep my calories in check- in part because I include lots of vegetables and they're low calorie, but also because I think I know I'll feel better.
At present, I'm doing the unhealthy thing and telling myself this healthy eating and calorie counting nonsense is only until I'm done being naked in front of people. But I'm doing more burlesque in January (where I will be far less naked, but still) and regardless, I'm sick of being uncomfortable with my body. My goal is to lose weight, sure. But maybe it will make me happier. Happier than ice cream, though? Maybe not.
Not completely naked. I get pasties. And I think my stomach will be covered. But still.
PBS gave my work some nice funding to put together a history of burlesque show in conjunction with the Ken Burns documentaries about Prohibition. I have wanted to do burlesque since I first heard of Dita von Teese and learned what the neo-burlesque movement is about, so I jumped at the chance.
Actually, I'm not that scared about being naked in front of people. The cool thing about burlesque these days is how body positive it is. And really, I don't hate my body. Not the way I did, say, this time two years ago (that was truly awful and I wouldn't wish it on anyone.) I'd say the feeling I have is closer to resentment. I resent my body for not being able to run faster. I resent my body for having cellulite. I resent my body for being hungry again an hour after I eat. But really, it is a perfectly good body. It has served me well. It lets me dance and walk and wrestle and skate and all manner of cool things.
But I realized I have this dumb fantasy of getting onstage in my skimpy clothes and everyone gasping in awe at my Greek God-like body. I know that isn't going to happen, and I definitely know it isn't going to happen in less than a month. But I can attempt to feel good about my body when I get up there. The way I traditionally do this is to diet. Can't help it- dieting is kind of fun to me. It gives my obsessive brain something to do- planning meals, shopping for the best deal, etc. I love that shit.
Recently I picked up a cookbook about whole foods. I always hear famous people talking about "well, my diet is mostly whole foods." Yeah, asshole, mine too- a whole pizza, a whole donut, a whole hamburg. But by reading this cookbook, I think I have a better grasp of it- it essentially means using less processed, pre-packaged stuff, using more veggies. I think why this sounds hard is that, as I have learned, lots of people can't cook. Not just, they aren't very good or don't know how to make many things- they just plain can't cook. They must have never been hungry enough to learn (my dad once asked me, "How did you learn to cook?" to which I replied, "One day I was hungry and all we had were ingredients." It really is that easy.)
I already cook dinner every night so I thought I'd give it a shot. For the first time in years, I'm going to cook tofu for a main dish. I'm looking forward to it. But eating whole foods isn't really my diet- counting calories is. Counting calories is really the only thing that works for me, because I can't do South Beach or any of that stuff because if I don't have ice cream and tacos I'll go crazy and murder my family. But I find that eating this way makes it a little easier to keep my calories in check- in part because I include lots of vegetables and they're low calorie, but also because I think I know I'll feel better.
At present, I'm doing the unhealthy thing and telling myself this healthy eating and calorie counting nonsense is only until I'm done being naked in front of people. But I'm doing more burlesque in January (where I will be far less naked, but still) and regardless, I'm sick of being uncomfortable with my body. My goal is to lose weight, sure. But maybe it will make me happier. Happier than ice cream, though? Maybe not.
Friday, April 1, 2011
CUPCAKES! And running. And sobriety. Which is more fun?
It's been some time and I've sure you've all missed this blog as much as I've missed writing it, which is probably a 3 on a scale of 1 to 10. The truth is, I kinda stopped caring about eating healthy. Seriously. I woke up one day and was like, "Eh, screw it." I was born with a big ass, I'll always have a big ass, so who gives a damn? It's true what they say- the older you get, the less you care about your body. I was in a show in the fall and shared a dressing room with a lovely, tiny girl who once said she was going to do something annoying and complain about her weight, to which I said, "No, you aren't, this is a body hate free zone." And it felt good. When I say I have a big ass, I'm not saying that I hate my big ass, and I'm not trying to get you to tell me that I don't have a big ass. I'm simply stating a fact. I still work out, though. Religiously, some might say. I love working out. It makes me feel like I'm doing something. And with all the crap I've been eating, if I didn't work out, they'd probably have to extract me from my house with a crane and wrecking ball, which would be embarrassing and also not good because I rent my house and my landlords would be pissed. I was feeling kinda frustrated, though, because though I was working out for at least an hour every day, I didn't see my body getting any firmer. Now, I can still have a big ass, and that doesn't bother me, but I'd at least like it to be a kind of muscle-y big ass. Enter my darling KC. Hi, KC! He's my roommate's best friend and he is the tits. Like, drive to Chicago in the middle of the night with no iPod or cigarettes in order to pick me up from the airport when my plane stranded me kinda tits. KC ran a half marathon last year and is doing it again in about a month. Now, KC, my roomie Nick, and I all gave up drinking for Lent this year. Yeah, I know. We've had to confront some things about ourselves that we really, really did not want to confront. KC and I also gave up smoking cigarettes (hopefully this one will last forever, and not just for Lent), and because I am a masochist and like to punish myself, I told KC I'd train with him. What could make your butt more muscle-y than running? So KC and I have been running. Running everywhere, to and fro. I'm running more than I thought possible, which means all that cardio work must have been good for something. And because I'm running, I've felt kind of motivated to eat better. And whaddya know? I've lost about five pounds. My abs look great. My ass, however, is still as fat as the day is long. And why? CUPCAKES. Oh, sweet Jesus in the sky. I love cupcakes. There is a place called Flying Cupcake where dreams go to be made into sweet baked goods to enter my face hole. They have so many cupcake varieties it's ridiculous. And I have sampled them all. Last weekend KC and I ran and did power yoga (oh, the hilarity of watching KC do power yoga) and afterwards went to his workplace, Mesh, for lunch. After that I fairly skipped down the street to Flying Cupcake.... only to find it closed because it was Sunday. I woulda thrown a brick through the window if I could have found one. Burn, baby, burn! The next day I drove past on my way to TOTS and literally whispered aloud, "I think about you all the time." I made it back there today and introduced KC to the glory of Flying Cupcake. He nearly cried. So again, it's sweet crap that keeps me from being skinny. Or whatever. Who really cares? I guess I kind of do- bikini season is coming, and I have all kinds of boys to impress! Oh, wait. Not really. But regardless, if I'm going to be running (and KC gave me a month membership to his gym so you best believe I'm gonna be all up in that place using the fancy equipment I can't afford to buy for my exercise room at home) I might as well attempt to not eat as terribly as I have been lately. So I'm semi-on the wagon again. One great thing is that now that I'm both at IHS and Beef & Boards, I have some extra money, so I can go to the healthy places to eat or buy better groceries. I also found a great app for the iPhone called MyFitnessPal. I'm tracking my calories (which I loathe and find leads to unhealthy food obsession, but what the hell, I'll try it for now) in order to make sure that when I'm eating 3.5 cupcakes a day, I'm attempting to make up for it by eating something green for dinner. I guess it's working. And the sobriety? It's going swimmingly. I survived St. Patty's AND a vacation to LA/San Francisco without even a drop of alcohol. I kind of like it because it's keeping me from going to the bars and staying out too late. I have to say, though, I do miss the bars because they are the main social place for my friends. But I'll be back before long! Until then, I'll try to stay relatively healthy for the next few weeks. Let's see!
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Off the Wagon
And man, am I ever. Last time I wrote about quitting sugar forever. I did pretty well, too, for about a month. Then I realized that I hadn't really lost any weight, or noticed any other changes other than that the one time I cheated to eat birthday cake with Robert and Jason, I felt like total shit all night long. I can't remember exactly when I decided to eat sugar again, just to suffice to say that I did. And I'm done playing around. Girl Scout cookies? Donuts? Peeps? Bring that shit on. I still have moderation issues, and probably always will- you should have seen me tearing into those Thin Mints the other night like a hungry dog on a hambone. I'm now trying to limit my sugar intake to every other day, so that I'm getting roughly half the sugar/calories I would be getting. It's a start.
Something I Never Would Have Touched with a Ten Foot Pole that I Now Worship
Last week I was making one of my many trips to the supermarket and wandered into the natural foods/fake meat/crunchy people section, as I often do. I almost never stop to browse the first aisle, where they keep all of the body builder bars and protein powders- mostly because I am still working my way through the big cannister of chocolate protein powder that I bought 2 years ago. But I had recently read something about egg white protein powders, blah blah, and wanted to see just how overpriced they were. It was there that I saw the rack of Cliff Bars.
I never would have eaten these things about a year ago. First off,
they say 'snack' to me, and I never was a big snacker- and really, I'm still not. I've pretty faithfully done the "4 small meals" thing for years, mostly because I find that snacking quite often makes me even hungrier. Second, even if I would eat them as a snack, I have this weird thing about '200 calories or less' for a snack, because otherwise you might as well just add something and make it a meal. Cliff Bars have between 220 and 260 calories per bar. That just seems like a lot for something you can finish in about 7 bites. As a matter of fact, I bet that if a year ago I saw you eating a Cliff Bar and I knew you weren't about to go run a marathon, I'd slap it out of your hand and into the gutter.
But there they were in the store, on sale, $10 for 10. And they were in so many delicious flavors. White chocolate macadamia nut. Maple nut. Peanut toffee buzz. Chocolate brownie. I couldn't take it. I had to buy them. And now I'm addicted. I can totally rationalize my decision, too. First off, for the same calories as a candy bar, you get (in general) 20% of your daily fiber and 22% of your daily protein (PS- always eat a protein with your carbs. Always.) This also makes them a great breakfast, especially for me- now that I'm back to my job at the historical society I'm finding myself constantly rushing to get out the door, leaving no time for a sit down breakfast, or even anything that needs heating up (big change from the Children's Museum, where I had a microwave right on my dressing table and was never more than an hour away from a break to eat.)
I really like Cliff Bars because they make me feel healthy. Maybe it's the little rock climber man on the package. With all that delicious, peanut buttery protein in my tummy, I too could climb a rock! They make me want to go camping. Of course, for me, camping is an excuse to smoke and drink wine and play cards and listen to Lynyrd Skynyrd and go swimming topless, not to rock climb or anything, but still, I could enjoy these whilst in a tent. They also burn pretty slowly, so I'm not ravenous by lunchtime. They're also surprisingly low fat, which I've said before isn't a huge deal to me, but that's just another reason why they are far superior to Snickers. If you love yourself, you will go buy a Cliff Bar.
Another Foray into the World of Calorie Free
Something I Never Would Have Touched with a Ten Foot Pole that I Now Worship
Last week I was making one of my many trips to the supermarket and wandered into the natural foods/fake meat/crunchy people section, as I often do. I almost never stop to browse the first aisle, where they keep all of the body builder bars and protein powders- mostly because I am still working my way through the big cannister of chocolate protein powder that I bought 2 years ago. But I had recently read something about egg white protein powders, blah blah, and wanted to see just how overpriced they were. It was there that I saw the rack of Cliff Bars.
I never would have eaten these things about a year ago. First off,
they say 'snack' to me, and I never was a big snacker- and really, I'm still not. I've pretty faithfully done the "4 small meals" thing for years, mostly because I find that snacking quite often makes me even hungrier. Second, even if I would eat them as a snack, I have this weird thing about '200 calories or less' for a snack, because otherwise you might as well just add something and make it a meal. Cliff Bars have between 220 and 260 calories per bar. That just seems like a lot for something you can finish in about 7 bites. As a matter of fact, I bet that if a year ago I saw you eating a Cliff Bar and I knew you weren't about to go run a marathon, I'd slap it out of your hand and into the gutter.But there they were in the store, on sale, $10 for 10. And they were in so many delicious flavors. White chocolate macadamia nut. Maple nut. Peanut toffee buzz. Chocolate brownie. I couldn't take it. I had to buy them. And now I'm addicted. I can totally rationalize my decision, too. First off, for the same calories as a candy bar, you get (in general) 20% of your daily fiber and 22% of your daily protein (PS- always eat a protein with your carbs. Always.) This also makes them a great breakfast, especially for me- now that I'm back to my job at the historical society I'm finding myself constantly rushing to get out the door, leaving no time for a sit down breakfast, or even anything that needs heating up (big change from the Children's Museum, where I had a microwave right on my dressing table and was never more than an hour away from a break to eat.)
I really like Cliff Bars because they make me feel healthy. Maybe it's the little rock climber man on the package. With all that delicious, peanut buttery protein in my tummy, I too could climb a rock! They make me want to go camping. Of course, for me, camping is an excuse to smoke and drink wine and play cards and listen to Lynyrd Skynyrd and go swimming topless, not to rock climb or anything, but still, I could enjoy these whilst in a tent. They also burn pretty slowly, so I'm not ravenous by lunchtime. They're also surprisingly low fat, which I've said before isn't a huge deal to me, but that's just another reason why they are far superior to Snickers. If you love yourself, you will go buy a Cliff Bar.
Another Foray into the World of Calorie Free
I've made the ill advised journey down the 'sugar free' aisle at the grocery store many times, but I thought I had learned my lesson when I had the misfortune to try the sugar free caramel syrup. Well, I clearly don't learn, because today I purchased a jar of Walden Farms Marshmallow Dip. Last weekend some friends and I were discussing our favorite binge foods, and one of them was marshmallow creme. That shit is so good, but damn, is it LETHAL. So how could I turn down marshmallow dip that claims to be calorie free? That's right, no calories. I don't even know how that's possible. It's like a dream. So I bought it. Of course, I had to buy graham cracker sticks to go along with it.
You guys are so lucky that I sacrificed myself so that you wouldn't have to. This stuff is NASTY. It tastes like congealed sugar free vanilla coffee creamer, and has about that consistency. It tastes nothing like a marshmallow, I'll tell you that much. Luckily, the cinnamon flavoring in the graham crackers covered up the foulness of the dip, and Lord knows I'll probably give it another shot, but good Lort. Don't waste your money. I feel so bad for diabetic people. They have no choice but to eat this crap.
That's all for now! What calorie free things have you tried?Sunday, January 3, 2010
No more sugar EVER!
Happy New Year, all. I spent mine at a punk bar and then at a swanky hotel party and finally in bed with two of my gays watching Sondheim- the common events of my life, all compressed neatly into six hours. I already had one resolution- to learn to read music and play piano (not that I feel the need to do any of these things well, but I do a damn mess of singing so it's time I learn a little.) I think last year's were to get more sleep (which I do- I just can't hang like I used to in my younger days), to quit smoking (yeah, that happened) and to eat healthier. I definitely ate healthier this year than I ever have before, but I still have this nasty habit of overdoing it. I think I have gluttony or greed issues. I can't be content with one piece of pizza or one scoop of ice cream- I have to eat it until I'm full and couldn't eat another bite. This is why I tend to cook just enough for one (or 3, if I'm feeding the family.) But I realize my worst trigger, and now that I have seen the light, I know the truth and wonder why I was blind for so long. So I bit the bullet.
I gave up sugar.
I told this to a friend last night and his reply was, "We need sugar to live." Well, I know that, but it's way more dramatic to say, "I gave up sugar" than "I gave up dessert-y type things." Which is actually what I mean. I am powerless over desserts, especially cake, candy, cupcakes and cookies, and especially when they're at home because I can eat as many as I want without the waiter staring at me like I'm a fat ass. Don't judge me because I'm fat, dude. Judge me because of my horrible habit of calling waitstaff 'honey.'
I first discovered the secret to not binging on sugar over Christmas, when I made all my Christmas yummies but did not partake in them. Except for that one time when Bill and I get all drunk and maudlin at the bar and the only thing that could console us was to eat a few handfuls of ginger cookies. But anyway, I knew that if I had one white chocolate raspberry bar, I would not be satisfied until I had five. So I just didn't eat them at all.
I've read before that if you can go a week without eating refined sugar, you won't crave it anymore. I don't really crave sugar so much as once I put it in my mouth, I can't stop myself. It's kind of like smoking in a bar. It's really hard, once you've lit up one cigarette, to keep yourself from pretty much chain smoking when the opportunity presents itself. If you don't want to chain smoke, it's better to just avoid it altogether in those situations. So I've given it up, cold turkey.
The problem is that this means I can't ever have refined sugar again. Again, like smoking, once you've quit you can't just casually pick it back up and expect to not be buying a pack the next morning. So I shall not be tempted. A few weeks ago I gave up tonic after I was horrified to learn it contained just as much sugar as regular Coke- now it's strictly gin and soda for me. So that was a start. Now my go-to stuff for craving sweets is my beloved Coke Zero, jelly or jam on toast in the mornings, honey, and fruit with Cool Whip. It's actually not so very bad- I've convinced myself that since I don't do desserts anymore, I can be more flexible with my 'real' food, so if I want bacon on my salad, it's cool, or cheese fries, that's cool, too. It's a fuckin free for all! Except no desserts. We'll see how long I can keep this up- I've already noticed the return of my insatiable craving for peanut butter, which is probably largely because of the sugars in it. But I've gone a week now with no desserts, so I have some hope.
But perhaps I'm going about this wrong. Sugar can be a great diet dodge, s
o says this ad, and who am I to question the wisdom of the 1960s diet industry?
On denying oneself
Oh, forcing myself to obey a strict set of rules always motivates me. Thus, I have been inspired to detox. I love detoxing, or else, I love the busy work of choosing food and feeling all righteous because I'm drinking water and the inevitable debauchery that follows when the detox is over.
Recently, I was rereading Skinny Bitch, which I now regard as largely the Bible for aspiring anorexics, meaning the vast majority of it is utter crap. The stuff about the horrible conditions that farm animals are raised in and all of the scary hormones in our food is absolutely true, but the idea that you should wait until you're starving to eat in the morning or at lunch time, or that most people actually eat too much protein, or that a big plate of vegetables for every meal is adequate caloric intake is all total bullshit. The main goal of the book is to promote veganism and organic eating, which is an admirable goal, and if I had unlimited money with which to buy groceries I'd definitely give veganism the old college try. But as it stands, it's highly unrealistic for a lot of people. However, the book did kind of motivate me to give this detox a whirl. I never regarded the organic eating part as crap, just as not important- when I eat organic, it's usually because the farmers markets I shop at tend to have organic crops. But since I have decided to detox, I figure, what the hell, let's try eating at least some organic stuff, and less meat while we're at it.
So today at the store I picked up organic waffles, organic pumpkin seed and granola cereal and soy nog, along with a big assortment of fruits and vegetables. Tomorrow I'm looking at black bean cakes with guacamole for dinner, later in the week no cheese pizza with a mess of vegetables, and portabello mushroom caps stuffed with pesto and pine nuts. I also have my absolute favorite tortillas in the world, Extreme Wellness, to make all kinds of wraps (seriously, follow the link- best tortillas ever.) I'm being extra ambitious and trying to lay off the cigarettes and booze, too, which isn't so very hard if I avoid the bar, which is the hard part. But today my show closed, and I still have one more week until school starts, so I'm going to dedicate all my time and energy to the detox until I get tired of it and quit, which I'm predicting will occur on Wednesday.
Comment and tell me how much fun you're having with your New Years resolutions! And while you're at it, tell me why I feel the need to capitalize New Years when I don't think of it as a real holiday.
I gave up sugar.
I told this to a friend last night and his reply was, "We need sugar to live." Well, I know that, but it's way more dramatic to say, "I gave up sugar" than "I gave up dessert-y type things." Which is actually what I mean. I am powerless over desserts, especially cake, candy, cupcakes and cookies, and especially when they're at home because I can eat as many as I want without the waiter staring at me like I'm a fat ass. Don't judge me because I'm fat, dude. Judge me because of my horrible habit of calling waitstaff 'honey.'
I first discovered the secret to not binging on sugar over Christmas, when I made all my Christmas yummies but did not partake in them. Except for that one time when Bill and I get all drunk and maudlin at the bar and the only thing that could console us was to eat a few handfuls of ginger cookies. But anyway, I knew that if I had one white chocolate raspberry bar, I would not be satisfied until I had five. So I just didn't eat them at all.
I've read before that if you can go a week without eating refined sugar, you won't crave it anymore. I don't really crave sugar so much as once I put it in my mouth, I can't stop myself. It's kind of like smoking in a bar. It's really hard, once you've lit up one cigarette, to keep yourself from pretty much chain smoking when the opportunity presents itself. If you don't want to chain smoke, it's better to just avoid it altogether in those situations. So I've given it up, cold turkey.
The problem is that this means I can't ever have refined sugar again. Again, like smoking, once you've quit you can't just casually pick it back up and expect to not be buying a pack the next morning. So I shall not be tempted. A few weeks ago I gave up tonic after I was horrified to learn it contained just as much sugar as regular Coke- now it's strictly gin and soda for me. So that was a start. Now my go-to stuff for craving sweets is my beloved Coke Zero, jelly or jam on toast in the mornings, honey, and fruit with Cool Whip. It's actually not so very bad- I've convinced myself that since I don't do desserts anymore, I can be more flexible with my 'real' food, so if I want bacon on my salad, it's cool, or cheese fries, that's cool, too. It's a fuckin free for all! Except no desserts. We'll see how long I can keep this up- I've already noticed the return of my insatiable craving for peanut butter, which is probably largely because of the sugars in it. But I've gone a week now with no desserts, so I have some hope.
But perhaps I'm going about this wrong. Sugar can be a great diet dodge, s
o says this ad, and who am I to question the wisdom of the 1960s diet industry?On denying oneself
Oh, forcing myself to obey a strict set of rules always motivates me. Thus, I have been inspired to detox. I love detoxing, or else, I love the busy work of choosing food and feeling all righteous because I'm drinking water and the inevitable debauchery that follows when the detox is over.
Recently, I was rereading Skinny Bitch, which I now regard as largely the Bible for aspiring anorexics, meaning the vast majority of it is utter crap. The stuff about the horrible conditions that farm animals are raised in and all of the scary hormones in our food is absolutely true, but the idea that you should wait until you're starving to eat in the morning or at lunch time, or that most people actually eat too much protein, or that a big plate of vegetables for every meal is adequate caloric intake is all total bullshit. The main goal of the book is to promote veganism and organic eating, which is an admirable goal, and if I had unlimited money with which to buy groceries I'd definitely give veganism the old college try. But as it stands, it's highly unrealistic for a lot of people. However, the book did kind of motivate me to give this detox a whirl. I never regarded the organic eating part as crap, just as not important- when I eat organic, it's usually because the farmers markets I shop at tend to have organic crops. But since I have decided to detox, I figure, what the hell, let's try eating at least some organic stuff, and less meat while we're at it.
So today at the store I picked up organic waffles, organic pumpkin seed and granola cereal and soy nog, along with a big assortment of fruits and vegetables. Tomorrow I'm looking at black bean cakes with guacamole for dinner, later in the week no cheese pizza with a mess of vegetables, and portabello mushroom caps stuffed with pesto and pine nuts. I also have my absolute favorite tortillas in the world, Extreme Wellness, to make all kinds of wraps (seriously, follow the link- best tortillas ever.) I'm being extra ambitious and trying to lay off the cigarettes and booze, too, which isn't so very hard if I avoid the bar, which is the hard part. But today my show closed, and I still have one more week until school starts, so I'm going to dedicate all my time and energy to the detox until I get tired of it and quit, which I'm predicting will occur on Wednesday.
Comment and tell me how much fun you're having with your New Years resolutions! And while you're at it, tell me why I feel the need to capitalize New Years when I don't think of it as a real holiday.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
I'm a sociology major. Luckily I am not planning on doing anything with this degree, as I already know what I want to do with my life and I'm pretty much doing it at the moment, but I've always felt it was important to get a college education if you have the means to do so because it speaks of an ability to follow through and finish what one starts. Besides, I love sociology, and I seem to have an innate understanding of it which makes it an enjoyable course of study. One class I'm taking this semester is on the sociology of work, which seems to mean the sociology of the inequality of work; not that I'm complaining, as I seem to have developed a spidey sense for gender, racial and socioeconomic bias. No good discussion of the new American workplace would be complete without talking about Wal-Mart, which was our topic today. Among other things, I find Wal-Mart abhorrent because it has forced the very people who it put out of a job (domestic factory workers, independent business owners) to purchase their goods because they are the cheapest. These people are put into a very sad position, because they literally don't have the money to shop elsewhere, and so must buy their necessary items within the Jaws of Hell; it doesn't very well work for us to tell them to shop somewhere else. While we were making this point in class, someone piped up with, "It's like when we tell poor people to eat healthy, but they can't because it's cheapest to get a 1 dollar hamburger from McDonald's."
I hear this argument a lot. In fact, I think I actually made it at some point on the blog here (I say I think because actually looking to see if I did would require opening another tab on Firefox and I'm too lazy to do that.) I've done some thinking, though, and I was wrong if I ever said that. Yes, it may be cheaper that day to eat at McDonald's, but in the long run, you save a lot of money by cooking at home. To illustrate my point, I thought of how much it would cost to feed one person for a week with groceries. This list was made using groceries from Kroger, and how much things cost in Indianapolis. Some of these things were on sale if you used your Kroger Plus Card, which is free to get so you should get one. Also, always shop at Kroger because they are unionized.
Milk: $1.25/half gallon
Generic Cheerios: $1.88
8 apples: $2.00 (4/$1)
1 lb grapes: 93 cents
1 lb sliced ham: $2.19
1 carton eggs: 77 cents
1 jar peanut butter: $1
1 loaf wheat bread: $1
1 lb ground turkey: $2.50
1 lb box wheat pasta: $1.00
1 14.5 oz can Hunt's pasta sauce: $1.00
Salad mix: $2.50
Generic salad dressing: $2.00
Grand total : $20.02
Cost per day: $2.86
Rough price of a meal at McDonald's, off the dollar menu, which includes a protein, carb, and fruit/veggie: $3.00 plus tax
I'll analyze how I did the list: The milk, Cheerios, grapes and eggs are for breakfast- a handful of grapes, a bowl of cereal and an egg or two is grain/carbs, lean protein, calcium and vitamins from fruit.
The lunch meat, peanut butter, bread and apples are for lunch. Again, any combo of these will give you the essentials for a filling, healthy meal. At the end of the week you'll have an extra apple and likely extra meat or peanut butter to eat as a snack at some point.
And the pasta, turkey, sauce and salad are obviously for dinner. Again- trifecta of good carbs/fiber, protein and a veggie.
I get that this is not exactly the food pyramid, but no one will starve on this, and what you'd be eating is a hell of a lot better for you than fast food. Also, Kroger generally has a lot of 10/$10.00 specials every week- for example, this week in their ad I see tuna, English cucumbers, cottage cheese and 1/2 gallons of orange juice, and that's just the healthy stuff. Add those to your groceries for the week and you get a little more variety, for only $4 more (remember, food isn't taxed.)
As you can see, the idea of being too poor to eat healthy is crap. I don't know how many actual poor people use this excuse; it seems to be used more by broke (different from poor, as broke often has to do with poor money choices) college students/young people. Look at it like this: I will assume that the average college student, or single poor person, works 20 hours a week at a job that pays $9/hr. If you assume that 20% of the weekly paycheck is taken out in taxes, we are looking at an income of $144 a week. By cooking at home and eating healthy, you are spending a little less than 14% of your weekly income on food. Even if you sprung for the extra $4 in groceries, you're looking at less than 17% of your weekly income. If you are eating out at every meal, even the dollar menu, let's assume you spend $9.00 a day (3 items off the dollar menu, 3 meals a day.) That's 43% of your weekly income! Holy crap! Now, I'll go ahead and assume that most people don't spend $10 a day on food and eat at home at least some of the time- but still, if you ate at home for every meal, you could eat really healthily for very little money. Did I mention that the only thing you'd need to eat at home on this plan is a pot to cook stuff in? I realize that a lot of people don't have money to buy fancy kitchen things, so I controlled for that. You do need a stove/oven, but almost anywhere you rent or live in will have these
So, ain't nobody too poor to eat healthy. Thank God we have things like WIC and food stamps in the USA so that people who have to work low wage jobs can provide food for their families, especially healthy food. I appreciate that if it were not just you, but you and say, your two children, this $20 in groceries would not quite cut it. But I do firmly believe that eating at home and eating healthily are really easy if you're willing to do it.
I hear this argument a lot. In fact, I think I actually made it at some point on the blog here (I say I think because actually looking to see if I did would require opening another tab on Firefox and I'm too lazy to do that.) I've done some thinking, though, and I was wrong if I ever said that. Yes, it may be cheaper that day to eat at McDonald's, but in the long run, you save a lot of money by cooking at home. To illustrate my point, I thought of how much it would cost to feed one person for a week with groceries. This list was made using groceries from Kroger, and how much things cost in Indianapolis. Some of these things were on sale if you used your Kroger Plus Card, which is free to get so you should get one. Also, always shop at Kroger because they are unionized.
Milk: $1.25/half gallon
Generic Cheerios: $1.88
8 apples: $2.00 (4/$1)
1 lb grapes: 93 cents
1 lb sliced ham: $2.19
1 carton eggs: 77 cents
1 jar peanut butter: $1
1 loaf wheat bread: $1
1 lb ground turkey: $2.50
1 lb box wheat pasta: $1.00
1 14.5 oz can Hunt's pasta sauce: $1.00
Salad mix: $2.50
Generic salad dressing: $2.00
Grand total : $20.02
Cost per day: $2.86
Rough price of a meal at McDonald's, off the dollar menu, which includes a protein, carb, and fruit/veggie: $3.00 plus tax
I'll analyze how I did the list: The milk, Cheerios, grapes and eggs are for breakfast- a handful of grapes, a bowl of cereal and an egg or two is grain/carbs, lean protein, calcium and vitamins from fruit.
The lunch meat, peanut butter, bread and apples are for lunch. Again, any combo of these will give you the essentials for a filling, healthy meal. At the end of the week you'll have an extra apple and likely extra meat or peanut butter to eat as a snack at some point.
And the pasta, turkey, sauce and salad are obviously for dinner. Again- trifecta of good carbs/fiber, protein and a veggie.
I get that this is not exactly the food pyramid, but no one will starve on this, and what you'd be eating is a hell of a lot better for you than fast food. Also, Kroger generally has a lot of 10/$10.00 specials every week- for example, this week in their ad I see tuna, English cucumbers, cottage cheese and 1/2 gallons of orange juice, and that's just the healthy stuff. Add those to your groceries for the week and you get a little more variety, for only $4 more (remember, food isn't taxed.)
As you can see, the idea of being too poor to eat healthy is crap. I don't know how many actual poor people use this excuse; it seems to be used more by broke (different from poor, as broke often has to do with poor money choices) college students/young people. Look at it like this: I will assume that the average college student, or single poor person, works 20 hours a week at a job that pays $9/hr. If you assume that 20% of the weekly paycheck is taken out in taxes, we are looking at an income of $144 a week. By cooking at home and eating healthy, you are spending a little less than 14% of your weekly income on food. Even if you sprung for the extra $4 in groceries, you're looking at less than 17% of your weekly income. If you are eating out at every meal, even the dollar menu, let's assume you spend $9.00 a day (3 items off the dollar menu, 3 meals a day.) That's 43% of your weekly income! Holy crap! Now, I'll go ahead and assume that most people don't spend $10 a day on food and eat at home at least some of the time- but still, if you ate at home for every meal, you could eat really healthily for very little money. Did I mention that the only thing you'd need to eat at home on this plan is a pot to cook stuff in? I realize that a lot of people don't have money to buy fancy kitchen things, so I controlled for that. You do need a stove/oven, but almost anywhere you rent or live in will have these
So, ain't nobody too poor to eat healthy. Thank God we have things like WIC and food stamps in the USA so that people who have to work low wage jobs can provide food for their families, especially healthy food. I appreciate that if it were not just you, but you and say, your two children, this $20 in groceries would not quite cut it. But I do firmly believe that eating at home and eating healthily are really easy if you're willing to do it.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Dried fruit- friend or foe?
Sorry about the title, but I couldn't resist. Do people still say foe? Why hasn't that phrase morphed into 'friend or enemy'?
This summer I've gotten really spoiled. There have been lots of awesome farmer's markets, both in town and in the other midwestern cities I've visited (Springfield, IL and South Haven, MI) and I've gotten my pick of all the fresh produce I can handle. Peaches, nectarines, cherries, blueberries, and cheap watermelons from the roadside stand near my neighborhood. Num. I also discovered Jazz apples, which on principle I should oppose because they are a weird hybrid of apples and pears and the idea of genetically engineering fruit always seemed a little weird to me, but nonetheless they are fucking yummy and I wept bitterly when Kroger stopped carrying them.
It seems so odd to me that I never used to like fruit. Whenever I voluntarily ate a piece, I'd congratulate myself for eating healthy and then take a three month fruit hiatus until the next time, so as not to overdose on vitamins or anything. I think this was because my exposure to fruit had been mostly mealy, bitter Gala apples and lame, wrinkly red grapes from when I worked at Steak 'n Shake as a teenager. The only way one could choke those down was to drown them in hot caramel sauce (they were classified in the menu under 'lighter options.') I just never really got into them. And it wasn't until earlier this year that I just decided I would start eating fresh fruit (yes, it really was as simple as just telling myself it was time to start eating them. I've come to think of eating healthy as something that adults do, like getting up before noon on the weekends and doing the dishes without anyone telling you to. I am now an adult, so I must do all of these things.)
In the interim, I discovered the stepping stone to learning to like fresh fruit- dried fruit! It started with dried pineapple, which is inexplicably sweet compared to fresh pineapple. In
fact, all fresh fruits are. I don't know why this is, and it's mildly disconcerting- what the hell are they doing to it to make it so sweet? I know they dehydrate it, or something, right? Oh, hey, the Internet! The Internet can tell me things! And it tells me, courtesy of Wikipedia, that "Since dehydration may result in water loss up to seven parts out of eight, dried fruit has a stronger flavor than its fresh counterpart." Well, there you have it.
Uh, oh, there's more- "The drying process also destroys most of the Vitamin C in the food." Huh. Well, that's not good. In fact, one of my nutrition bibles, the Magic Foods guide (which I wrote about earlier in 'Required Reading') says that dried fruit usually lacks almost all of the vitamins that its fresh counterparts have, except maybe the fiber. Also, dried fruit can have up to twice the calories of fresh fruit, for less actual food: for example, an apple has 60 calories, but 10 dried apple rings (the serving size) has 110 calories.
So, is dried fruit really worth it? It's delicious, and it's convenient, but is it healthy? Also, dried fruit is pretty expensive compared to the fresh. Thank God you have me around to make up your mind for you.
In my humble opinion, dried fruit is worth it, provided you study the label carefully and choose wisely. My pick? Trader Joe's Dried Bartlett Pears, and also, Trader Joe's Sweet Dried Apple Rings. Have I mentioned lately that I fucking love Trader Joe's? God, they are awesome. I used to think only uppity people shopped at Trader Joe's, but I guess now I am one of those uppity people, buying my fancy cheeses and organic arugula and carrying it home in my trendy reusable grocery tote bag. I don't care because I get awesome dried fruit at Trader Joe's.
Why is this dried fruit awesome? Mainly, the fiber. Fresh apples and pears have a goodly amount of fiber in them, and it's all preserved in the dried version. For example: the pears have a whopping 10g of fiber per 5 slice serving. That's 41% of your daily needs. And for only 140 calories, that's a deal. And though I might have maligned the apple rings earlier for having too many calories compared to fresh, in fact 110 is hardly anything for something this healthy, especially because it contains 3g of fiber per serving. I've taken to keeping a bag in my car for when I am on my way home from rehearsal at 10:00pm and famished.
I will offer one caveat- be careful about things like dried cherries, dried blueberries, and my beloved dried pineapple. The serving size is usually something like 1/4 or 1/3 cup, and let's face it, unless you want to look like crazy Lifetime movie anorexic girl by measuring out all of your portions with measuring cup, it's pretty easy to get carried away and end up eating way more than you intended; generally, these are in the 140-cal per serving range, which again is really not much, but if you're eating twice or triple that, then it kind of defeats the purpose and you might as well have candy. Dried berries are good for salads, or trail mix, or for sprinkling in your oatmeal, but in general, not so good to take the bag along and munch whenever the urge hits ya.
That's all I got. Comment and tell me what sorts of dried things are not tasty!
This summer I've gotten really spoiled. There have been lots of awesome farmer's markets, both in town and in the other midwestern cities I've visited (Springfield, IL and South Haven, MI) and I've gotten my pick of all the fresh produce I can handle. Peaches, nectarines, cherries, blueberries, and cheap watermelons from the roadside stand near my neighborhood. Num. I also discovered Jazz apples, which on principle I should oppose because they are a weird hybrid of apples and pears and the idea of genetically engineering fruit always seemed a little weird to me, but nonetheless they are fucking yummy and I wept bitterly when Kroger stopped carrying them.
It seems so odd to me that I never used to like fruit. Whenever I voluntarily ate a piece, I'd congratulate myself for eating healthy and then take a three month fruit hiatus until the next time, so as not to overdose on vitamins or anything. I think this was because my exposure to fruit had been mostly mealy, bitter Gala apples and lame, wrinkly red grapes from when I worked at Steak 'n Shake as a teenager. The only way one could choke those down was to drown them in hot caramel sauce (they were classified in the menu under 'lighter options.') I just never really got into them. And it wasn't until earlier this year that I just decided I would start eating fresh fruit (yes, it really was as simple as just telling myself it was time to start eating them. I've come to think of eating healthy as something that adults do, like getting up before noon on the weekends and doing the dishes without anyone telling you to. I am now an adult, so I must do all of these things.)
In the interim, I discovered the stepping stone to learning to like fresh fruit- dried fruit! It started with dried pineapple, which is inexplicably sweet compared to fresh pineapple. In
fact, all fresh fruits are. I don't know why this is, and it's mildly disconcerting- what the hell are they doing to it to make it so sweet? I know they dehydrate it, or something, right? Oh, hey, the Internet! The Internet can tell me things! And it tells me, courtesy of Wikipedia, that "Since dehydration may result in water loss up to seven parts out of eight, dried fruit has a stronger flavor than its fresh counterpart." Well, there you have it.Uh, oh, there's more- "The drying process also destroys most of the Vitamin C in the food." Huh. Well, that's not good. In fact, one of my nutrition bibles, the Magic Foods guide (which I wrote about earlier in 'Required Reading') says that dried fruit usually lacks almost all of the vitamins that its fresh counterparts have, except maybe the fiber. Also, dried fruit can have up to twice the calories of fresh fruit, for less actual food: for example, an apple has 60 calories, but 10 dried apple rings (the serving size) has 110 calories.
So, is dried fruit really worth it? It's delicious, and it's convenient, but is it healthy? Also, dried fruit is pretty expensive compared to the fresh. Thank God you have me around to make up your mind for you.
In my humble opinion, dried fruit is worth it, provided you study the label carefully and choose wisely. My pick? Trader Joe's Dried Bartlett Pears, and also, Trader Joe's Sweet Dried Apple Rings. Have I mentioned lately that I fucking love Trader Joe's? God, they are awesome. I used to think only uppity people shopped at Trader Joe's, but I guess now I am one of those uppity people, buying my fancy cheeses and organic arugula and carrying it home in my trendy reusable grocery tote bag. I don't care because I get awesome dried fruit at Trader Joe's.
Why is this dried fruit awesome? Mainly, the fiber. Fresh apples and pears have a goodly amount of fiber in them, and it's all preserved in the dried version. For example: the pears have a whopping 10g of fiber per 5 slice serving. That's 41% of your daily needs. And for only 140 calories, that's a deal. And though I might have maligned the apple rings earlier for having too many calories compared to fresh, in fact 110 is hardly anything for something this healthy, especially because it contains 3g of fiber per serving. I've taken to keeping a bag in my car for when I am on my way home from rehearsal at 10:00pm and famished.
I will offer one caveat- be careful about things like dried cherries, dried blueberries, and my beloved dried pineapple. The serving size is usually something like 1/4 or 1/3 cup, and let's face it, unless you want to look like crazy Lifetime movie anorexic girl by measuring out all of your portions with measuring cup, it's pretty easy to get carried away and end up eating way more than you intended; generally, these are in the 140-cal per serving range, which again is really not much, but if you're eating twice or triple that, then it kind of defeats the purpose and you might as well have candy. Dried berries are good for salads, or trail mix, or for sprinkling in your oatmeal, but in general, not so good to take the bag along and munch whenever the urge hits ya.
That's all I got. Comment and tell me what sorts of dried things are not tasty!
Sunday, August 23, 2009
It's a magical time of year- the Indy Fringe Festival. This year I'm involved in two shows: Welcome to Blanksville, a long form improv show based on the Choose Your Own Adventure books with Indyprov, and Tortillo!, about a snack food company-cum-drug ring. We all know that snack foods are so not my thing. Being surrounded by bag upon bag of Fritos, Funyuns and Doritos at all times sounds like dieting hell, but actually, I don't even want to eat those things anymore. Put a big ass chocolate chip muffin in my face and we'll talk.
I've seen a few shows so far, including my friend Carrie's Stetson Manifesto (check her out at rainbowsandsausages.blogspot.com), a really neat modern dance piece called Gone, Gone, Gone (I swear one day when I retire from acting I'm just going to dance, because nothing makes me feel more light and free), and Wanda and Rhonda's Bitchin Bingo Bash, where I unfortunately did not win bingo.
But one show I saw happens to relate to the blog. It was called 'The Attack of the Big Angry Booty.' It's a very funny storytelling piece about both losing weight and watching others lose weight. It's told from the perspective of a gay male actor, and as such I really felt like I could relate to it. I don't think I can properly stress how much weight and body means to a performer. Your fat ass is on display for the world to see, and because you have voluntarily put said ass out there, it is fair game for anyone to comment on. The thing I told Les, the storyteller, that really stuck out to me was how every story was about a gay man or a woman- never a straight man. I really do feel that straight men have much more leeway with their weight; this is especially obvious to me once you get to the performance world. Hell, straight men get more leeway with their looks in general. I think of the show Roseanne- lots of people didn't like Roseanne because she was an opinionated lady, so to try to hurt her feelings, they called her fat. John Goodman was way bigger and I never heard anyone call him fat.
I liked this piece because it reinforces what I have been saying since God was a boy- control your portions and get some exercise, and you will be fine. If you don't want to control portions or exercise, you'll be fine, too, but you'll also probably be heavy, and if you are a gay man or a woman, chances are that people will not be okay with your decision to be heavy. Remember this, though- no one can make you feel like shit without your permission. Unfortunately, somewhere along the line, I was hardwired to be sensitive to comments on my weight. Hence this blog!
I admired Les's courage to get up there and talk about his struggles. I'd love to do a storytelling piece of my experiences with weight loss and dieting, but I find a lot of that stuff too personal, even for the blog. But Les's piece isn't super serious; it's actually very fun and easy to relate to, for anyone. Check it out! (After you've checked out my shows, of course.)
I've seen a few shows so far, including my friend Carrie's Stetson Manifesto (check her out at rainbowsandsausages.blogspot.com), a really neat modern dance piece called Gone, Gone, Gone (I swear one day when I retire from acting I'm just going to dance, because nothing makes me feel more light and free), and Wanda and Rhonda's Bitchin Bingo Bash, where I unfortunately did not win bingo.
But one show I saw happens to relate to the blog. It was called 'The Attack of the Big Angry Booty.' It's a very funny storytelling piece about both losing weight and watching others lose weight. It's told from the perspective of a gay male actor, and as such I really felt like I could relate to it. I don't think I can properly stress how much weight and body means to a performer. Your fat ass is on display for the world to see, and because you have voluntarily put said ass out there, it is fair game for anyone to comment on. The thing I told Les, the storyteller, that really stuck out to me was how every story was about a gay man or a woman- never a straight man. I really do feel that straight men have much more leeway with their weight; this is especially obvious to me once you get to the performance world. Hell, straight men get more leeway with their looks in general. I think of the show Roseanne- lots of people didn't like Roseanne because she was an opinionated lady, so to try to hurt her feelings, they called her fat. John Goodman was way bigger and I never heard anyone call him fat.
I liked this piece because it reinforces what I have been saying since God was a boy- control your portions and get some exercise, and you will be fine. If you don't want to control portions or exercise, you'll be fine, too, but you'll also probably be heavy, and if you are a gay man or a woman, chances are that people will not be okay with your decision to be heavy. Remember this, though- no one can make you feel like shit without your permission. Unfortunately, somewhere along the line, I was hardwired to be sensitive to comments on my weight. Hence this blog!
I admired Les's courage to get up there and talk about his struggles. I'd love to do a storytelling piece of my experiences with weight loss and dieting, but I find a lot of that stuff too personal, even for the blog. But Les's piece isn't super serious; it's actually very fun and easy to relate to, for anyone. Check it out! (After you've checked out my shows, of course.)
Sunday, August 2, 2009
There's an article in today's New York Times magazine called Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch by Michael Pollan. It is partly about Julia Child, who is awesome, and partly about "Julie and Julia", whose producers I swear must have purchased stock in the Times because it seems like every damn article lately has made some mention of it (Civil Unrest in Honduras Continues while Julie and Julia Opens to Rave Reviews), but mostly about how people no longer cook at home, even though as a culture we still seem pretty fascinated with food.
Read it. It was really, really interesting, especially if you like food or cooking. The stats, while sad, were not surprising- the average American spends 27 minutes a day on food preparation. I'm sure some of you are saying, "That's kind of a lot." And maybe it is, to you, because I'd wager to say that a good 50% of people "don't cook." Here's what I have to say about that- get over it and learn.
The article does get down on all of the many 'shortcuts' afforded to us now. I like convenience food as much as the next person- I don't know what I'd do without bagged spinach, sliced mushrooms, chicken buillon cubes, and refrigerated pizza dough. I'm glad we have these things, because without them, I probably wouldn't cook. The article talks about how Julia Child took the fear out of cooking- she showed the average home cook with a normal kitchen how to make fancy sounding things and proved that it was something everyone could do if you had the patience and the motivation. I think for most people, watching Julia Child in 2009 would actually make you more fearful- "You mean I have to do THAT?" The good news is, since the majority of us don't have one adult who stays home and whose main job is to run the house, I don't think anyone is expecting people to prepare an hour-long French feast every night of the week. In 2009, the article says, cooking in the style of Julia is pretty obsolete, except for those of us who truly want to spend hours cooking.
And I don't spend hours cooking, though I do cook. In fact, I cook almost everything I eat, or do some amount of preparation, even if it is just slicing the cheese and tomatoes to make a sandwich. But for the most part, I don't roast my own chicken, or make my own pie crust (Pollan calls this "real scratch cooking"), and that doesn't make me feel inadequate. I can make a mean Korean chicken or spinach and mushroom quiche or baked ziti. People ask me how I learned to cook and I say, "One day I was hungry, and there was no food, so I had to make something." I might be one of the cooks that Pollan is villifying here- the ones who rely a lot on shortcuts and are drawn to the concept of "30-Minute Meals." But what the article taught me is, if I am consistently doing 30-minute meals every day, I'm doing a hell of a lot better than most people. I think there are four levels of cooking- those who don't cook at all, those who can operate an oven enough to make frozen lasagna or a boxed cake mix, those like me who can make a wide array of everyday meals and some specialty things, and people at the top who are total whizzes and know how (and have the patience) to do everything from homemade cannoli to steak tartare. I think all adults should be at least a level 2, with the ability to at least feed themselves. I am saddened by people who burn frozen pizzas. I find cooking to be very intuitive- once you have the basics down, it's really easy. Just follow the directions. Why are some people too scared to attempt that?
But what really drew me to the article was the connection between obesity and home cooking. I have always known this but I didn't have the stats to back it up, and now I do. The bottom line: people who cook are less likely to be obese than those who do. Far less likely. I quote:
"The more time a nation devotes to food preparation at home, the lower its rate of obesity. In fact, the amount of time spent cooking predicts obesity rates more reliably than female participation in the labor force or income. Other research supports the idea that cooking is a better predictor of a healthful diet than social class: a 1992 study in The Journal of the American Dietetic Association found that poor women who routinely cooked were more likely to eat a more healthful diet than well-to-do women who did not."
Whoa. I think that is amazing. But why? Oh, hey, more quotes!
"When we let corporations do the cooking, they’re bound to go heavy on sugar, fat and salt; these are three tastes we’re hard-wired to like, which happen to be dirt cheap to add and do a good job masking the shortcomings of processed food."
SEE!!!! Before, you didn't believe me. When you said, "Taco Bell isn't that bad for you, it's just cheese and chicken and a tortilla!" and I said, "God, you are so wrong," you disagreed. Now it's in the newspapers, so it's true. Now do you believe me? I hope this serves as a wakeup call to a lot of people- when you eat fast food or pre-packaged crap, you have only a vague idea of what is actually inside it unless you read the label. And a lot of that stuff is really, really bad for you. It makes you farty and tired and large (being large is okay, but only if you got that way eating stuff that is awesome and delicious- and believe me, there are lots of delicious and awesome things you can make at home for much cheaper, that are way more worthwhile things to use to fatten up.) They are hard on your system, full of steroids and lots of other drugs with unfortunate side effects, and they are addicting.
This is why I advocate home cooking: you can control what goes into your food. And if, like me, you prefer to use the diet version of ingredients to get a lower-cal product, you can do that! You can make your french toast with whole wheat bread with extra fiber. You can use egg whites instead of eggs to make your breakfast sandwich, and you can use turkey bacon instead of pork bacon. You can use I Can't Believe It's Not Butter! instead of real butter on your grilled cheese, or substitute turkey for pork in your meatballs. Alternately, you can do awesome things like add dried apricots to your turkey meatballs or mushrooms to your lasagna. These are all things that fast food places either don't offer, or you'd feel like an asshole for ordering. But if you do it at home, it's not only cheaper, it's healthier. And even if you're scared to cook, there are usually frozen turkey meatballs and cartons of egg whites in the grocery store to make it extra easy.
I get kind of upset when people refuse to cook and go out to eat all the time. I kind of equate it with laziness and wastefulness, which I understand is probably unfair, but I can't help it because I know how easy and beneficial it is to make the switch (I think this is how ex-smokers feel when they hear their smoking friends complaining of having a constant cough or something- they know there is a simple solution for the problem, but their friends don't want to hear it.) I know for some people, it isn't realistic to cook- it's a lot cheaper to go to Taco Bell than to buy tortillas and chicken and cheese. But all of the rest of us who make enough money to cook at home should do so, at least part of the time. There are such a wealth of benefits to cooking at home and taking control of your food. And besides, cooking is really fun. I used to be kind of a fast food addict. If I could have eaten fast food for every meal, I would have. I never would have thought that, today, I routinely turn down the option to go out to eat because I've been dreaming all day of something I can cook at home.
The article says a lot of this better than I can. But the bottom line is this- I started this blog because I love to write, and I love food, and I especially love healthy or diet food. I wanted to show people how easy it is to eat even a little healthier. I would be remiss if I did not point out that one of the easiest ways is to cook at home. So try it. You might like it.
Read it. It was really, really interesting, especially if you like food or cooking. The stats, while sad, were not surprising- the average American spends 27 minutes a day on food preparation. I'm sure some of you are saying, "That's kind of a lot." And maybe it is, to you, because I'd wager to say that a good 50% of people "don't cook." Here's what I have to say about that- get over it and learn.
The article does get down on all of the many 'shortcuts' afforded to us now. I like convenience food as much as the next person- I don't know what I'd do without bagged spinach, sliced mushrooms, chicken buillon cubes, and refrigerated pizza dough. I'm glad we have these things, because without them, I probably wouldn't cook. The article talks about how Julia Child took the fear out of cooking- she showed the average home cook with a normal kitchen how to make fancy sounding things and proved that it was something everyone could do if you had the patience and the motivation. I think for most people, watching Julia Child in 2009 would actually make you more fearful- "You mean I have to do THAT?" The good news is, since the majority of us don't have one adult who stays home and whose main job is to run the house, I don't think anyone is expecting people to prepare an hour-long French feast every night of the week. In 2009, the article says, cooking in the style of Julia is pretty obsolete, except for those of us who truly want to spend hours cooking.
And I don't spend hours cooking, though I do cook. In fact, I cook almost everything I eat, or do some amount of preparation, even if it is just slicing the cheese and tomatoes to make a sandwich. But for the most part, I don't roast my own chicken, or make my own pie crust (Pollan calls this "real scratch cooking"), and that doesn't make me feel inadequate. I can make a mean Korean chicken or spinach and mushroom quiche or baked ziti. People ask me how I learned to cook and I say, "One day I was hungry, and there was no food, so I had to make something." I might be one of the cooks that Pollan is villifying here- the ones who rely a lot on shortcuts and are drawn to the concept of "30-Minute Meals." But what the article taught me is, if I am consistently doing 30-minute meals every day, I'm doing a hell of a lot better than most people. I think there are four levels of cooking- those who don't cook at all, those who can operate an oven enough to make frozen lasagna or a boxed cake mix, those like me who can make a wide array of everyday meals and some specialty things, and people at the top who are total whizzes and know how (and have the patience) to do everything from homemade cannoli to steak tartare. I think all adults should be at least a level 2, with the ability to at least feed themselves. I am saddened by people who burn frozen pizzas. I find cooking to be very intuitive- once you have the basics down, it's really easy. Just follow the directions. Why are some people too scared to attempt that?
But what really drew me to the article was the connection between obesity and home cooking. I have always known this but I didn't have the stats to back it up, and now I do. The bottom line: people who cook are less likely to be obese than those who do. Far less likely. I quote:
"The more time a nation devotes to food preparation at home, the lower its rate of obesity. In fact, the amount of time spent cooking predicts obesity rates more reliably than female participation in the labor force or income. Other research supports the idea that cooking is a better predictor of a healthful diet than social class: a 1992 study in The Journal of the American Dietetic Association found that poor women who routinely cooked were more likely to eat a more healthful diet than well-to-do women who did not."
Whoa. I think that is amazing. But why? Oh, hey, more quotes!
"When we let corporations do the cooking, they’re bound to go heavy on sugar, fat and salt; these are three tastes we’re hard-wired to like, which happen to be dirt cheap to add and do a good job masking the shortcomings of processed food."
SEE!!!! Before, you didn't believe me. When you said, "Taco Bell isn't that bad for you, it's just cheese and chicken and a tortilla!" and I said, "God, you are so wrong," you disagreed. Now it's in the newspapers, so it's true. Now do you believe me? I hope this serves as a wakeup call to a lot of people- when you eat fast food or pre-packaged crap, you have only a vague idea of what is actually inside it unless you read the label. And a lot of that stuff is really, really bad for you. It makes you farty and tired and large (being large is okay, but only if you got that way eating stuff that is awesome and delicious- and believe me, there are lots of delicious and awesome things you can make at home for much cheaper, that are way more worthwhile things to use to fatten up.) They are hard on your system, full of steroids and lots of other drugs with unfortunate side effects, and they are addicting.
This is why I advocate home cooking: you can control what goes into your food. And if, like me, you prefer to use the diet version of ingredients to get a lower-cal product, you can do that! You can make your french toast with whole wheat bread with extra fiber. You can use egg whites instead of eggs to make your breakfast sandwich, and you can use turkey bacon instead of pork bacon. You can use I Can't Believe It's Not Butter! instead of real butter on your grilled cheese, or substitute turkey for pork in your meatballs. Alternately, you can do awesome things like add dried apricots to your turkey meatballs or mushrooms to your lasagna. These are all things that fast food places either don't offer, or you'd feel like an asshole for ordering. But if you do it at home, it's not only cheaper, it's healthier. And even if you're scared to cook, there are usually frozen turkey meatballs and cartons of egg whites in the grocery store to make it extra easy.
I get kind of upset when people refuse to cook and go out to eat all the time. I kind of equate it with laziness and wastefulness, which I understand is probably unfair, but I can't help it because I know how easy and beneficial it is to make the switch (I think this is how ex-smokers feel when they hear their smoking friends complaining of having a constant cough or something- they know there is a simple solution for the problem, but their friends don't want to hear it.) I know for some people, it isn't realistic to cook- it's a lot cheaper to go to Taco Bell than to buy tortillas and chicken and cheese. But all of the rest of us who make enough money to cook at home should do so, at least part of the time. There are such a wealth of benefits to cooking at home and taking control of your food. And besides, cooking is really fun. I used to be kind of a fast food addict. If I could have eaten fast food for every meal, I would have. I never would have thought that, today, I routinely turn down the option to go out to eat because I've been dreaming all day of something I can cook at home.
The article says a lot of this better than I can. But the bottom line is this- I started this blog because I love to write, and I love food, and I especially love healthy or diet food. I wanted to show people how easy it is to eat even a little healthier. I would be remiss if I did not point out that one of the easiest ways is to cook at home. So try it. You might like it.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Soup! And other foods for toothless people
I finally did it. I got my damn wisdom teeth out. I've been putting it off for over a year now because I was just too terrified. Not of the pain, really- I've had jaw issues stemming from my teeth for years, and I doubted that the post-op pain would be worse than that (I was right.) I was really scared of the IV. I never used to have this huge needle phobia, and I still don't- I'm not thrilled to get a shot, but I can man up a little bit, with minimal tears. Getting blood drawn or having an IV placed is a different story. That shit ain't right. I just don't want anything in my veins; the very thought of it is horrifying to me. I was also terrified of the actual passing out- the counting backwards, that horrible feeling of falling and losing control. It makes me think of the people on Intervention, shooting heroin and then passing out and choking on their puke. Ew. I know it sounds really wussy for me to avoid this surgery that would have saved me a lot of pain and bullshit if I had done it a year ago because I was scared of the IV, but there you go. I even had gone to an oral surgeon at one point and talked about it, but when he told me I couldn't take a Valium before the surgery, I was out of there. But this time my jaw and mouth hurt so bad that my dentist refused to write me any more prescriptions for pain killers or Amoxicillin if I didn't just get them pulled, so I did. I asked them for the nitrous oxide before they even put the IV in, but when she told me, "Your fingers and toes might start to tingle," I started sobbing like I was going to the electric chair and didn't stop until a few hours after my surgery, because you best believe I was STILL CRYING when they woke me up.
Anywho, it does hurt, but nothing that sweet, sweet Vicodin can't control. What does suck is that I can't eat like I want to, and I haven't been able to since Tuesday of last week, when the jaw and wisdom tooth pain started and I stopped being able to open my mouth more than a few centimeters. Everyone knows that post-surgery, especially of the oral kind, you're limited to 'soft foods.' This generally means soup, pudding, and ice cream. For some people, this is really exciting- an excuse to eat all the ice cream you want! Not so for me. First off, if I want some ice cream, I'll just eat some fucking ice cream- I don't need an excuse. And second off, I don't want to eat nothing but ice cream. When I was a kid, I used to love Thursdays because that was the night my very health conscious mother worked late, so I was left with my dad, who doesn't cook. This meant I got to eat fast food. Sometimes, if my mom was out of town for something, I would get to eat as much fast food as I could ever want. As I got older, I realized that I wasn't really doing myself any favors by eating all that fast food. Yeah, it tasted good, but it wasn't worth it in the end. I feel that way about ice cream and junk food now. Yeah, it tastes good, and if I could eat it all the time, I guess I would, but I can't, so waiting until times like this to completely binge on it isn't really going to help me in the long run.
Plus, I'm used to eating healthy. It took me a really long time to get to where I am with my eating- to the point where I prefer to eat fruits and vegetables. I worry that I'm always on the verge of falling off the wagon, though. This week has proven that I am not. I MISS VEGETABLES. I think you can tell how nutritious a food is by its crunchiness. Usually, crunchiness denotes some kind of fiber, or at least a good high water content which means low cal. Watermelon? Apples? Peppers? Brocolli? Carrots? Crunchy. They take awhile to chew. Pudding? Soup? Ice cream? Un-crunchy. Fiberless, soft, and boring. But there is a reason they are recommended- I attempted to eat a salad the day before my surgery and found I was unable to get the fork in my mouth because I couldn't open wide enough, let alone chew the spinach to any sort of swallowable consistency.
Combine this horrible diet with an inability to exercise for my usual amount for a few days (Vicodin, while good at relieving the throbbing and tension, makes me a little sick to my stomach, and my legs sorta weak), plus the fact that I can't have any Coke Zero because I heard carbonation increases your chances of dry sockets, and I am ready to go Charles Manson on someone's ass. Seriously. Don't come to my house unannounced, because chances are I will be sitting on the porch cleaning my gun and looking for my next victim.
This presented a big problem. How do I eat healthy when I can't chew? It hasn't been easy, but I think I did a pretty good job.
1. Lentils. Lentils are miracle food. Packed with fiber, sometimes upwards of 40% of your daily value per serving, as well as lots of protein, they're kind of magic. Something this good should be illegal. And when cooked the right way, they're nice and soft and easy to gum!
The way I've been preparing them comes from a recipe courtesy of a cookbook put out by Prevention magazine that I can't recall the name of (check out their cookbooks, though- I have a few and always get them at the library because they have some awesome creative and healthy, as well as easy, recipes.) Bring a cup of chicken stock and a cup of water to boil on the stove. Add 1/2 a chopped onion and a few good shakes of red pepper flakes. Add 1/2 cup of lentils while everything is still boiling. Simmer it, covered, for 20 minutes- if the lentils are dry after 10, add some more water. After 20 minutes, take off the lid, turn the heat on high and boil off the rest of the water if there's any left. Then add a shot of olive oil and some salt, pepper, and oregano. Delicious and soft. I added mushrooms and spinach to mine since my body needed things that had once been in dirt. Yum.
2. Smoothies. I'm not usually a fan of them, even though they taste good, because in general, they are nutritional nightmares. They usually involve some sort of frozen yogurt, hyper-sweetened fruit product, lots of excess milk and maybe a few shakes of protein powder. However, when you make them at home, you can control what you put into them, and save your five bucks that you would have spent on them somewhere else. I needed fruit, so I made smoothies. One I've grown to love is a few good handfuls of blueberries, a handful of frozen strawberries or cherries (or fresh is you have them, though make sure to take out the pits in the cherries), a generous splash of light vanilla soymilk (I like Silk brand), and either a scoop of light Activia vanilla yogurt or a scoop of chocolate protein powder. Voila- fruit, protein, and new chewing. If I had time to clean out my blender every morning, I'd probably drink these for breakfast pretty regularly.
3. Soup. It's a staple. I'm a sucker from french onion soup in particular, but it has to be the kind with a ton of croutons and a layer of cheese an inch thick on the top. I tried as long as I could to hold out on soup because it makes me feel like an invalid, but finally I couldn't take it and asked my dad to pick some up on his way home from work. Bless his heart, he bought all of the soups you use to cook with- cheddar cheese, cream of mushroom
, etc. But he did get me a can of Campbell's Select Harvest Garden Recipes Harvest Tomato with Basil soup. I had never had tomato soup before- something about it just didn't seem right to me. It was too much like eating hot tomato juice. But I'll tell you what, it was good, and a bowl of it contains a serving of vegetables! I love anything sneaky like that. Each serving contains 100 calories, 5 from fat, and 2g of fiber and 3g of protein. Not bad for something you can essentially suck up with a straw. I dressed it up with some mozzarella and parmesan and it made a perfectly good breakfast. I'd eat it again, even if I weren't confined to only foods one can put into a feeding tube.
Exercise and the post-op
Unfortunately, I found that after my wisdom tooth-ectomy, I was a little more tired than usual- meaning I was so high on painkiller that I slept all damn day. Add to that the previously discussed shakiness and overall feeling of crap and I didn't do my usual hour of exercise. Luckily, a few weeks ago I bought Get Extremely Ripped with Jari Love. I love me some Jari Love- her DVDs all have titles like 'Get Ripped and Chiseled' or 'Get Ripped 1000' or 'Get Super Mega Hulking Ripped.' And she doesn't disappoint. She does high reps with few breaks and kicks your ass, with a focus on the arms. I especially like Get Ripped 1000 because you do step aerobics in between and by the end I'm so sweaty that I can barely see because it drips into my eyes. Most of her workouts are about an hour, but Get Extremely Ripped is actually 2 different 30 minute segments. I bought it for mornings when I have to do something early and don't have a lot of time; I figured they'd be good for my recovery since they're high intensity but not very long. And I have to say: damn. Just because they're short doesn't mean they don't kick your ass. I was sweatier than someone's swarthy immigrant dad after mowing the lawn (or my own swarthy dad after mowing the lawn.) It's mostly combination moves, with arms and legs, and you can use a step if you have it though there are modifications. I liked the little timer that pops up when you have 30 seconds to go. I don't recommend it for beginners, but I think people who work out occasionally (once or twice a week) might like it for an extra challenge. Do not think that all of her workouts are like this, though- her longer ones generally hit only one body part at a time, so while they are hard, they aren't as sweat-inducing as Get Extremely Ripped.
That's all I got! Comment and tell me if you give a damn about eating healthy when you're sick!
Anywho, it does hurt, but nothing that sweet, sweet Vicodin can't control. What does suck is that I can't eat like I want to, and I haven't been able to since Tuesday of last week, when the jaw and wisdom tooth pain started and I stopped being able to open my mouth more than a few centimeters. Everyone knows that post-surgery, especially of the oral kind, you're limited to 'soft foods.' This generally means soup, pudding, and ice cream. For some people, this is really exciting- an excuse to eat all the ice cream you want! Not so for me. First off, if I want some ice cream, I'll just eat some fucking ice cream- I don't need an excuse. And second off, I don't want to eat nothing but ice cream. When I was a kid, I used to love Thursdays because that was the night my very health conscious mother worked late, so I was left with my dad, who doesn't cook. This meant I got to eat fast food. Sometimes, if my mom was out of town for something, I would get to eat as much fast food as I could ever want. As I got older, I realized that I wasn't really doing myself any favors by eating all that fast food. Yeah, it tasted good, but it wasn't worth it in the end. I feel that way about ice cream and junk food now. Yeah, it tastes good, and if I could eat it all the time, I guess I would, but I can't, so waiting until times like this to completely binge on it isn't really going to help me in the long run.
Plus, I'm used to eating healthy. It took me a really long time to get to where I am with my eating- to the point where I prefer to eat fruits and vegetables. I worry that I'm always on the verge of falling off the wagon, though. This week has proven that I am not. I MISS VEGETABLES. I think you can tell how nutritious a food is by its crunchiness. Usually, crunchiness denotes some kind of fiber, or at least a good high water content which means low cal. Watermelon? Apples? Peppers? Brocolli? Carrots? Crunchy. They take awhile to chew. Pudding? Soup? Ice cream? Un-crunchy. Fiberless, soft, and boring. But there is a reason they are recommended- I attempted to eat a salad the day before my surgery and found I was unable to get the fork in my mouth because I couldn't open wide enough, let alone chew the spinach to any sort of swallowable consistency.
Combine this horrible diet with an inability to exercise for my usual amount for a few days (Vicodin, while good at relieving the throbbing and tension, makes me a little sick to my stomach, and my legs sorta weak), plus the fact that I can't have any Coke Zero because I heard carbonation increases your chances of dry sockets, and I am ready to go Charles Manson on someone's ass. Seriously. Don't come to my house unannounced, because chances are I will be sitting on the porch cleaning my gun and looking for my next victim.
This presented a big problem. How do I eat healthy when I can't chew? It hasn't been easy, but I think I did a pretty good job.
1. Lentils. Lentils are miracle food. Packed with fiber, sometimes upwards of 40% of your daily value per serving, as well as lots of protein, they're kind of magic. Something this good should be illegal. And when cooked the right way, they're nice and soft and easy to gum!
The way I've been preparing them comes from a recipe courtesy of a cookbook put out by Prevention magazine that I can't recall the name of (check out their cookbooks, though- I have a few and always get them at the library because they have some awesome creative and healthy, as well as easy, recipes.) Bring a cup of chicken stock and a cup of water to boil on the stove. Add 1/2 a chopped onion and a few good shakes of red pepper flakes. Add 1/2 cup of lentils while everything is still boiling. Simmer it, covered, for 20 minutes- if the lentils are dry after 10, add some more water. After 20 minutes, take off the lid, turn the heat on high and boil off the rest of the water if there's any left. Then add a shot of olive oil and some salt, pepper, and oregano. Delicious and soft. I added mushrooms and spinach to mine since my body needed things that had once been in dirt. Yum.2. Smoothies. I'm not usually a fan of them, even though they taste good, because in general, they are nutritional nightmares. They usually involve some sort of frozen yogurt, hyper-sweetened fruit product, lots of excess milk and maybe a few shakes of protein powder. However, when you make them at home, you can control what you put into them, and save your five bucks that you would have spent on them somewhere else. I needed fruit, so I made smoothies. One I've grown to love is a few good handfuls of blueberries, a handful of frozen strawberries or cherries (or fresh is you have them, though make sure to take out the pits in the cherries), a generous splash of light vanilla soymilk (I like Silk brand), and either a scoop of light Activia vanilla yogurt or a scoop of chocolate protein powder. Voila- fruit, protein, and new chewing. If I had time to clean out my blender every morning, I'd probably drink these for breakfast pretty regularly.
3. Soup. It's a staple. I'm a sucker from french onion soup in particular, but it has to be the kind with a ton of croutons and a layer of cheese an inch thick on the top. I tried as long as I could to hold out on soup because it makes me feel like an invalid, but finally I couldn't take it and asked my dad to pick some up on his way home from work. Bless his heart, he bought all of the soups you use to cook with- cheddar cheese, cream of mushroom
, etc. But he did get me a can of Campbell's Select Harvest Garden Recipes Harvest Tomato with Basil soup. I had never had tomato soup before- something about it just didn't seem right to me. It was too much like eating hot tomato juice. But I'll tell you what, it was good, and a bowl of it contains a serving of vegetables! I love anything sneaky like that. Each serving contains 100 calories, 5 from fat, and 2g of fiber and 3g of protein. Not bad for something you can essentially suck up with a straw. I dressed it up with some mozzarella and parmesan and it made a perfectly good breakfast. I'd eat it again, even if I weren't confined to only foods one can put into a feeding tube.Exercise and the post-op
Unfortunately, I found that after my wisdom tooth-ectomy, I was a little more tired than usual- meaning I was so high on painkiller that I slept all damn day. Add to that the previously discussed shakiness and overall feeling of crap and I didn't do my usual hour of exercise. Luckily, a few weeks ago I bought Get Extremely Ripped with Jari Love. I love me some Jari Love- her DVDs all have titles like 'Get Ripped and Chiseled' or 'Get Ripped 1000' or 'Get Super Mega Hulking Ripped.' And she doesn't disappoint. She does high reps with few breaks and kicks your ass, with a focus on the arms. I especially like Get Ripped 1000 because you do step aerobics in between and by the end I'm so sweaty that I can barely see because it drips into my eyes. Most of her workouts are about an hour, but Get Extremely Ripped is actually 2 different 30 minute segments. I bought it for mornings when I have to do something early and don't have a lot of time; I figured they'd be good for my recovery since they're high intensity but not very long. And I have to say: damn. Just because they're short doesn't mean they don't kick your ass. I was sweatier than someone's swarthy immigrant dad after mowing the lawn (or my own swarthy dad after mowing the lawn.) It's mostly combination moves, with arms and legs, and you can use a step if you have it though there are modifications. I liked the little timer that pops up when you have 30 seconds to go. I don't recommend it for beginners, but I think people who work out occasionally (once or twice a week) might like it for an extra challenge. Do not think that all of her workouts are like this, though- her longer ones generally hit only one body part at a time, so while they are hard, they aren't as sweat-inducing as Get Extremely Ripped.
That's all I got! Comment and tell me if you give a damn about eating healthy when you're sick!
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Peanut butter so good I wanna roll it in the hay
Well, it finally happened. I stopped counting calories.
Kind of.
It started right before my vacation. For a few months now I have been keeping a pretty close record of what I eat every day, and consequently, the calories; or I should say, the night before I would plan it out and follow it roughly. I did this mainly because I find a lot of comfort in the structure of having a schedule or plan, and I pretty much planned out in my head what I was going to eat the next day anyway, but by writing it down I could clear that space in my brain for more important things, like reality show contestants and Elvis trivia. I also did this because I love to grocery shop and thus always have a fridge that is full to overflowing, so by planning things out I could make sure I was eating the spinach before it went bad, finishing leftovers to make more room for new things, etc. But I will admit that planning to this extent is kind of unhealthy and a weird eating behavior, especially the calorie counting part, and it was pretty easy to get obsessed with it (kind of like the very special Full House were DJ got anorexia for a day.)
Of course the nutritionist agreed. "Blah blah, no food accounting, woo woo New Age-y Enya blah blah." I think that's what she said. So I struck a bargain- on vacation, I would resist the urge to plan and tabulate calories. This turned out to be the best idea, because as we all know, there ain't no time to count calories during vacation. I ate lots of red velvet cake, like I promised I would, and also some fudge, and other things that I don't usually eat. While on vacation I read two really interesting books that resulted in me not picking up my food journal at all since I got back. One was The Skinny: How to Fit in Your Little Black Dress Forever by Melissa Clark and Robin Aronson (I suggest you buy it on Amazon because not only is it cheap, there are lots of awesome and creative but easy and healthy recipes in the back that you'll want to have. For serious, it made me want to eat brussel sprouts, which I haven't eaten for approximately 15 years.) The gist of the book is to eat what you want and don't eat what you don't want, and to eat lots of fruits and vegetables and to eat in moderation. None of this should be news, but it really made me think.
For a long time, I associated any kind of 'bad' food, like white bread or cake or anything else 'empty' with no nutritional value with completely trashing my day, healthy-eating wise. Like, "Fuck it, I'm going to have the fudge, and because any hope of eating well today is now fucked, I'm fittin to eat all the fudge I can stuff into my food hole." I knew this wasn't the right way to approach it, but I honestly could never understand how other people could eat just one piece of fudge and then stop (this is a big part of my diet foods philosophy- I want to eat a lot of whatever it is that I want to eat, so it better be low-cal so I can do that without a ton of damage.) In The Skinny, the authors say that nothing is forbidden, which is common in almost every diet book. But they really focus on eating enough to satiate you or satisfy your craving, then stopping. Like, I only really wanted one piece of fudge, and I don't HAVE to eat the whole pan because if I really think about it, I'm good. The hard part about this is that they realize that it's really hard to say no when there's a plate staring you in the face, so they suggest you throw what you're eating away when you're done to keep you from picking at it. This is really hard for me, because I refuse to waste anything, to a degree that I don't think even people who lived through the Depression can understand. I think it comes from working as a costumed interpreter in an exhibit about World War II and rationing and having to pretend like I'd kill someone for the roast beef under their fingernails, and repeating the phrase, "Wasting food is like taking it out of someone's mouth" over and over. But they have a point. Most of us were raised, rightfully so, to clean our plates and not waste food, but most of us then grow into adults who eat waaaaay too much under the guise of 'not wasting it.' Important point from the book: if you cannot fit your sandwich into your mouth, you need to either throw some of it away or save half for later.
I also realized from the book that I really haven't been eating enough fruits and vegetables. This was kind of a surprise, because I consider myself a militantly healthy eater, never eating anything unless it has some sort of redeeming attribute, like lots of fiber or protein. But one of the main points of the book is to figure out what you really want to eat, and then building a meal around that. If you really want a piece of pizza, go ahead, but only have one or two and fill the rest out with salad or cauliflower. And when I started to think about it, yeah, I eat veggies and fruit every day, but it seemed like the majority of my diet was made up of protein and grain instead. Veggies I can sneak in anywhere, so I decided to start with more fruit. Oh, my Maude. I'm eating fruit I haven't eaten in years, and it is delicious. Plums, apricots, honeydew melon, all delicious and nutritious. So, I've been eating so many fruits and veggies that I know are low-cal that I'm not eating as much of the things that carry more weight, like bread and nuts or whatever, so I don't feel the need to worry so much about calories.
The other book was Breaking out of Food Jail: How to Free Yourself from Diets and Problem Eating, Once and For All by Jean Antonello. I picked this up at the library because I was interested in learning how to eat healthy but not think of it as a diet. Also, I wanted to see if it had any advice on the whole 'eating the entire pan of fudge' issue discussed earlier. The gist of the book is that most overeaters are actually undereaters, or at least started out this way. It's kind of a fascinating insight- a lot of people are dieting right now just to get back to the weight they were when they started dieting. That is a scary thought. The idea is that dieters are on a continuous feast or famine cycle, where they try to severely restrict their food intake to lose weight, but then end up fucking it all up by having a binge on chocolate frosting. And it is always something horrible like chocolate frosting, because your body is programmed to seek out the fattiest thing possible when it thinks it might not get to eat ever again. I started thinking: have I really been undereating that much? And the answer was: yeah, dumbass! The book says that by eating good quality foods (nothing empty, pretty much) whenever you are hungry to the point of being full (not just 'medicating' your hunger with a few little bites), that you'll pretty much be too well fed to ever binge or overeat. That makes a lot of sense to me.
So I'm trying it. By this I mean I'm definitely eating more, but as far as more calories, I'm not sure, because I haven't been keeping track. Basically, I try to eat something with fiber, something with protein, and some sort of fruit or vegetable with every meal, plus a snack between dinner and lunch. For example- old breakfast= a packet of oatmeal with a handful of almonds. Today's breakfast= watermelon, two egg whites with a torn up piece of turkey, and a bowl of shredded wheat. It looks like a lot more food, and it sure did fill me up, whereas my old breakfast, while probably containing roughly the same amount of calories, didn't keep me full for nearly as long. Also, I find that now, one piece of cake is good.
Note: this does not mean I have stopped counting cals completely, or that my love affair with diet foods is over. Diet foods and I are still meeting for a sweat sexy rendezvous in Argentina whenever we can and sending each other graphic e-mails. And calorie counting still sometimes sneaks in my oval office to give me a blow job. But the extent of it is picking up items in the grocery store, checking their calorie count and serving size, and then not really looking at that again. If I'm satisfied that I didn't buy anything with a horrifying amount of fat, then I'm secure in the knowledge that anything I choose to eat will probably be pretty good for me.
Peanut Butter- nut butter of the Gods
So on vacation, my dad and I made a little jaunt to Saugatuck, aka the Key West of Lake Michigan. I found all manner of quaint and adorable little shops, but one in particular stood
out- a spice store that I wish I could remember the name of. I'm confident that it was the only spice store in Saugatuck so it shouldn't be too hard to find. I bought vindaloo spice and Asian spice and MOTHERFUCKING CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE DOUGH PEANUT BUTTER. It sang to me from the corner, and I found it and immediately after purchasing it began to eat it with my fingers. I have a thing for peanut butter. I flove it. I used to be satisfied with just run of the mill Jiff, but then I discovered Peanut Butter & Co. They make all kinds of scandalously flavored peanut butters, like Dark Chocolate Dreams and Cinnamon Raisin Swirl. They're pricey, but they're worth it. I didn't think it could get much better than dark chocolate flavored peanut butter, but I was so wrong. The purveyor of said motherfucking chocolate chip cookie dough peanut butter is P.B.Loco. Just looking at the website by now, I literally started to salivate. I mean, is there anything more orgasmic than caramel apple flavored peanut butter? Or white chocolate raspberry flavored peanut butter? The answer: no. The chocolate chip cookie dough flavor is so chunky, so deliciously both dry and oily, so chocolatey and delicious that to eat it with anything other than a spoon would be blasphemy. No bread, no jam, no chicken breast or pickle can compete with that shit. I was all sad, thinking that I would have to bite the bullet and order it online because I can't live without it, but lo and behold, my local SuperTarget carries it! Unfortunately, the only other P.B.Loco flavor they carry is Jungle Banana, but I bought some today and am happy to report that it is equally amazing.
Which leads me to: why don't they make fucking diet peanut butter?! Peanut butter isn't all that bad for you. The fancier ones, like Peanut Butter & Co. and P.B.Loco don't contain any trans fat, and it does have protein and the good kind of fat that keeps you full. But two tablespoons (the general serving size) generally packs between 170 and 200 calories, plus about 25% of your daily fat needs. A few weeks ago, I looked at a jar of reduced fat peanut butter at Kroger, and the bastard had the same amount of calories, only less fat! Fuck that! I want some diet peanut butter. But until they invent it, I will just have to keep telling myself that by eating peanut butter with a spoon, I am sparing myself the calories of eating it with crackers or in a sammich.
Lastly, stuff about exercisin'
I have my own fairly complicated but steady workout plan- I work out every day for an hour, alternating every day between cardio and strength training. My cardio used to come completely from my exercise bike, where I did my own form of interval training which involves counting to four a lot and riding standing up. Needless to say, my bike is now kinda fucked, so I needed to find a way to give it a break. I read a review over at Fit Bottomed Girls of Mindy Mylrea's step workout Interval Express. They spoke quite highly of it, even giving it their highest rating ever. I was reluctant. I used to work out exclusively with videos, even for cardio. I was a normal weight, yeah, but it wasn't until I started hitting the gym and eventually got my exercise bike that I got to my current size, where I am much happier. I just didn't really believe that a DVD could ever give me the kind of workout that machines do.
I WAS WRONG AND I BEEN BORNED AGAIN. This workout is the shit. You need a medicine ball and a step, so it isn't completely equipment free. And the moves were kinda complicated at first, even for me, and I take one or two ballet classes a week. But it worked me, and it worked me but good. The difference between equipment and aerobics-based workouts are that in aerobics, you move your whole body, and that tires you out a lot faster than just using your legs. This DVD is based on intervals, hence the name, and they sometimes seem to go on forever. I felt like I got every bit as good of a workout as I do on the bike, so this DVD is now in the rotation. Apparently it has been discontinued by the distributor, which is fucking stupid, so order it when you can, or get it off Netflix.
That's all for now! Comment and let me know about your best peanut butter orgasm!
Kind of.
It started right before my vacation. For a few months now I have been keeping a pretty close record of what I eat every day, and consequently, the calories; or I should say, the night before I would plan it out and follow it roughly. I did this mainly because I find a lot of comfort in the structure of having a schedule or plan, and I pretty much planned out in my head what I was going to eat the next day anyway, but by writing it down I could clear that space in my brain for more important things, like reality show contestants and Elvis trivia. I also did this because I love to grocery shop and thus always have a fridge that is full to overflowing, so by planning things out I could make sure I was eating the spinach before it went bad, finishing leftovers to make more room for new things, etc. But I will admit that planning to this extent is kind of unhealthy and a weird eating behavior, especially the calorie counting part, and it was pretty easy to get obsessed with it (kind of like the very special Full House were DJ got anorexia for a day.)
Of course the nutritionist agreed. "Blah blah, no food accounting, woo woo New Age-y Enya blah blah." I think that's what she said. So I struck a bargain- on vacation, I would resist the urge to plan and tabulate calories. This turned out to be the best idea, because as we all know, there ain't no time to count calories during vacation. I ate lots of red velvet cake, like I promised I would, and also some fudge, and other things that I don't usually eat. While on vacation I read two really interesting books that resulted in me not picking up my food journal at all since I got back. One was The Skinny: How to Fit in Your Little Black Dress Forever by Melissa Clark and Robin Aronson (I suggest you buy it on Amazon because not only is it cheap, there are lots of awesome and creative but easy and healthy recipes in the back that you'll want to have. For serious, it made me want to eat brussel sprouts, which I haven't eaten for approximately 15 years.) The gist of the book is to eat what you want and don't eat what you don't want, and to eat lots of fruits and vegetables and to eat in moderation. None of this should be news, but it really made me think.
For a long time, I associated any kind of 'bad' food, like white bread or cake or anything else 'empty' with no nutritional value with completely trashing my day, healthy-eating wise. Like, "Fuck it, I'm going to have the fudge, and because any hope of eating well today is now fucked, I'm fittin to eat all the fudge I can stuff into my food hole." I knew this wasn't the right way to approach it, but I honestly could never understand how other people could eat just one piece of fudge and then stop (this is a big part of my diet foods philosophy- I want to eat a lot of whatever it is that I want to eat, so it better be low-cal so I can do that without a ton of damage.) In The Skinny, the authors say that nothing is forbidden, which is common in almost every diet book. But they really focus on eating enough to satiate you or satisfy your craving, then stopping. Like, I only really wanted one piece of fudge, and I don't HAVE to eat the whole pan because if I really think about it, I'm good. The hard part about this is that they realize that it's really hard to say no when there's a plate staring you in the face, so they suggest you throw what you're eating away when you're done to keep you from picking at it. This is really hard for me, because I refuse to waste anything, to a degree that I don't think even people who lived through the Depression can understand. I think it comes from working as a costumed interpreter in an exhibit about World War II and rationing and having to pretend like I'd kill someone for the roast beef under their fingernails, and repeating the phrase, "Wasting food is like taking it out of someone's mouth" over and over. But they have a point. Most of us were raised, rightfully so, to clean our plates and not waste food, but most of us then grow into adults who eat waaaaay too much under the guise of 'not wasting it.' Important point from the book: if you cannot fit your sandwich into your mouth, you need to either throw some of it away or save half for later.
I also realized from the book that I really haven't been eating enough fruits and vegetables. This was kind of a surprise, because I consider myself a militantly healthy eater, never eating anything unless it has some sort of redeeming attribute, like lots of fiber or protein. But one of the main points of the book is to figure out what you really want to eat, and then building a meal around that. If you really want a piece of pizza, go ahead, but only have one or two and fill the rest out with salad or cauliflower. And when I started to think about it, yeah, I eat veggies and fruit every day, but it seemed like the majority of my diet was made up of protein and grain instead. Veggies I can sneak in anywhere, so I decided to start with more fruit. Oh, my Maude. I'm eating fruit I haven't eaten in years, and it is delicious. Plums, apricots, honeydew melon, all delicious and nutritious. So, I've been eating so many fruits and veggies that I know are low-cal that I'm not eating as much of the things that carry more weight, like bread and nuts or whatever, so I don't feel the need to worry so much about calories.
The other book was Breaking out of Food Jail: How to Free Yourself from Diets and Problem Eating, Once and For All by Jean Antonello. I picked this up at the library because I was interested in learning how to eat healthy but not think of it as a diet. Also, I wanted to see if it had any advice on the whole 'eating the entire pan of fudge' issue discussed earlier. The gist of the book is that most overeaters are actually undereaters, or at least started out this way. It's kind of a fascinating insight- a lot of people are dieting right now just to get back to the weight they were when they started dieting. That is a scary thought. The idea is that dieters are on a continuous feast or famine cycle, where they try to severely restrict their food intake to lose weight, but then end up fucking it all up by having a binge on chocolate frosting. And it is always something horrible like chocolate frosting, because your body is programmed to seek out the fattiest thing possible when it thinks it might not get to eat ever again. I started thinking: have I really been undereating that much? And the answer was: yeah, dumbass! The book says that by eating good quality foods (nothing empty, pretty much) whenever you are hungry to the point of being full (not just 'medicating' your hunger with a few little bites), that you'll pretty much be too well fed to ever binge or overeat. That makes a lot of sense to me.
So I'm trying it. By this I mean I'm definitely eating more, but as far as more calories, I'm not sure, because I haven't been keeping track. Basically, I try to eat something with fiber, something with protein, and some sort of fruit or vegetable with every meal, plus a snack between dinner and lunch. For example- old breakfast= a packet of oatmeal with a handful of almonds. Today's breakfast= watermelon, two egg whites with a torn up piece of turkey, and a bowl of shredded wheat. It looks like a lot more food, and it sure did fill me up, whereas my old breakfast, while probably containing roughly the same amount of calories, didn't keep me full for nearly as long. Also, I find that now, one piece of cake is good.
Note: this does not mean I have stopped counting cals completely, or that my love affair with diet foods is over. Diet foods and I are still meeting for a sweat sexy rendezvous in Argentina whenever we can and sending each other graphic e-mails. And calorie counting still sometimes sneaks in my oval office to give me a blow job. But the extent of it is picking up items in the grocery store, checking their calorie count and serving size, and then not really looking at that again. If I'm satisfied that I didn't buy anything with a horrifying amount of fat, then I'm secure in the knowledge that anything I choose to eat will probably be pretty good for me.
Peanut Butter- nut butter of the Gods
So on vacation, my dad and I made a little jaunt to Saugatuck, aka the Key West of Lake Michigan. I found all manner of quaint and adorable little shops, but one in particular stood
out- a spice store that I wish I could remember the name of. I'm confident that it was the only spice store in Saugatuck so it shouldn't be too hard to find. I bought vindaloo spice and Asian spice and MOTHERFUCKING CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE DOUGH PEANUT BUTTER. It sang to me from the corner, and I found it and immediately after purchasing it began to eat it with my fingers. I have a thing for peanut butter. I flove it. I used to be satisfied with just run of the mill Jiff, but then I discovered Peanut Butter & Co. They make all kinds of scandalously flavored peanut butters, like Dark Chocolate Dreams and Cinnamon Raisin Swirl. They're pricey, but they're worth it. I didn't think it could get much better than dark chocolate flavored peanut butter, but I was so wrong. The purveyor of said motherfucking chocolate chip cookie dough peanut butter is P.B.Loco. Just looking at the website by now, I literally started to salivate. I mean, is there anything more orgasmic than caramel apple flavored peanut butter? Or white chocolate raspberry flavored peanut butter? The answer: no. The chocolate chip cookie dough flavor is so chunky, so deliciously both dry and oily, so chocolatey and delicious that to eat it with anything other than a spoon would be blasphemy. No bread, no jam, no chicken breast or pickle can compete with that shit. I was all sad, thinking that I would have to bite the bullet and order it online because I can't live without it, but lo and behold, my local SuperTarget carries it! Unfortunately, the only other P.B.Loco flavor they carry is Jungle Banana, but I bought some today and am happy to report that it is equally amazing.Which leads me to: why don't they make fucking diet peanut butter?! Peanut butter isn't all that bad for you. The fancier ones, like Peanut Butter & Co. and P.B.Loco don't contain any trans fat, and it does have protein and the good kind of fat that keeps you full. But two tablespoons (the general serving size) generally packs between 170 and 200 calories, plus about 25% of your daily fat needs. A few weeks ago, I looked at a jar of reduced fat peanut butter at Kroger, and the bastard had the same amount of calories, only less fat! Fuck that! I want some diet peanut butter. But until they invent it, I will just have to keep telling myself that by eating peanut butter with a spoon, I am sparing myself the calories of eating it with crackers or in a sammich.
Lastly, stuff about exercisin'
I have my own fairly complicated but steady workout plan- I work out every day for an hour, alternating every day between cardio and strength training. My cardio used to come completely from my exercise bike, where I did my own form of interval training which involves counting to four a lot and riding standing up. Needless to say, my bike is now kinda fucked, so I needed to find a way to give it a break. I read a review over at Fit Bottomed Girls of Mindy Mylrea's step workout Interval Express. They spoke quite highly of it, even giving it their highest rating ever. I was reluctant. I used to work out exclusively with videos, even for cardio. I was a normal weight, yeah, but it wasn't until I started hitting the gym and eventually got my exercise bike that I got to my current size, where I am much happier. I just didn't really believe that a DVD could ever give me the kind of workout that machines do.
I WAS WRONG AND I BEEN BORNED AGAIN. This workout is the shit. You need a medicine ball and a step, so it isn't completely equipment free. And the moves were kinda complicated at first, even for me, and I take one or two ballet classes a week. But it worked me, and it worked me but good. The difference between equipment and aerobics-based workouts are that in aerobics, you move your whole body, and that tires you out a lot faster than just using your legs. This DVD is based on intervals, hence the name, and they sometimes seem to go on forever. I felt like I got every bit as good of a workout as I do on the bike, so this DVD is now in the rotation. Apparently it has been discontinued by the distributor, which is fucking stupid, so order it when you can, or get it off Netflix.
That's all for now! Comment and let me know about your best peanut butter orgasm!
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