The dreaded food boredom strikes!

Michelle totally nailed it with her recent apprisal of how a fall off the wagon works. I think for the last week I’ve been coasting, pretending my weight will maintain despite my questionable food choices.

My biggest obstacle in any plan is boredom. When I started relying on my recent food routine (granola bars, yogurts, salads for lunch, protein + veggies for dinner), I knew I was running the risk of boredom. And guess what, it’s happened!

I’ve developed a severe fear of salads. This is boredom of routines, but it was also triggered by one especially bad salad. I tried to eat my regular lunch salad one day last week (when I had eaten more for breakfast than normal on a weekday) and it was just utterly disgusting to me. The baby spinach, the fruit, I had to stop myself from gagging, and threw it out after barely four bites. What is that all about? I wonder if it was simply my body trying to tell me that I wasn’t hungry — even though it was a VERY different signal from regular fullness. It really did feel like I was getting seasick from boredom as I ate. Blech.

I spent some quality time in my kitchen this weekend, cleaning and organizing after a couple weeks of chaos, but I still feel like I’m feuding with my kitchen. I make plans to hang out there, cook some tasty healthy food, and then I just don’t show up. Sometimes I feel like I’m just fighting with the dishwasher, which is old and awkwardly placed, so that leaving it open blocks the door to the backyard garden. Sometimes my husband and I have avoided it for weeks, me because I can’t stand the thought of dealing with its awkwardness, and he probably because he didn’t notice! Ha. So the dishes pile up, gradually crowd the counters, and eventually any attempt to cook means committing to at least 15 minutes of cleanup before there’s room to prep.

But the consequences of food boredom and kitchen-avoidance are severe. For instance, I’ve been wasting food because I buy things and don’t use them in time before they go bad. This causes tremendous guilt in that part of my brain that wants to feel good and healthy, but also in the hoarding, penny-pinching part of me that goes nuts at wasted food (both a blessing and a curse, as in everyone’s least favorite fat girl habit, the clean plate club, so clever at six years old and so useless in adulthood!)

So I continue to plan wonderful quiches, salads, grilled chicken breasts, and I continue to avoid making them. And recent meals have started to look suspicious. Last week we ate country bacon (ham) on toast with homemade jam and farmer’s market fontina cheese, with a side of steamed farmer’s market potatoes with butter. It was wonderful! It was also fatty protein, sugar, dairy, carbs and fat. Another time I simply ate sardines (everyone’s favorite superfood!) on crackers, which is okay but makes me feel like a 1920s bachelor living in a rundown hotel, for some reason. Meanwhile, I have peaches slowly turning to mush in the fridge, as well as a massive box of blueberries. Why are they going bad? Because they are destined to become peach cobbler and blueberry crumb bars, both desserts I clearly need to avoid.

I’ve been bad at feeding myself, but very good at feeding the compost heap lately with rotting fruit and vegetables, and I’ve also been good at killing plants which I had helpfully purchased in the hopes of getting yummy healthy results. So far I’ve killed off several eggplant plants (maybe they’re just not suited to the climate), a large basil plant (why transplant when I can just water its dying little pot?), an artichoke (screw it, no room), and other various things. Oh dear oh dear.

The end result is that I’m not eating healthy foods, but I’m not exactly going whole hog (yummy) with some of the bad choices I’ve lined up in the fridge. None of these foods are exactly the wholesome salads with protein that I was consuming a couple weeks ago in a mindless, blissful, healthy daze. I need to get back my smug Yoga attitude again! (This makes me feel a little bit Bridget Jones, though. Inner poise, body is temple, yes yes, bring on the Cadbury.)

My solution over the weekend was to totally give in to one food craving: lasagna. Since the weather was not too hot, I made a batch of homemade meat sauce, complete with eggplant, onion and peppers from the farmer’s market, that simmered for almost two hours on the stove. Then I made it into a lasagna, skipping the ricotta-with-cheese-and-egg-mixture part, so it was pretty much just a giant casserole of sauce, pasta sheets, and cheese. It was incredibly filling, and incredibly yummy. And now that I think about it, it’s not too terribly unhealthy, actually, so I’m starting to feel less guilty about having about five meals’ worth left in the fridge. It’s basically tomatoes and vegetables and sausage meat. The pasta and the cheese content is actually minimal compared to the vast oceans of yummy sauce. (Though the healthy-ish lasagna may be outweighed–literally! haha!–by the small bowl of vanilla ice cream I had afterwards, ice cream which was around because I did make the peach crumble last week and we couldn’t very well have that without vanilla ice cream! This sort of slippery slope logic is so tempting.)

If I’m really going to go with the food cravings, then I need to step up and actually make the blueberry squares this week, too. I might as well. I can only save that giant box of blueberries by cooking most of them, and sending them off (except the few we will eat while they are fresh) with Kirk to impress his workmates once again with my amazing cooking. I’m just going to go ahead and accept the fact that
I’m going to eat some of them. And then they will be out of my house and I can start to make other choices.

If I sound a little bit resigned here, I don’t mean to be. I am not happy with how the scale has crept up a pound from last week, but at least I’m enjoying the ride. I’m hoping that by indulging these food cravings this week, I can help my stomach and brain accept the fact that they are not totally forbidden, thus reducing the need to binge and feel guilty. I wish I could say I’m going to throw out all the unhealthy food and start fresh with a zen palate, but I’m just trying to be realistic, because if I don’t indulge this unhappy mood now, it will only get worse later on.

Magic pills versus the real thing

What would life be like if there was a magic weight loss pill?

My husband and I enjoy ridiculing the various quack weight loss remedy commercials we see on tv, but I always feel a little embarrassed and angry after seeing them, too. Advertising is so crazy — it makes me feel guilty for not trying worthless pills! I get the feeling I should be trying them, because maybe they work! But they just want to make money off of suckers. I know they won’t work. Or not permanently. But sometimes I wonder, what if?

To me, if a magic pill existed, it would let you absorb the exact nutrients you needed, and no more. Somehow it would also make you stop craving junk food and crave whatever you really need, like protein or spinach or a banana, if certain vitamins are running low internally.

I think Alli was supposed to work kind of like this, except it didn’t — more likely it scared you into eating clean because you are constantly afraid of the oily black runs. Seriously, they recommend wearing dark pants when you start out. I don’t think it’s been such a successful drug, because fear of diarrhea is not quite the mechanism people were expecting!

The problem with magic pills is that I doubt there will ever be any such thing as “garbage in, perfection out.” If your body is not stockpiling excess energy in the form of fat, that food has to go somewhere, and there’s not enough fiber in the world to prevent that from coming out the other end!

There’s just never going to be a substitute for being truly in tune with your body, feeding it well, and being active and alive. And I am glad for that. This is a lot like recent reactions against too much processed food in our diets. We are finally learning that there is no real substitute for food grown locally, food that doesn’t require us to poison the soil or drain all its nutrients. After a while, that lettuce that was chemically fertilized and watered in a near-desert and then transported 1,000+ miles to your supermarket is going to taste bland. It’s been bred to withstand mechanical harvesters, refrigeration trucks on the highway and the rigors of conveyor belts and deliveries, not to be tasty food! To my mind, there’s no substitute for a homegrown dinner, a gourmet experience that can transform even the simplest veggie omelette into a sublime distillation of flavors. I’ve been trying hard to lower my food mileage this year, by growing my own garden, buying fruits and veggies in season as much as possible, and shopping the farmer’s markets as often as I can.

But it strikes me now that my quest for local, homegrown food is just like trying to get back in touch with my stomach and my heart (and the connections in between). I think I yearn for an organic food and garden experience in the same way I yearn to be close to my body: I want to be in tune with things, stuff, whatever it is, that ineffable hippie ether of the world. The soil, the body, the seasons, my needs. I’m working to make my body a coherent system again, an organic life that includes exercise and healthy foods, not a scheduled, regimented, ruled existence that eats the “healthy” but flavorless tomato in the dead of winter, or that mindlessly consumes a bowl of ice cream in front of the tv when there is a whole wide beautiful world to be explored outside.

I love the world of science, but it’s so clear to me that it’s yielded amazing victories in the same way it’s yielded questionable mistakes. Cars can be pretty awesome, but reducing my ability to walk everywhere is not very healthy. Refrigeration is an amazing invention, but I don’t like how it makes the food world so industrialized, disconnected from the soil, and ultimately less nutritious. But I’m trying to work within the systems of my world, not fight them. The thing is, we sent pilots and scientists to the moon, not poets, but they’ve all been there anyway.

Forgive me for my hippie digression here, I’m just glad that there’s a real reason to eat good food and get my body moving. It’s not just for the sake of a scientific dictate on inputs and outputs, because real health and connection to the world is the result. I don’t think I understood before how my need to garden and my need to love myself more are so intimately connected.

Yoga triumphs and musings on metabolic rates

Strike a pose

I’m proud to announce that yesterday in Yoga class I was able to do Pigeon Pose for the first time! Woohoo! I have been struggling and struggling with the flexibility required, as it combines flexibility in hamstrings, lower back, and hip flexors, each of which are particularly stiff areas for me. In eight weeks of Yoga, instead of Pigeon, I have instead laid on my back and stretched my hamstrings against the wall. It felt so, so good to finally be in the pose and feel so happy and grateful that my body is capable and is progressing.

It was almost as awesome as two weeks ago, when I was magically able to do a 90° handstand against the wall — who knew? In that pose, I was upside down looking at myself in the mirror, always a funny sight, with my feet braced on the mirror at hip level. It was also a weird moment because I could literally feel my brain flip-flopping between joy and strength and then insecurity, as I saw myself in the mirror. It was really hard to hold onto that moment of joy when my inner critic came out with ugly words. If I closed my eyes, I could feel joy and awe and giddiness surging through me, and when I opened them, I could feel the pit in the bottom of my stomach that said everyone can see you, be careful. Come on, brain, I’m trying to work on inner peace here!

Puttin’ some science on my intuition

Since last week I’ve dropped another 1.5lbs, which is also a good feeling. I genuinely feel good about the food choices that are getting me here. For the first time, I’m seeing predictable weight loss in response to eating “clean” after a weekend splurge (oh devil Brunch, get thee behind me!). As an added bonus, my husband is totally gung-ho about our meals lately — salads! Grilled chicken! He is truly a master at grilling meats to perfection. He still orders the french toast dripping with caramel-and-cream on the weekends, though :)

Before, I don’t think I had a clue (without obsessively counting calories) what was a “good” food day, the kind that would keep me energetic and full throughout the day and avoid a groaning stomach — I just kind of aimed in the general direction of healthy foods, portions be damned. I could aim for a calorie number, but it didn’t seem to have any correlation with feeling good, other than that hollow “hey, my numbers look good” feeling I get when I’m tracking my food closely. So since I’ve been eating more according to intuition and the constant-snacking method for the last three weeks or so, I’ve been curious what the actual caloric breakdown is, so here we go:

150 cals – Granola bar, 8:00 am

270 cals – Greek yogurt , 10:30 am (sometimes w/ raspberries or granola)

406 cals – Spinach salad w/ cottage cheese and fruit (7 cals spinach, 70 cals cottage cheese, 14 cals strawberries, 15 cals honeydew, 12 cals watermelon, 3 cals cuke slices, 165 cals salted sunflower seeds, 120 thousand island dressing) (This might sound ridiculously healthy but it tastes so decadent and yummy to me!)

130 cals – crackers, 3:30 pm

500 cals – marinated grilled chicken, shrimp, etc., plus salad or grilled veggies

200 cals – chocolate jello pudding with Cool Whip (latest fave dessert to use up stuff in the fridge)

TOTAL: 1,656 calories in an average day. Verrrrrry interesting. I think my intuition is working!

I know that resting/basal metabolic rate (RMR/BMR) calculators are notoriously iffy, because in looking mine up, I was given 2,020 calories by Physics Diet, 1,671 by ShapeUp.org, 1,737 by Discovery Health, and 1,720 by, um, Bodybuilding.com. ShapeUp.org gives a good explanation of how cutting calories below your RMR will slow your metabolism down in order to conserve energy for essential functions (like breathing). It’s hard to know if I’m cutting my calories too low, or hitting at the right spot, without paying someone to run a fancy machine and give me a better answer. But if my body felt too restricted, I wouldn’t be losing weight, so I’m guessing that everything is fine for now.

Since self-esteem is a muscle I have to use every day, I’ll take this opportunity to remind myself that this has been a pretty good week. I’ve felt calm enough not to be ruffled by the heat, and centered enough to have a heart-to-heart with my husband about Important Stuff, and I felt challenged and rewarded by Yoga. Part of self-esteem is taking the time to respect my body, and this week has been great for that. You know what would be pretty awesome? Taking advantage of the cooler weather this weekend to take a nice long bike ride. Let’s do it!