Stuology

My Recent Food Change

Aug 6th, 2010By: Mellystu Comments 3

I steer away from posting about my food habits. I post recipes or general food discussions because I like food and cooking has become one serious hobby for me over the last five years. The reason I generally stay away from the topic of overall food habits is because when I see other people doing it, it comes across as being pompous, mainly when people steer towards convictions rather than truths. The raw food person who has no science or nutrition or medical background that expounds that they are the best and healthiest and your life is terrible because you are destroying your food by cooking it because they read views of some other convictionist. They will post about how wonderful they are and that everybody should be a raw foodist yet they will not even look at or consider the handful of food that are goitrogens when eaten raw, and if you eat lots of them raw and have hypothyrodism, you are just aggravating your thyroid and making your condition worse. And guess what? Cooking those foods removes the goitrogenic properties. But when you have convictions, the possibility that there is any flaw in them goes out the window.

Perhaps the attitudes of those type of people bother me because I’m a skeptic. I do not like strong convictions over repeatable proof. The quote: Convictions are a more danger to truth than lies. I do not believe things people tell me unless I can look at it from different sources and at different angles. That doesn’t mean I automatically believe people are wrong. I just automatically believe that there is a possibility that people are not always right.

I am prepending what I say with “this is my experience.” This is an experience that I’d like to look at more.

If you would have looked at my food habits 7 years ago compared to today, the change is nothing short of phenomenal. It isn’t completely absent, but my trips to the middle of the grocery store are extremely infrequent. I hit the health food & diary section at one end and then walk completely across the store to the produce end. I have an occasional stop at meat in the middle, mainly because I buy in bulk, so I have lots in the freezer.

A lot of people try to diet and jump into big changes head first, feel miserable and fail. My changes have been slow going over the course of 6-7 years. I tiered out any sort of pre-made frozen meal. Next I cut down any packaged food that contained sugar or HFCS. I took up cooking and cut down prepackaged dry goods. I also cut down on baking in the dessert area. I cut out canned vegetables^*. I’ve kicked my soda habit, twice. Then I started cutting out non-whole foods. I quit buying packaged cereal bars. I substituted those tiny fruit flavored yogurts for just plain yogurt and I get whole yogurt, not plain yogurt that has any fillers in it like corn starch. Then I cut out frozen fruits and vegetables, although the main purpose for this was cooking that the fact that the texture of the vegetable are just wrong to me after defrosting for a lot of my cooking needs. They work okay in soups. That’s why when I got sick, I ran out of vegetables because I don’t freeze them. I’m just, “meh” about frozen vegetables. Okay, I’ll steer back on topic.

I have made great strides in changing my food habits, and a lot of it has been because of health or weight issues, especially after I gained almost 60 lbs when I was pregnant with Ada. Through all of this, I still have problems controlling my weight. When I did the CMD at work right after I had Jay, I got back down to a few pounds of being in my healthy weight range again. I did it by drastically cutting calories and exercising a lot every day. I wrote down all the calories and nutrition for anything I ate. I even weighed and measured.

Guess what? It worked for me, but it didn’t last. The amount I was cutting and the recording everything everyday was not something I could maintain. My cravings were still terrible through the entire thing, and not one single person’s advice at getting them to stop worked. I have had my entire life had what people call a “sweet tooth.” I crave sugar. A lot. So it worked, but it was a lot of extra work to make it work, and I had to mentally fight cravings all the time. Now that I’ve stopped, my weight has slowly creeped back up, especially after being at home for a year. Boo.

I made one more change after seeing friends do it and having success with it. In the beginning of July, I cut out all grains and beans from my diet. No, not just the unhealthy ones, all of them. No whole grains, no brown rice, no whole oats. And except for days I have cheated, because this is a big change for my body and I craved them and Mac’s birthday celebration was one big cheat, and corn is in season, I have done what I consider pretty well. Not super, but not bad for a start. What I did was add fat back into my diet. You know that big fat-free craze that started, when, in the late 80s or early 90s? Yeah. I said crap all and I added it back. My skim milk became 2% milk. My fat free yogurt became reduced fat yogurt. I’ve never eaten reduced fat or fat free cheese, so that didn’t change. I eat the skin on chicken. I eat more bacon. I will eat the entire avocado if I can keep my kids away. I have substituted morning oatmeal or cereal with egg scrambles, even the yolks. I still have half-n-half in my coffee. I’m not counting a single calorie. Here is what has happened:

My breakfast consists of two eggs, I eat that, and sometimes I get full and don’t even finish and unlike eating oatmeal or cereal bars or meal replacement drinks or toast, I’m not hungry an hour later. I don’t eat anything or feel like eating anything until my stomach starts growling anywhere between 12:30 – 1:30pm. In otherwords, I eat again when I’m hungry and not when I start craving more food.

I still had cravings for bread and bagels and cookies and all that until shorty after I was sick. I had those dreams about cinnamon rolls and woke up craving pizza? Well, it was gone the next day and that was almost the last time I had a cravings for anything.

The last time I had a craving for sweets was Wednesday night. Mac and I went out for Mexican. I passed on drinks since I know most of the margarita drink mixes are made with HFCS. I ordered Ceviche, a dish without a grain or bean in sight. I was happy with it too, not grumbly because I couldn’t have a taco or a burrito or black beans. But guess what I didn’t do. I ended up not avoiding the freshly made corn chips. OMG, they were so good. I had about 10 of them. Then a couple hours later, I wanted something sweet. Yeah, I didn’t eat the entire bowl, but it didn’t matter.

Without drastically changing my exercise until the last couple of weeks, I have lost 10 pounds since the beginning of July. When I was sick and couldn’t eat, I lost 5, but only gained back a little over 2 once I started eating again. The rest of the 10 pounds? Yeah. Remember, I’m not counting calories. At all. I’m just eating until I’m full and not eating again until I’m hungry.

Here is something that has changed that I didn’t expect or realize until today. I don’t have any obvious physical problems from eating grains. I don’t eat a bagel and get sick or bloated or anything. However, I started picking up running again starting the last week of July. You know those leg aches that I always get after any activity that uses my legs? That I’ve had since I was a kid? I haven’t had one, even after the running. Really. No freaking leg aches in the first time since I’ve been able to recall my stored memories. Let’s see how long I go without a migraine–the ones that have increased in frequency this year? And the eczema problem that flared up around my hairline in June that I’ve also had since I was a kid that my mother was told it was the detergent that she was using and I was told it is related to the same reason I had bad hayfever. Well, it cleared up. I’ll be interested to see when or if I have another flare up of that as well. Do I have an undiagnosed gluten intolerance? I don’t know, but I’m starting to ponder this idea.

I am going to stick with this. I’ll set a reminder on my calendar to post my results in four more weeks, and I’ll keep track of returning eczema, leg aches and migraines.

*I use canned tomatoes because grocery tomatoes are gross. And tomatoes are a fruit, so I still cut out canned vegetables.