eat healthily

Unhappy Meals by Michael Pollan in the New York Times

The first line is a great mantra: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” By “food,” of course, he means strawberries as opposed to strawberry-flavored breakfast bars.

I also very much liked a bit of advice near the end of the article (p. 11 in the web version) that coalesces something I’ve been thinking about: “Don’t eat anything your great-great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.”

Both of my parents died in their sixties. The youngest of any of my grandparents to die was 79 and one of my grandmothers lived to just shy of a hundred. Obviously, I have longevity genes. Equally obviously, to take advantage of those genes I will want to live more like an early 20th century rural farmer and less like a late 20th century suburban information professional.

If I had started a diet at the beginning of the year instead of an eat healthily goal, I would have given up long ago. I always believed I should lose a pound or two a week on a diet—and I can, but I can’t sustain it for more than about a month. At which point, I gain it all back and then some.

But with the focus on healthy eating, giving up isn’t really an issue. I have bad days, but I keep coming back to it.

It turns out, I can lose about half a pound a week by following my food plan reasonably well and doing some exercise. That’s in fits and starts—lose a pound and a half one week, gain a half pound the next. But guess what? It adds up. 4 months of averaging a half a pound of week is enough weight loss to see and feel. I like it.

I had a bad week or so in April, the longest bad time this year, but I never really let go of the notion that I want to follow my food plan and I’m back to it again now.

Aiming for 5 days of following my food plan quite closely this week:

M: A. I had to keep telling myself on the way home that I was thirsty, not hungry, to keep from eating the second I got in the door. And I was right. But, I sure take a lot of convincing.

Tu: B+ Still not eating in the evening the way I want.

W: A- forgot to eat my salad! But no overeating—and I had a huge serving of vegetables at supper

Th: B+ strange evening, strange eating

F: C didn’t expect to have 2 meals today that I didn’t prepare. I did make much better choices under the circumstances than I would have a few months ago.

I’ve been eating more and more off my food plan for the last week and a half. Yesterday I crossed whatever invisible line that means I’ve eaten so much (probably sodium) that it negatively effects my sleep. So, I’m going to try logging how I’m doing for the rest of the week to see if that helps me get back on track.

W: Today’s challenge will be continued food on the counter at work—I tried it all yesterday and, frankly, none of it tastes that good to me anymore. Too sweet. I don’t want any of that today.
The evening’s challenge was feeling entitled to a treat because it wasn’t the best day I’ve had. Instead of treating myself to food, I’m treating myself to a bit of shopping on the Internet.

Th: Tonight’s challenge is that I came home hungry which can trigger an evening of eating. But I had a reasonable snack, I’m going to change to comfortable clothes and plan some activities for after supper so that I don’t just keep eating.

F: Today’s challenge is that we ran out of groceries before we ran out of week! So, I’ll be foraging for lunch on campus something I almost never do because I’m so much more in control if the rule is “don’t eat it unless it’s in your lunch sack.” I’m going to focus on getting a salad and minimizing the calories. Also, might as well take a walk while I’m out if it’s not raining.

Sa: Did okay with lunch yesterday, not too bad at the late-afternoon reception, but then ate more than I wanted when I got home. What’s up with that? I think I sometimes use food as a way to wind down. Yoga is much better for that!

I followed my healthy eating plan (and my exercise plan) very closely for the last six days. Guess what? I lost a pound and a half. The fact that this surprises me may explain a lot about why I’ve been overweight most of my adult life.

I ate badly yesterday for the first time since Christmas eve. It took all day yesterday of writing in my journal, trying things, working things out, to discover what was going wrong. And it turned out to be a simple thing that happens every year at this time: stressing out about getting the taxes done. And the solution was the same as every year, too—make a plan and get started on it.

So, I’m feeling better now and ready to eat healthily again today. But I think I have to accept that the first wave of energy that I had going toward this goal is over. It lasted much longer than any other time I’ve started to follow a food plan—partly because this isn’t a diet, it’s a healthy eating food plan designed to work for the rest of my life.

And, here’s an embarrassing confession, I’ve never gone on past the end of that first energy wave. So, I don’t know what comes next. I don’t know how to sustain this. So, I may be writing a lot here to work things out and get suggestions.

Here’s one of my issues: resentment. My world surrounds me with attractive, convenient, and delicious food choices that I have to deny myself 95% of the time if I want to eat healthily. There are many things in that world that I have to deny myself 100% of the time (say, anything in a Hardee’s commercial). Instead, I have to laboriously fix my food from healthy ingredients and it isn’t always attractive (if you make potato-cabbage soup with red cabbage it comes out purplish-brown), it’s rarely convenient (I’m starting to get sick of washing lettuce every two or three days), and it’s delicious only in context with other healthy foods (sure, I’m enjoying the banana cream pie lowfat yogurt, but not in the same sense that I used to enjoy a chocolate-covered custard donut).

And I resent it. I resent athletic-looking actors eating Snickers bars and telling me what a satisfying snack it is. I resent billboards with 1/2 pound cheeseburgers that are 15 feet across. I resent intersections that have fast food restaurants on every single corner that I pass when I’m tired on the way home from work where I will have to use up my flagging energy to fix yet another healthy meal.

This is going to be a bit of a challenge this week. I’m on a search committee at work and we’re taking candidates out to dinner two nights in a row. In the past, I’ve pretty much not worried about what I eat when eating out, because I do it so rarely it doesn’t matter that much. But I really want this goal to go well during the first week of the new year. I’m hoping the restaurants we go to have nice big salads for dinner entrees.

I didn’t eat precisely according to plan with a family gathering as the major feature of the day, but pretty darn close and SO much better than at Thanksgiving. I’m very pleased.

I devised a portion food plan for myself based on the pyramid from the USDA:
http://www.mypyramid.gov/
I’m going to start working it today and avoid the January 1 rush :-)