develop healthy eating habits

I have never been a fan of fad diets or get thin quick schemes… I have always advocated the need of a well balanced diet, eating in moderation, and mixing it up with a variety of foods. In making a list of my ideal eating habits I hope to jumpstart a conscious way of nourishing my body.

1. Eat breakfast everyday.
2. Eat a healthy satisfying lunch.
3. Incorporate tea, fruits, veggies, and water throughout the day to encourage metabolic activity and minimize discomfort from my stomach issues.
4. Eat a balanced and light dinner two full hours before bed or earlier.
5. Keep a consistent schedule with medication (for stomach acid problem) and perhaps incorporate a balancing supplement for fat distribution (i.e. slimquick)
6. Incorporate conscious gratitude and reverence when nourishing my body.

... to be conscious of what i eat; improve my metabolism and digestive health.

I’ve almost eliminated processed food from my diet. Exceptions are made for macncheese from a box (organic), hotdogs (uncured when I can manage) and japanese snacks. Oh. And Ramen. Because ramen is good.

The summer’s produce has been wonderful. I hate to think what it’s going to be like in the winter. I try to eat local, but sometimes this isn’t compatible with eating loads of fruit and veg. Or citrus fruits. I’m going to make a few jars of pickled veg which I hope will help in the midst of winter.

Eating healthy is actually tasty. After a while you loose your taste for oddly-colored and artificially flavored “foods”. It does take a touch more time, but what of it? An extra twenty minutes cooking something healthy does wonders for my future. I consider it less time I’ll spend feeling gross and regretting what I’ve just eaten.

So part of my training session was nutritional analysis. The trainer was thinking that I don’t eat often enough. She says I should be eating every. three. hours. WTF? If I’m awake 18 hours out of 24, that’s eating six times. I don’t want to spend that much time looking for something healthy to put in my mouth. I’ll stipulate that I don’t eat the reccomended two snacks a day, but sometimes I don’t feel hungry, so why bother? She also wants me to eat cottage cheese. I hate cottage cheese, and told her, and she was like, oh, make yourself eat it. No. Full stop, no. I’ll take vitamins, exercise, even do the weight training, but I will not eat something I loathe. Even with berries. I’ll eat yogurt. I like yogurt. I’ll eat many other types of cheese. But not cottage cheese. How sad to make yourself eat something you describe as, ‘like eating vomit’. (Her words, not mine, but no less true) Healthy people can be an odd breed, advocating eating things that are unpalatable. I suppose I’m lucky that I like most vegetables, and the ones I don’t, I avoid. (No rutabagas. No no no.) Or the whole, oh, you should eat brown rice all the time. Once again, I like brown rice. In certain ways, it’s quite nice, but there are times when it simply doesn’t work because of the textural and flavor differences. I don’t like it as sushi rice with fish. With veg, it’s fine, but not with fish. It distracts from a really nice morsel of fish to have all that nuttiness floating in your mouth. Life’s too short to force unpleasant things upon yourself. Hell, I have enough things which make me unhappy already. I could eat all of the steamed brown rice in the world and a plane could fall out of the sky and land on my house all the same. (And yes, I can remember the last time a plane fell on a house. One little experimental plane collided with the side of a building very recently, and in 2001 or 2002, a plane literally dropped out of the clear blue and landed on several homes. That has got to be the worst day ever, by far.) I refuse to let healthy habits make me miserable.

I cut up all the veg so it’s easier to cook them, and/or have them as a snack. It’s a rather nice feeling, looking at them all in the fridge. This is definately something to do more often, or to try, if you haven’t. With the exception of onions and cucumbers, neither of which I think do well stored when cut, I’m fairly ready to make almost anything, from soups to stirfries, with minimal effort.

I went to the grocery today and I’m quite proud of myself. I don’t think I purchased any foods with HFCs or trans-fats. I brought canned soup, but all with veggies and not the salty condensed stuff. I did buy ice cream, but you know, in moderation, that’s not entirely bad, and my nephew will come over and eat most of it next week.

In a while I’m going to go finish cutting up the veg for snacking and make some low-fat yogurt dip. It’s so true that much crap goes into the mouth when one’s hungry and not in the mood to prepare something decent.

My diet is really not that unhealthy to begin with. But it could be better, and that’s what I’m going to try to accomplish. I read You:On a Diet recently, and it’s inspired me to try some different things. This book is highly recommended, by the way; it’s the first book I’ve read which doesn’t try to deny the realities of the human body in a while. I tried South Beach, for a bit, and I did loose weight. I got sick of eating the foods, so it was easy. I never did Atkins because it sounded horrible, as I really don’t love meat that much. Not that I’ve never tried any silly diets. The worst had to be the Beverly Hills Diet. I was too young to realize that’s not the best place to look for good advice on sensible living. The first few days were all fruit. My mouth hurt from eating pineapple, and I actually grew faint on day three. The You book explains in great scientific detail why dieting is so hard, and why certain foods are bad, while some are good. The eating guidelines are reasonably doable.

The thing I didn’t like about their two-week re-training plan was that it’s quite pricey, even just for two people. I honestly don’t think they really considered the cost of fresh food. And some of the things I honestly don’t like, and I have to edit them out. I’m also not giving up white bread entirely, or white rice. Color and convenience aren’t the only reason these things are refined. Whole grains have a distinct nutty flavor that isn’t always desired.

not doing so well here…I still mostly go for quick and easy. At least I’m getting used to some smaller portion sizes and fewer servings. I’m nearly out of veggies… I need to grocery shop.