Food, food, food...food! As you are all very well aware, I am a bit obsessed with food. I literally think about it all day long. I want to eat it all the time, I hate eating it sometimes, I want to eat right, but I also want to binge on chocolate. This tug-of-war in my mind is incredibly counter-productive when trying to lose weight and live a healthy lifestyle. So I'm taking some time to reflect right now what exactly I have done in the past year to make the whole weight loss thing work. I can't say that I always have a healthy outlook on what I put in my body, but man, am I miles away from where I used to be!
When I was a kid, I never got treats in my lunch. I always had sandwiches with fruit for dessert and a cup of milk or something like that. I ate good, nutritious lunches...until I was responsible for them. You see, while my mother did a great job feeding me, she didn't have time to teach me the finer points of healthy living. When I became responsible for feeding myself, I ate things like potato chips, candy, Jamaican patties (beef in pastry type bread...very greasy) or nothing at all for lunch. Then I binged on anything I could find in the cupboard when I got home from school. This was the beginning of some bad habits for me!
When I moved out on my own, I was, for lack of a better term, dirt poor. I worked a part time job while attending university, and suffice to say, I didn't eat very much good food. I bought whatever was cheap and quick, and that meant a lot of pasta and frozen veggies. Protein was rarely a part of my diet. Starch, starch, starch, carbs, and sugar. That was pretty much it for 5 years. Then I got pregnant and I realized I needed to change something, because it was no longer just my body I had to care for. So I began to think about what I had been fed as a child, and went back to eating from all four food groups every day, and switched to whole grains and such. But I still struggled with those bad habits! Not to mention the fact that I had become an emotional eater. I ate when I was happy, I ate when I was sad, I ate when I was depressed, I ate, I ate, I ate.
Bad food habits are ridiculously hard to break! I am still struggling with things that started when I was a teenager today; right now in fact. What I have had to do is try to change my view on what food actually is, and what purpose it really serves. Food is nourishment. Food is energy to make our bodies run efficiently and properly. Food is not an answer to an emotional problem. It is not entertainment. It is not evil, and should not make me feel guilty for eating it. When I think of fast food, sometimes I cringe. The thought of eating something deep fried, while sometimes still appealing, now kind of makes me want to throw up. I have begun to picture just what that food is going to do when inside my body, and how it will benefit me. When I think this way, I don't want to eat mountains of chocolate (though a little is good for you), or head out to the closest fast food place instead of cooking. When I think about food as fuel for my body, I want to give it premium, not regular. Don't I deserve more than junk? Don't I deserve beautiful, colorful veggies, and lean meat, and whole grains? Yes, absolutely I do, because these are the things my body needs.
When I go to the grocery store now, instead of stocking up on white pasta, boxed dinners with a bunch of artificial flavors and colors, and junk meat, I buy fresh veggies and fruit, whole wheat everything and my own ingredients for baking delicious things at home. I very seldom buy packaged cookies or treats. I bake my own, with whole wheat flour, reduced sugar or use natural sweeteners like honey, replace oils with apple sauce, and use lots of beautiful spices to make it tasty. It is like a food revolution in my household! If you looked in my cupboard now, and were able to travel back in time and look in it 8 years ago, you would see a very different picture. And man, does it feel good to eat well. I'm telling you, my body feels ten times better than it did 8 or 10 years ago. I have aged, and gained and lost weight, but because I am fueling it with things that it actually needs, I don't feel it.
It might sound, as this point, like I have this great and perfect diet. Well, I don't. I still struggle daily with eating too much, or eating things that just aren't good for me. If you put an apple and a chocolate bar in front of me and asked me to choose, nine times out of ten, I'd choose the chocolate. The thing I have come to realize is that I can't live on a diet. I refuse to deny myself the things that I love, and I think this can actually be a good thing. If I don't allow myself to have something, I end up binging on it later. So, if I make sure that most of the food I eat is healthy and wholesome, then what's a little treat? In the over all scheme of things, it's not really anything at all - because I've already given my body what it needs. When I do this, I am more apt to stop at just one and not eat the whole box. I haven't deprived myself and played psychological games. I am not in starvation mode.
So, yes, I obsess about food. I fixate on it, I stress about it, I indulge in it. But I have really learned to look at it differently. Food is not my enemy! It is something I am allowed to love and want, as long as I am making healthy choices. I have been learning a great deal about nutrition, and though I despise cooking, have begun to really branch out in my meal preparation and baking. It's actually been quite an adventure. In fact, right now I am baking oatmeal breakfast bars that are made with whole grain oats, molasses (2 tbsp), cinnamon, raisins, dried cranberries and walnuts. That's it. Simple, wholesome ingredients, and they smell amazing! There's something about creating something with beautiful ingredients that just makes me feel good. And I feel good giving it to my kids too.
In the end, the reason this whole weight loss thing is working for me is because first, I got active, and second, I began to change the way I think about food. I have attempted to stop making it my enemy, and freed myself to love it and appreciate it for what it does for my body. The battle is far from over, but in the last year I feel like I have made steps in the right direction, and I feel like my 40 pound weight loss is evidence of that. My habits are changing, my mindset is changing, and my waistline is changing. Maybe someday I can stop obsessing about it and just enjoy it! Change is good.
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