Almost a month! Looking forward to February...

In getting my meal plan ready for this week I realized ... this is WEEK FIVE!  I've been at this a full month.  I can't believe it has already been that long and honestly I can't believe how well it is going and how little effort I feel like I'm putting into it.  Don't get me wrong - there is effort but I'm actually having fun learning, cooking, doing the meal plans and grocery shopping.  Usually at this point in a "diet" I'm just through the painful part of getting used to the rules and doing without whatever the food deemed "bad" is.  I'm usually fighting serious cravings for that food and always fighting my sweet tooth.  Fun has NEVER come into it before.  And for the first time I can honestly say that I can see myself doing this long term ... not a "diet" but a true honest to goodness lifestyle change.

As I think about how I'll continue I think each month I'll focus in on something in particular.  January obviously was learning to cook and getting used to the 'Real Food Rules' as outlined by my favorite resource so far - the 100 Days of Real Food blog.  I was thinking about coming up with my own rules but I must say from what I've learned so far I haven't come up with anything but reasons to stick to these rules!  Lots of reasons!  So I'll stick with these rules for now as I continue to learn ... and there is SO MUCH to learn.  I'm half way through Michael Pollen's The Omnivore's Dilemma and seeing why doing this is also not just about getting "organic" or "fresh" but about truly knowing where your food came from.  For now I feel good about the changes I've already made but I'm also paying more attention to the labels - how far away did it come from?  Does it say "grass fed" or "pasture raised" ... surprising how some of those descriptions can be so deceiving.  That "cage free" means literally ONLY that the chickens were not raised in a cage - they still could be all crowded in a building together and never see the light of day, fed a diet that is not natural to them but will fatten them up fast! I had an image of a white farm house and a red barn with many animals and little chicken coops.  How naive* of me.  Out of sight truly means out of mind and not just in my simplistic 'my whole chicken looks like a chicken so now I feel bad for it' way.  The food industry understandably takes full advantage of the fact that we don't see it ... that we don't want to see it.  I think as I learn more and more I will have many moments of upset but I don't see that as a bad thing - just an awakening of sorts.  

So what will I focus on in February?  Well - keeping up what I've already started with cooking and learning and meal planning.  I realize that in this journey of mine there will be much I learn that is big picture and that I can't control as an individual.  So I'm focusing on some very simple things that I can control ... for February it will be paying attention to my portion size.  Am I really hungry?  When do I feel full?  What the hell does full even feel like?  I know stuffed ... but full supposedly comes much sooner.  According to Food Rules by Michael Pollen (I dig this author!) the Japanese have a saying - hara hachi bu - that basically says to stop eating when you are 80% full.  I'm going to try to keep that in mind and also an old wives' test he mentioned "If you're not hungry enough to eat an apple, then you're not hungry."   I'm going to take a picture of my dinner every night so I can literally SEE my portions and keep track of them.  Now I do realize that this is a very weight loss oriented focus.  Though not my only motivation for this journey getting healthy is a big part of it and weight loss has to come with it in my case.  I'm 5'4" and 190 pounds and have been overweight for almost 20 years ... I have no serious health issues right now but that's asking for trouble.  And the roller coaster I've been on between the weights of 140 and 210 the last few years has got to have been rough on my body.  I'm not jumping on the scale or worrying about how much I'll lose by when or even the size of my clothes.  I just know I, like so many Americans, have grown up used to "super size" and that we eat much more than we really need.  I was part of the 'clean your plate' club as a kid.   Time to pay attention and not just mindlessly fill my plate.

Pictures of my portions so far from last month:

 

These are all large dinner plates.  I do love these pictures because I can already see that I have made a huge change in getting in a TON of veggies!  Before this journey you'd never see side dishes unless they were french fries or chips that came with the take out.

*To come clean I had to google how to spell naive - I always want to spell it nieve.  I'm a horrible speller ... my mom always used to say "It is a sign of creativity that you never spell the same word the same way twice!" ... my teachers did not feel the same.  Anyway, I was lead to http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/naive and when I actually read the definition I almost laughed at it's relevance to this issue in SO many ways: 

"1.  having or showing unaffected simplicity of nature or absence of artificiality; unsophisticated; ingenuous."

and get this:

"4.  not having previously been the subject of a scientific experiment, as an animal"