In finding new blogs it always drives me a little batty to find 'the beginning' ... how did this person even start? Why are they blogging? So ... for easy finding here is my very first post where I explain:
Me ... thinks ... NOT! Oh don't get me wrong I'll take some of the pieces of that stereotype ... I'll quit my job and be a full time housewife. But the letting him be the 'man of the house' thing? Well ...
I think you get my point. The why behind this has nothing to do with being a better 'wife'. It is about me being better to myself. You see I've been struggling with my weight for years. I've done diet after diet after diet. I've tried to figure out what the 'right' way is among all of the conflicting information out there. I've been on that roller coaster ride so many of us end up on ... try new ridiculously restrictive diet ... lose about 30 pounds ... fall off of diet ... gain 40 pounds ... try the packaged we'll ship it to you and charge you a fortune diet ... lose about 30 pounds ... fall off diet ... gain 40 pounds ...
When cold weather hit this past fall and I found myself once again having to go back out and buy "fat clothes" because literally nothing fit ... (No I didn't keep my old ones - that would have meant that I'd given myself room to go back there! Seriously? If I had the money back from all the wardrobes I've bought over the years ... and oh the lucky lady who ran across those items at Goodwill) ... a thought crossed my mind that was basically like a hand slapping me upside my head:
THE DEFINITION OF INSANITY IS DOING THE SAME THING OVER AND OVER AGAIN AND EXPECTING DIFFERENT RESULTS - Albert Einstein
That's what I've been doing. Over and over for years. So I stopped. I decided no more dieting. No more listening to the fads or diet commercials. No more guilting myself about what I'm putting in my mouth. NO MORE! But does that mean I'm giving up? Giving in and just be happy with fat? No ... I can't do that. Not so much because of the fat part ... but it's the healthy part. My greatest fear is of being unhealthy. Simply, I don't have the family that some do that will support them in their old age. I don't have kids and have no real relatives. My husband is as fat and unhealthy as I am. I know genetics isn't a fool proof predictor but considering his 2 Grandfathers died before they were 70 and his father has health serious health issues already ... whereas my 2 Great Grandmothers lived to be over 100, one Grandma died in her 90's and the other is still kickin' ... looks like I have to prepare for the possibility of being alone. Alone I can handle. Alone and vulnerable is what scares me. So I want to be healthy as many of my years as possible. But how?
I Googled and read and researched and honestly just got more and more frustrated. None of it makes sense or if it does I've tried it and know it doesn't work long term. First I found Diet Rehab by Dr. Mike Dow. That made some sense and I've been incorporating the foods into my day to day but it didn't seem like the perfect solution in terms of only eating the foods on his lists. In my search I happened on a blog called 100 Days of Real Food. What the hell is "real food"? Isn't all food real? ... so I started to read ... and read ... and read. Lisa simply seemed NORMAL. Not some crunchy granola hippie chic living off the land in some commune preaching against 'the man'. She seemed like me - just looking for answers. So I bought the book she mentioned In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan and read some more. Okay ... so all I can say about this is HOLY $#!# THIS MAKES SENSE! ... no wonder we are all so confused about what to eat!
"... No people on earth worry more about the health consequences of their food choices than we Americans do - and no other people suffer from as many diet related problems."
Is this guy the end all be all of nutrition? No - and he doesn't claim to be. Instead he reminds me more of my old sociology classes / books in school ... it's about our society and how our culture has changed over the years. To me it explains so much about why food and what to eat is so very confusing ... why there seems to be no right answer. Why nothing has worked. So I'm thinking why the hell not give it a try? It makes sense to me. More sense than anything I've tried in the last 15 years.
So I go back to Lisa's blog and look at some of what she's eating ... uh oh ... I can't cook! Oooh but these recipes look pretty damn good. Crap, I'm going to have to learn to cook. Well ... you do what you've gotta do right?
Here we go ... hopefully no more roller coaster but definitely a ride ahead!
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I'd love to know you visited and what you think! I'm also thankful for any ideas, tips or suggestions as I'm still learning to cook and to live a real / whole foods lifestyle.