The devil in the details

Healthy eating is scary!  The last thing that you would think of is that healthy eating is scary, it should be the exact opposite, shouldn't it?  The Terrible Tragedy of the Healthy Eater is an amusing read on how delving in to healthy eating can be quite terrifying.  Not that I'm not guilty of most of that myself.  I eat low carb, no/little wheat, no grain, no soy (due to my thyroid), if anything it does make eating more difficult, but tasty.  Though I did find myself looking longingly at a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

But sometimes you're eating healthy, sometimes you aren't really eating healthy.  People fall into false the false belief that eating 'organic' means eating healthy, and that simply isn't true.  While 100% Organic fods must be 99.6% fully organic (205.302   Calculating the percentage of organically produced ingredients.),

organic and 'natural' foods can still container filler ingredients of wheat, soy, syrups, artificial colorings.

205.301   Product composition.
(b) Products sold, labeled, or represented as “organic.” A raw or processed agricultural product sold, labeled, or represented as “organic” must contain (by weight or fluid volume, excluding water and salt) not less than 95 percent organically produced raw or processed agricultural products. Any remaining product ingredients must be organically produced, unless not commercially available in organic form, or must be nonagricultural substances or nonorganically produced agricultural products produced consistent with the National List in subpart G of this part. If labeled as organically produced, such product must be labeled pursuant to § 205.303.

And just in case you think it's just the Organic foods that can hide things, did you know that some salts have sugar added to them?  Because that's just what I need with my salt!  125g serving (little more than half a cup) of Ragu spaghetti sauce has 6 grams of sugar, with it being the 4th ingredient, falling behind soybean oil, and salt.  Compare that to an Oreo cookie that has 5 grams of sugar.  And let's not assume I'm just picking on sugar, as there are hidden ingredients such as Yellow #5, aka Tartrazine, which has been banned in the UK, and which the FDA regulates the creation of, because there is a potential link to hyperactivity in children, and a insensitivity, and is used in products such as One a Day Women's 50+/Active Metabolism, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.

What it comes down to is, that ulultimately the best food is fresh food you cook, where you know what all the ingredients are.  Bypassing that (as time and convenience get to most of us), read the labels always, my mom always told me this, but it was the nutrition not the ingredients she was talking about.  Understand what the items are in the food you're eating, if anything else, it may just encourage you to pick up that banana, instead of that bag of chips.

The world of weight loss

My whole life (or at least that's what it feels like) I've been overweight.  I make no bones about it, I mean, it's pretty hard to hide being fat.  It's far easier to hide my romance novel collection from the friends who would tease me.  I was lucky in both school and adult life to have not really run into people that make fat jokes around me, I tend to make them about myself, because that steals all the fun out of some peoples life.

But this is who I am, there's no hiding it.  While I lost a bunch of weight (we're talking over 100 pounds) in 2008-2009, I was laid off from my job, got really depressed, stopped exercising, stopped eating healthy, stopped caring, as I talked about here.  A year later (when this picture was taken), I was back up to the weight I was before, but I wasn't ready to get back to being healthy, despite the issues I had when camping.

But now, I'm back, and determined that even if I never loose all the weight I want, that I will not be this person.  Because this person is still going to eat better, and make better choices.  And because if I don't, the zombies in the Zombie 5K app are going to get me.

The weight loss world is terrifying.  If you're not in it, you almost can't understand the scope of insanity that we're talking about.  There are conflicting reports about what is, and isn't good for you, everyone thinks they know what is best (ok guilty, sometimes I come off as preachy), and while everyone is trying to do their best, we're people, and we make mistakes, and the world of weight loss is filled with the guilt over mistakes, over who we are, and what we're planning on doing.

Why not make it dinner in?

Every now and again I like to splurge and have a nice dinner, and normally going out is how most people splurge.  However, I was reading 100 Days of Real Food lately, and it kind of gave me the heebie jeebies as to eating out.  What are they putting in my food back there that I don't know about?!

I had already picked up a Sirloin Tip steak from Whole Foods in preparation of this... event.  While I normally buy my meats from a 'regular' store, I wholly and truly believe that organic meat just darn well tastes better, and in the case of steak, if I'm going to pay $5/lb at the store, I can go get one from Whole Foods on sale for $6.99/lb on sale (it was .63lbs, so less than $5).  And while I'd like to buy a half a cow, I've come to the conclusion I do not want a deep freezer in my apartment living room.  I mean, I might actually use that space at some point.

I won't go into the nitty gritty details, there are thousands of places that will tell you how to cook a steak, suffice to say, I love my cast iron skillet.  Sometimes I want to sing 70's love songs to it, just so it knows.  A package of pre-chopped cauliflower (makes a great faux mashed potato) that was cheaper than buying a head, and another splurge for the 'special night' is that I had.. cheese!  Now I've had a little feta on salads, but since I started watching my weight again, I have not had a lot of cheese.  I love cheese.  I have a Cheesus Christ cheese grater, that's how much I love cheese.  Needless to say I missed cheese.  So a little smoked gouda on the cauliflower, a little port salut cheese on the steak, and ahh.

All in all, with the cost of everything, my dinner was probably about $10, which is far less expensive than going out, and I didn't have to deal with crying kids, cell phones, and rude servers.

Pretending Paleo

Pretending Paleo??  You either are or you're not right?  It seems that societies views are that if we follow a popular 'diet' (and I consider Paleo a lifestyle, not a diet), we must follow it all the way or we're not truly doing it justice.  I don't really understand why that is, why can't we adopt the concept of eating and living a certain way without the rigidity of the way some are structured?  Why should we feel ashamed, or guilty if we don't happen to follow the perceived exact route?  This is my life!  I refuse to feel guilt!

So why am I going at this part of the way?
On the plus side: I truly believe that there are great benefits to following a paleo lifestyle, I have a married couple that I know that are completely paleo and have seen the benefits to their personal selves, so I know at least it works for some.  Plus any lifestyle that promotes eating delicious meat is one I can get behind. 
On the negative side: While I have a career, and I am able to pay my own bills, my grocery budget is not very large.  In fact, I often go over what I am budgeted to spend on groceries just to be able to eat pretty healthy, with a few splurges here and there.  Maybe better grocery shopping is something that I need to work on too.  Always room for improvement!  I know there are many people and websites out there that say you can eat paleo on the cheap, but often it goes where I will not.

I have accepted the fact that I will not go to the lengths that some people do, such as raising their own food (look my kale plant is awesome, but it's a miracle it's survived, I'm in an apartment, and my patio is in almost full shade 90% of the day), having a deep freezer for that side of cow in my living room is not in the list (while it's a large living room, it's not huge), an there are some random other things.  I accept these and things that I personally am not willing to do, but kudos for the people that do, I don't knock it.

This just means that while I try and eat healthy, I'm just not 100% paleo, and I'm ok with that.  It's not drug or alcohol rehab, I don't have to go all in.  But I really do like those paleo honey muffins.  Yum.

Here we are, on this road again.

How many times have I seen on weight loss support sites "I lost weight, now I gained it back", and while in 2009 I just patted them on the back and empathized, I never thought it would be me.  But alas, with less than 24hrs warning I was laid off from a job that I thought had promise for me to rise in.  At 29, I had found my grove in the workplace, it was the longest job I had ever held, and then... nothing.  It was crushing to my spirit, that a job I had worked so hard on, that I had invested my life into, just tossed myself, and my coworkers, to the curb.

I looked for employment, but my heart wasn't in it, and the job market was horrible.  I stopped eating well, because who knew when I would find work again, ramen is cheap!  I stopped exercising, as I didn't want to go outside if I didn't have to.  I was stuck in a 298sq ft studio (that's a picture from the door) that I hated, which added to my depression.  I gained back all the weight, and then some, just like those other horror stories that you hear.

Life, as it often does, began turning around.  I got another job (albeit across town, and sadly for less money than I was making before), and eventually moved baby steps up in that job until I was offered the chance to go to work for our client directly.  A thousand miles away.  In a town I knew no one.  In a town I'd only once driven through.  Starting as a temp.

So I did it.  Because normal has never been my way of life.  And an exciting drive later with a 10ft u-haul trailer on the back of my poor little Corolla, here I am in South Houston.  6 months later, at the prodding of some other coworkers who also wanted to start eating healthier, and exercising, I'm back at it again.  So here's to new starts.  I'm back on My Fitness Pal as of 3/30 to log food and have people keep me accountable, and I just finished Week 1 Mission 2 of Zombies 5K on 4/19.  Here we go to a healthier me, with some missteps here and there.  Life is, after all, a imperfect journey.