It’s driving me nuts that I can’t remember something I wanted to talk about earlier. It has something to do with my new attitudes about food. It’s so refreshing to feel “normal.” How strange that I had to go vegan to do it. (Speaking of vegan, I went to a special lunch today and was amazed at how many of the foods had meat in them. Even the mushroom rice had meat in it! Why do people feel the need to put meat and other animal effluence in everything? I noticed one other person didn’t eat her rice either.)

Now I remember what I wanted to say. It did have to do with my new attitudes about food. Food has taken a more appropriate role in my life. I eat when I’m hungry, I stop when I’m not hungry, and most of what I eat is objectively healthy (fruits, veggies, whole grains, nuts.) I do like chocolate and eat a little piece of it most days, but I don’t obsess about it. The downside of my healthy new attitude is that when I want to give a treat to someone who has done something special for me (or when I have my committee get together), I don’t want to give them junk or anything unhealthy. But how many people would be thrilled with a vegan fruit plate? I would… when I go to gatherings where they lure broke graduate students with promises of food, I’m all over the fruit. It makes me feel weird… not because I don’t eat animal products, but because I’m honestly starting to prefer the healthy choices. They taste better, look better, and make me feel better.

How did I get here and what took me so long?

I have unofficially noticed a loss on the scale. Today I was 85.7 kg, the lowest I’ve been since I decided to switch to kilos. That’s nice. It’s especially good because with just a little bit of pre-planning, this will be a very sustainable lifestyle (in more ways than one). Right now, I’m being kind of boring, just mixing a grain and a bean, about half a cup to a cup of each for my meals. Breakfast is a homemade vegan breakfast bar. (or oatmeal.)  Salads and veggies whenever I think about it and have time to prepare them.

I’m not big on the fake meats (possibly because I’m not big on real meat, plus fake meat is made of my arch-nemesis- soy.)  I want to have a diet that is what it is, not that’s pretending to be something else.

I hope my stomach discomfort goes away with the milk.  That would be nice.

I wanted to post yesterday about how much I love my Sunday routine. I swim laps and then  tread water and then sit in the sauna.  This week I got to 13 laps.

I realized I’ve been better at carving out time to exercise.  Sundays I swim, Monday is bellydancing, Tuesday and Thursday are weights.  I haven’t quite been able to be consistent on Wednesdays or Saturdays, and Fridays are out of the question because I’m either working or driving between 3am and 5pm.  I do usually get a bit of a walk in at lunch time.

Lately I haven’t had much of an appetite.  I wonder if that’s my body’s way of saying it’s tired of being fat.  I didn’t do a very good job of listening to myself last week, so I ate when I wasn’t hungry and didn’t choose the healthiest foods.  I need to listen to my body, because I think that’s key.

I’m in a team challenge at eDiets, and I feel like I’m dragging the team down.  I’m going to try my hardest this week to get all the points each day.

We talked about mindfulness and intuitive eating. Something we could have talked about more was society’s message to us. We get such destructive messages. I have never felt like I was allowed to love my body. I have always felt like my body only deserves love and care when it is small.

I’m working really hard on a couple of different aspects of eating.  I want to eat what I really want, when I’m hungry, and stop when I’m full.  When I eat something unhealthy in particular (at this point), I want to really be present while I’m eating it– to really smell, taste, and feel it.  Maybe I don’t even like it.  Sunday, I had Popeye’s chicken strips as a treat during the long drive.  They weren’t even all that good.  But when I ate my red beans and rice the next day, it was absolutely wonderful.  So next time, I’ll just get the red beans and rice. 

Another aspect is to not eat what I don’t like.  I don’t really like soda.  It makes my mouth burn, it tastes like chemicals, and it gives me chest pains.  When I “crave soda,” I’ll have to think about what I really want.  Yesterday, I drank orange juice, and it was good.  Maybe I’ll mix cranberry juice with sparkling water (or cranberry, orange, and sparkling water) another time.  That even sounds better.

To help myself, I’m still only weighing once a week.  If I still obsess, I’ll go down to every two weeks.  I’m also packing a lunch bag with apple, orange, grapes, dried fruit, walnuts, and a cheese stick.  I don’t like ANYTHING from the machine, so I won’t buy anything from the machine.