All Out Of:

Went shopping today at Trader Joe's (which I link because they have spunky little black and white characters on their quite interactive page which could entertain a wandering mind like mine for hours. And because I love them because their low prices allow me to purchase mostly natural and preservative-free food without breaking bank, like I would at Whole Foods down the street. But, they don't have local produce, so during the summer I usually go to farmer's markets or Giant Eagle for that.)

Got:
(In chronological order:)
whole wheat bread
cucumber
red pepper
bag of spring green lettuce
romaine heads
broccoli
apples
grapefruit (uno)
AVOCADO! (uno)
pears
milk
greek yogurt
frozen berry mix
honey wheat pretzel sticks
peanut butter
hummus
12 grain honey cereal
dark chocolate wafers
dried cranberries
stroopwafels (amazing caramel cookies that the Dutch eat with their coffee and I'm half Dutch so. When in Holland...?)
granola bars
FIN

I know I hadn't said much yet about what I actually eat, so I thought this would be a great way to lay my cards, or receipt, on the table. Cheers.

it started with eggs.

So there's this site I often use to find out the nutritional content of food. (I have no idea where they get their information from but it's very legit looking and has everything so I'll take it.)

I went on there earlier this morning as I made breakfast to find out just how bad egg yolks v. egg whites are, and they are very bad, if you are looking to raise your cholesterol just start drinking egg yolks. But I saw a link to an article about the "Paleo diet" and the graphics included two crossed spears and I thought "oh hey! somebody's talking about eating naturally!" so I clicked on it and very quickly became confused. The nutritionist talked about paleo diet vs. Mediterranean diet and what you can and cannot eat on one or the other and my eyes began to cross and I smelled something, perhaps my eggs, burning.

This is a good example of why I hate Diets. I'd say my hate affair started in the first half of this decade, when my dad and stepmom did the whole Atkins bullshit, trading their fruits for pounds of steak and bacon, then wondered why they weren't losing any weight.

Now there are aspects of the Atkins I agree with, and probably most diets for that matter. Protein will keep you fuller than carbs, especially refined ones, and I think that everyone should place sugar and white flour on the same nutritional battlefield as fat. Fat is not alone in this party.

My qualm is with the restriction aspect. The fact that this old guy's telling people you can't eat certain foods-- in an apparently very convincing way, because my parents treated him like a golden all-knowing god-- really grinds my gears. (Is it too early for a Family Guy reference? Probably.)

I believe that it's this restriction, these bans and rules that make people feel confined and unfulfilled while on a diet, and that's why they never work. Scenario: Woman hates body, tells self to stop eating sweets, does it for about a week, then caves in over tiramisu, hates self, feels like a failure, gives up, goes back to unhealthy ways. Convinced that she doesn't have it in her.

Have it in her to do what? Deprive herself in a completely unrealistic way? It takes a superhuman to only eat vegetables, fruits, lean meat, whole grains, and nuts... which is what "the paleo diet" apparently is-- no oils, no dairy. Or it takes someone with buckets of cash to throw away on personal (food conscience) trainers.

So to hell with these diets. America has been diet obsessed for decades and, guess what, we're still fat. I think it's time for every American to start thinking for themselves regarding their health, instead of putting it in the hands of people that I honestly don't trust, because their job is to get you to follow their diets. Stop thinking you aren't "qualified" to make your own decisions about what you eat; we're not dummies, but the Diet industry seems to think we are. It's just common sense, actually thinking about the food before you shove it down your gob. Like, say you crave chocolate. Ho-ho? Hmm... you are high in calories, could probably survive a nuclear holocaust what with all your preservatives, but you are deliciously chocolatey. Dark chocolate bar? You are even MORE chocolatey yet don't have all the crazy gunk ho-ho has! I choose you. But I also know you are high in fat, so I will not eat you everyday, because you are a treat and should stay that way.

But no seriously, try it out! And if you're not sure if something is or isn't good for you, do some research, just make sure Atkins isn't your only source.

rant and then run

Okay, maybe it was a bad idea to post a picture of Lindsay Lohan; every time I look at it my gag reflexes act up. Could be the stretchy pants (leotard?). I don't want you to vom when you click on my page.

But I posted that picture for a reason. If you've lived through the past decade and are under 30, you know why. Otherwise, let me fill you in: about five years ago, Lindsay starred in a delightful Tina Fey comedy called Mean Girls, in which she looked doe-eyed, glowing, and healthy. Fast forward a couple years, add some fame and booze and drugs, and you have the present stick-figured, crispy-orange version of Lindsay that so often graces our tabloids. This trend is all too common in Hollywood, trading in curves for angles to please the cameras or the public or most likely, the angry gold-chain clad Hollywood gods who sit in LA offices grunting and banging on tummy-tuck skin drums. Who are probably fat themselves.

As much pressure as this is for actresses and models and the like, it doesn't stop with them. Thanks to E! and VH1, we are a celebrity obsessed nation, and will do anything to look like them, as unrealistic as it may be. (News flash: they have personal trainers to monitor every move and every morsel. Do you?) Which is why I was particularly upset when I saw this ongoing article in Health magazine about an actress trying to shed her baby weight. She is 5' 5.5". Her starting weight was 130 pounds, and her goal was to get down to 115.

Go to a BMI website. Enter her stats and you'll find out that 130 puts her score at 21.5; 3 points above underweight, 3.5 points below overweight. Read: average. Normal weight. In the middle. Already healthy.

Now plug in 115 pounds, and you'll find that she wants her BMI to get down to 18.8, 0.3 of a point above underweight. Nearing the danger zone.

When I flipped to this article one day at work, I jumped up and waved it in front of the face of every girl/woman in the office, trying to find someone as vehemently disturbed as I was. (They thought it was ridiculous, but not to the eye-bugging, finger-jabbing extent I did.) In a magazine that is meant for the general public, they are blatantly telling women: Oh hey, you're healthy? According to the Department of Health and Human Services, the federal government, the highest power in the land? Well, guess what, not good enough. Watch us glorify this woman getting borderline undernourished and then go pacify your tears with Chubby Hubby because you will never be as good as her.

So Health magazine lost one reader, like they care. They have an agenda to fill, this whole nation has an agenda to fill, one based primarily on images and false perceptions. But that's not mine, and, hopefully, not yours.

I think before one can embrace a truly natural, healthy, holistic lifestyle, it's vital to shed these notions of not being good enough, skinny enough, attractive enough-- all the artificial baggage that is dumped on a woman by society as soon as she's old enough to grow boobs. When I became a teenager, I wasted two foolish years with my fingers down my throat because I somehow knew I could never be happy if I didn't get skinny. I finally got grossed out by this and joined cross country instead. I wasn't that fast, but running made me feel alive. And after a year, I got down to 135 pounds. Then at practice one day my coach referred to me and one of my friends as "the big girls" on the team, which was true, relative to the gazelle-like top-ranked girls. I quit.

This past summer, five years later, I started running again. For me. Not to win a race, not to lose weight, but to remember how it feels to hear the blood pumping through my veins.

A good (but bad) example

You don't want to be this.

The Skinny

I spent this past weekend with my mom and sister, my lone comrades in the natural health crusade. All three of us have had similar difficulties with health throughout our lives, since we're, you know, related and all, and so I'm able to talk to them about my problems and achievements, knowing they'll understand on a level my friends cannot.

Probably the most striking similarity between us is that, despite our obvious and vocal efforts to be healthy, none of us are thin. Thanks to that smiling angel named Genetics, we all carry our weight around our middle, the most dangerous place on your body to store extra pounds, since it is home to your guts. We're not obese by any means-- my sister and mom are quite small, in fact, both in frame and stature, whereas I'm... not. We're just not skinny.

Which is an interesting concept to most Americans, where we associate weight with health: If I'm skinny, I'm healthy.

This is so, so not true. You can be underweight and undernourished, or nearing overweight with no detectable health problems, granted you eat well and exercise. It's all about how you take care of yourself.

Example: I have a friend who has lost her grip since starting college. She drinks too much, but has managed to not gain any noticeable weight. I was baffled by this until one day, I asked her what we were going to do for dinner. She said she wasn't going to eat much so she could drink more later that night. I hesitated, fighting my desire to yell are you STUPID?! and instead shrugged and went into the kitchen to make myself some food.

People do this, and think it's a good idea. She knew if she ate and drank, she would gain weight from all the calories. So she sacrificed one, thinking as long as she kept her weight steady, she was okay.

This friend of mine is an extreme case of unhealthy tendencies, but people do things like this all the time. I'm going to have cheesecake with my boyfriend tonight, so I'll skip lunch. It's not just the average population that has this mentality, though; I've seen it advertised. There is a TV commercial for some sort of health snack thing, where this little crudely drawn woman limps into a room with her friends, saying she did four hours of aerobics because she indulged in a hot fudge sundae. Although I'd promote an exercise trade-off like this one over deprivation, because it is technically healthier, the fact that they are advertising exercise as a punishment irks me.

If you view exercise as something you have to do to balance extra caloric intake, it will never become something you want to do. It will be torture. All that huffing and sweating will wrongly translate in your mind into abuse for bad deeds, instead of a treat for your body, which it is. (We're made to move. Why do you think kids play so much?) You will push yourself too hard in your workouts, hating every agonizing minute, because you'll think it is necessary for the trade-off. I have to do this to be skinny.

I'll tell you right now, if your focus is entirely on weight and outward appearance, not on health and inner harmony, you need to reevaluate your priorities, because you'll never get what you want. I promise if you focus on doing what's good for your body, instead of punishing yourself for missteps, you will become healthier. You may never be Kate Moss, but you'll look and feel the way you were meant to, inside and out.

Why should I care, you damn hippy?

First, I'm going to be honest with you so you don't get your panties in a bunch later on: I am not a nutritional expert. I don't claim to be. Any health advice given in this blog should be taken with many grains of salt (or maybe not because you could then die of a sodium-induced heart attack.) I'm just a semi-normal Midwestern girl, circa 21 years since birth, grappling with newfound mortality and the fact that I have a body that is mine and will be until the day I die.

Like many modern Americans, I have struggled with my weight my whole life, winning and losing various battles. I spent most of my childhood overweight, feeling imprisoned in flesh. Come junior high and puberty and an apparently lightning fast metabolism, I shed weight and could suddenly eat what I wanted and stay slim. But "slim" is a word I use in retrospect-- throughout high school my mirror falsely painted me as chubby, and I mentally punished myself for those extra Cheetos.

Then I went to college, and the mirror wasn't lying anymore: the fabled Freshman Fifteen came true. That spring, my doctor informed me that I had extremely high cholesterol for my age. I mean it's not like I was going to die or anything (yet), but it was the first time I realized that I was not invincible. Just because my outside was smooth and shiny and smiley and young, didn't mean that inside there wasn't a sticky monster lurking in the depths of my arteries.

Since then, I have overhauled my lifestyle. And I've made discoveries along the way, gems that I think elude many Americans blinded by beacons of neon M's seen from the comfy seats of their sedans. But I don't blame anyone for falling into this unhealthy trap, because there's no reason or need to fight for food in our society anymore; if anything, we have too many choices. Even in our present recession, instead of people thinning out like our grandfathers in the Great Depression, we are gaining weight, courtesy of an abundance of cheap processed food products.

So to put my views in the simplest way: I try to eat real foods. Lots of fresh fruits and vegetables. Whole grains. Lean meat and dairy. Things that have been manipulated and morphed by humans as little as possible. But I'm no martyr; I still have pizza, ice cream, and other junk that I know is bad for me. But I don't keep them in my apartment, because I treat them like the indulgences they are.

Most of what I think about food seems like common sense to me, and it is, but it's overlooked in our society, where people define "diet" as temporary torture to lose a few pounds, instead of the way they eat everyday. "Flavor" consists of fat, salt, and sugar, instead of the myriad other spices in our cupboards. Biologically, we have not changed much in the past few thousand years. But within the past fifty, the way and the things we feed ourselves have. And so has the quality of our health.

So I'm here to tell you how I (and others) have given the ol' bod some much deserved and needed love and respect. Hopefully America will do the same before we all find our bodies giving us one last chance, with a gun to our thick, fat skulls.