It has been a week - eight days - since I learned my friend Tricia was raped and murdered on Christmas Day.
In this time, I estimate that I've spent 10% of every waking hour reading memorials on Facebook, investigation updates on The Washington Post, and trolling the comment boards on myriad other news sources that carried the story of her death. I've become increasingly upset with every new detail exposed by the police and with every heart-felt memorial posted on myriad "In Memory Of" pages online,
On day four of this obsessive grief odyssey, I cried, cried harder than I have in a long time. On days five through seven, I gained three pounds, largely as result of my settling into the enveloping stupor of Candy Crush Saga.
And today, on day eight, I met with a therapist.
And about five minutes into our session, she gave me a swift kick in the gut. I was blathering on about how vulnerable I was feeling about my personal safety and she said, "I wonder if your reaction to your friend's death might be about more than your friend's death."
"Whatever could you mean?" I innocently replied.
"Well, there are many Americans feeling vulnerable right now. How are you feeling about the direction in which our country is moving?"
Dammit. Dammit Dammit.
During my brief period of grieving, it has seemed as if my sadness has been out of proportion to my relationship with Tricia. I've felt like I don't have the right to be as immobilized by this terrifying act of violence as I have been.
But, if I think about Tricia's murder as the most terrible straw that broke the camel's back, then this reaction makes a little more sense.
What also makes sense is leveraging this process of grieving her death to find my inner strength.
Reflecting on this list, I can see why I'm feeling so vulnerable today. Many of these experiences are big. And largely out of my control. Ugh.
I want 2017 to be a hopeful year, a year that offers life-affirming adventures, So, I also want to look at the bright spots from 2016, to see where I can draw power. These include:
Losing (and keeping off) nearly 25 pounds through hard work, a healthier diet, and a new found commitment to exercising
Being reminded of how great my community is when a retired neighbor took pity on me after the landscaper con and helped me finish a major gardening job
Purchasing a kayak rack after six years of kayak ownership, finally widening my boating circle exponentially
Taking a BMG-free trip to DC in October to visit with family and to be reunited with two dear college friends
Receiving multiple forms of recognition at work for excellence on the job, including be nominated and accepted into a regional women's leadership program
Analyzing this list I see that my power lies in making life affirming choices, working hard, and connecting with the positive people around me.
Tonight, as I raise my flute of champagne in honor of the earth finishing another trip around the sun, I'll be wishing for another year of adventures, made possible with the strength I find from within, and from the people who help make my life complete.
I think of my bulimia like many people think of alcoholism. While I've been in recovery for more than 20 years, my eating disorder will be with me for my entire life.
I actively and regularly binged from age 16 to age 21. It was only after I finished college and was living on my own that I figured out the magic of purging. I stopped purging at age 25, at the same time I stopped living by myself. I knew I couldn't keep my behaviors a secret, and because my shame about my behaviors was so great, I knew I couldn't bear being confronted about them. So I quit. Cold turkey.
Twenty-one years later, I can read my emotional triggers when I start to crave my favorite binge foods. These were:
Anything from McDonalds or Burger King: I used to drive home from my part-time job in college, motoring through every drive-thru window along the way, eating a complete meal. In the 20 minutes it took to get to my house, I'd easily have consumed at least 2,000 calories. One of the few memories of my dad involves him bringing home McDonald's for family dinner. I've since come to realize that the McDonald's binge is about daddy.
Cookies: When I was a little girl, I thought people who ate store-bought cookies were rich. (We always had homemade cookies.) Nevertheless, my mom would occasionally have a secret stash of Oreos or other store-bought treats. As soon as I figured out where they were, I'd have my way with them. And at Christmas time, my mom always made more Christmas cookies than one family needed. She'd store them in weathered holiday tins in our front vestibule, which was so drafty that it functioned as sort of an icebox for us. I used to sneak into tiny "room," sit down, and eat. As an adult, I love to bake but I also know I need to get the food out of the house as quickly as it has cooled to remove any temptation to binge. I've since come to realize that the Oreos binge is about my longing for my mom and the feelings associated with material goods being out of reach.
Ben and Jerry's: In college, I could toddle down to the on-campus convenience store, purchase a pint of Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream, and eat it all within 10 minutes. All of it. Several times a week. Luckily, I'm now lactose intolerant. Unluckily, Ben & Jerry's dairy-free ice cream is as good as the real stuff. When I want ice cream now, I know this means something is up on the feelings front.
Ground turkey mixed with mushroom soup and white rice: This was an easy and quick family dinner we called "glop." In my early twenties, I would make and eat an entire pan of it in one sitting - pound of ground turkey, two cans of soup, heaps of rice. I've since come to realize this binge is about longing for family. And I still make this recipe. But, when I crave it, I'll restrict myself to 1/4 pound of turkey from the butcher, a dairy-free soup, and I'll add green beans instead of rice, making a comforting mash-up of "glop" and green bean casserole.
Bulimia will always be with me; I definitely still feel the urge to binge today. On the rare occasion, I give myself permission to this, I try to control the caloric intake by eating things like popcorn, salted, steamed vegetables (e.g., broccoli, carrots), or raw cucumbers.
I live in a tiny house. A tiny house with a tiny amount of storage space.
This tiny amount of storage space, combined with my natural propensity for simple living, are the reasons why I tend to shy away from single use kitchen gadgets. Things like egg slicers (knives work just great), grapefruit spoons, and spaghetti servers. Yeah, nope. Don't need 'em. Don't want 'em.
But, I *do* have a cherry pitter.
This is a tool that expels the pit of a cherry into a small chute, and then with a poof, pops it into a waiting vessel (like a hand or a bowl). The sound of the pit being forced out of the fruit sounds like a gnome-sized nail gun to me. And the part of device that presses into the cherry to push out the pit looks like a gnome sized pick-axe.
The result of the pitter's work is tiny piece of stone fruit with a gaping flesh wound that looks as if a bullet has passed through it. While it is no longer gorgeous, but it is also free of the tiny pit you need to awkwardly and ungracefully dispose of every time you consume one cherry.
I've owned mine for three years. And I've used it maybe four times. It takes up precious real estate in my limited drawer space. By all rights, it is not the sort of thing I would ever own.
But I'll never get rid of it.
Because every time I use it, I'm reminded of my father-in-law.
In the short time I knew him, he introduced me to the magic of the cherry pitter.
It was a weekend day, long before BMG and I were actually married, and I was visiting with him and my mother-in-law. As I chatted with them, my father-in-law was discreetly flexing his hand and causing a small popping sound.
"What are you doing?" I remember asking.
And he explained the cherry pitter, even letting me take the reins of the device and giving it a squeeze.
I may have scoffed at the need for a cherry pitter, perhaps extolling the diverse virtues of the knife or asking "How hard is it to eat around the pit?"
I remember my father-in-law laughing and telling me the cherries were much more delicious when they were pitted. And that was that.
A couple of years later, after he passed from this earth, BMG and I were planning our wedding. I insisted on putting a cherry pitter on our registry. BMG raised his eyebrows at me (he knows me well), but I insisted. And that was that.
*****
I much prefer to infuse everyday objects with meaning and memories, rather than holding onto other types of mementos. Doing so gives me regular opportunities to reflect on the person or event that I associate with the object. The size of my home makes it harder for me to display or interact with other types of memory devices, like photos stored on Facebook or in print albums or souvenirs from trips,
And I don't need them. I don't need a photo of my father-in-law to remember what made him such a special person. I don't need to hang onto every gift he ever gave me to make I don't forget him. Nope. All I need is to pit a few cherries and boom, I'm reminded of how much I hold him in my heart.
Just this week, I told my husband and mother-in-law that, in spite of having recently lost 30 pounds, I still feel exactly the same. While I lost the weight primarily for health reasons, not emotional ones, I'm aware that I have struggled with being a "fat girl" my entire life.
With that revelation still spinning around in my heart, I found myself drawn to click on an NPR article posted to Facebook, offering reviews of two works of fiction that "tear down" stereotypes about fat girls.
The Facebook rabbit hole being what it is, this article next led me to a PBS Newshour link about a poet, Rachel Wiley, who penned this:
For Fat Girls Who Considered Starvation When Bulimia Wasn’t Enough
Mom says that my teeth are perfect Perfect brother has just gotten braces on his top four front teeth A tiny railroad bridge connecting nothing And mom says that my teeth are perfect. At last my quiet mouth, the overlook, the swallowed feelings have all paid off and cultured something perfect and mine. My mouth is a music box stuffed with pearls.
Perfect brother is tall And lean eats whatever he wants One time a whole box of oatmeal cream pies. but it is more clear each day that my baby fat is no longer baby fat but just fat It is more clear each day that I will not be a ballerina I had wanted to be a ballerina. My mouth is a music box A small girl spins gracefully at the back of my throat On point I am sure if I can just reach far enough back I could still have her grace I reach for her every night after dinner while the bathtub fills.
Until one day the health teacher shows us a photo of a mouth crammed full of broken, yellowed dishes says that a side effect of Bulimia is ruined teeth but Mom said that my teeth were perfect And my perfect is a ransom I cannot bring myself to pay for the spinning girl So I swallow her and then nothing more for 4 whole days My mouth is a music box, plays a low gear grinding that puts me to sleep.
When I do not wake up any closer to the spinning girl encircled in pink tulle but rather still a ravenous hollow encircled in overgrowth I sneak down to the pantry and devour an entire box of oatmeal cream pies in the dark before going upstairs to brush my perfect teeth 1 at a time.
What happened next? Well, I cried.
I cried for the little girl in me who wanted to be a ballerina but was instead told, "You'd be so pretty if you could just lose some weight." I cried for the young adult in me who thought she was a genius when she discovered bulimia, without knowing the word for it. I cried for the adult in me who knows that this eating disorder is like an addiction in that it will be with me always, in spite of having beat the behaviors long long ago.
And now my stomach hurt. I'm sure it's because of the #whole30 decaf mocha I just gulped. It couldn't be feelings.
I'm doing a six-week holistic diet with Liz Vequist in an effort to start feeling fit, active, and inspired. The diet started on Monday, October 26, 2015. ***** Tomorrow is the 6th and final week of the diet. If you look at the numbers, my experience so far has been successful. 1. I've lost 15 pounds 2. I've lost an inch in all the places I've measured 3. I'm comfortably down by one full size 4. I've reduced my caffeine intake by 50% 5. I've reduced my refined sugar intake by nearly 90%. 6. I've reduced my weekly alcohol intake by nearly 75% 7. I've reduced my typical daily calorie intake by 15%, from 1,750 day to 1,450 7. I've reduced my use of OTC sleep aids by 95%, from up to four times a week to once a month 8. I've increased my daily steps by 20% As far as I'm concerned, this has been a valuable group and one I would recommend to any person who seeks to feel healthier, stronger, and more at peace in their bodies.
But, with just a week left in the program, I've consciously stopped participating in the Facebook portion of the group.
Why?
On Thursday, I was indirectly rebuked on the group's Facebook page for giving "bad advice" when I asked a question. Bad advice, it was explained, because the question I asked was akin to encouraging people to do something that was causing people to "fail" at the intermittent fasting portion of the diet.
My question was in response to a post from a member of the group who appears to me to be struggling with being at peace in her body. At the start of the day, she posted a plaintive query about how to handle her desire to fast with her desire to indulge in a holiday celebration. So I asked, "Why can't you do both - eat sensibly/low calorie for a majority of the day, and also indulge?" I acknowledged with my question that one couldn't call this a true "fasting" day, but what was the harm in eating your cake and having it too?
I asked my question out of genuine curiosity, and from a position of ambivalence about the fasting days, particularly in light of my own experience of balancing the diet "rules" with the "rules" of living, for me, what is a good life.
If you look at my numbers, it seems that my strategy of eating my cake and having too, carefully and with intention, has been pretty successful. I don't feel like a failure at the diet.
What I think has made me a success at this diet is in not my ability to faithfully follow the rules. Instead, it has been my ability to listen to my body and decide what rules I'm going to break.
For example, two cups of coffee makes me go off the emotional rails AND inspires sleeplessness. So, when I'm having intense cravings for a second cup of the half-caf I'm drinking, I can remind myself that I don't want it badly enough to risk the jittery panicked feelings that I'll feel as a result. If the craving remains, I fill it with a cup of hot lemon water or rooibos tea. Ditto for milk-based products and enriched bread.
I'll still have a small piece of candy or a chocolate chip cookie from time to time. And when I do, I savor it and remind myself to stop at one or two unless the desire for the sweet is more powerful than the need to maintain a certain caloric intake to keep my body healthy. So far it hasn't been worth it.
All of these signs point to victory for me and my body.
So, when I felt chided for "giving bad advice," I decided it was time for me to say good-bye to the Facebook portion of the diet. I don't want to share how I've successfully adapted the rules to serve my body if doing so could potentially risk the success of others. I don't see how that is helpful. I also don't think it is helpful to be part of a virtual dialogue about being a "failure" with one's diet and exercise choices.
So, at least as far as Facebook goes, I'm done.
I'll post my numbers here at the formal end of the last week, to put up the final bookend to this experience. After the diet is formally over, I'll continue to eat a balanced, whole food diet while also considering the choices I make in the interest of feeling strong and healthy. I will always have to pay close attention to how I care for my body. I can't eat an entire package of Oreos and not feel the ill effects. But I also don't want it to become my raison d'etre, where I am daily scrutinizing every food choice to determine if THAT'S the reason I am up half a pound.
Thank you Liz Vequist, for guiding me to a place where I can eat my cookie and be ok with myself. I feel like my struggles are over.
I was recently at a cafeteria-style quick serve restaurant. While there, I observed a woman open the napkin dispenser to pull out a paper napkin.
"Oh aren't you clever," I started to exclaim.
But my voice dropped off when I realized she was pulling a 4" stack out of the machine. My eyes got wide and I finished my sentence with "And apparently very messy!"
She smiled at me and said, "I do this because it takes too long to pull out each napkin one by one."
I'm doing a six-week holistic diet with Liz Vequistin an effort to start feeling fit, active, and inspired. The diet started on Monday, October 26, 2015. ***** Today is my first intermittent fasting, or IF day. As I understand it, and IF day is one in which calorie intake is limited to 500-600 (I normally eat 1,750-2,000 calories per day), and one waits to have one's first meal until one is ready to chew one's hand off. The goals are multiple:
To make up for "binge days"
To make it possible to eat whatever one wants on the other five days of the week
To prevent cancer and other health issues like diabetes and Alzheimer's
To remind one's body one doesn't actually need to eat as many calories a day as we do in the Western world
To force the body to consume one's own fat when exercising
There is also a paleo aspect, reminding the body that our hunter-gather ancestors ate intermittently and they did OK. On the diet, I'm supposed to have as many as two IF days each week. To get started, we are doing a 6:1 schedule - eat "normal" for six days, and IF for one. After four weeks of participation in Liz Vequist's SFS program, which started with a vegan food cleanse in early October, I'm down 11 pounds. I don't feel deprived, I'm not counting calories, and I'm not perseverating on food. I'm also not sure I need to IF. But, I'll play along. I also didn't think I needed to eat breakfast at work, but when I tried that, it actually had positive benefits. So, what does one eat when one is on an IF day? This is what I'm eating Breakfast: 1/2 cup of aromatic brown rice and two hard-boiled eggs - 249 calories
Lunch: 1/2 cup of aromatic brown rice and 1 cup of sweet and sour red lentil dal - 233 calories
Dinner - 3 oz. steamed cod fillet, 1 cup roasted squash and broccoli, 1 cup steamed kale - 146 calories
Snack - 1/2 cup sliced cucumbers - 8 calories
Total planned calorie count for the day is 636.
My predictions? I'll eat breakfast by 10:00 AM, instead of 8:15 and then I'll perseverate on food for the rest of the day.
What would you do to make an IF day work for your body?
I'm doing a six-week holistic diet with Liz Vequistin an effort to start feeling fit, active, and inspired. The diet started on Monday, October 26, 2015. ***** Week two of the diet starts on Monday, so I'm in prep mode this weekend. On the spiritual side of the diet, we're supposed to identify positive affirmations about our body that we can scatter around our homes, cars and workplaces to help inspire us to make the Slim, Fit and Sexy thing work. I actually feel pretty motivated already. This is, in part, a function of the pounds falling off (an indicator my body was ready to lose some weight), and the new Fitbit groups I'm participating in, which, in the first week, motivated me to amp my steps from 7500 each weekday to more than 10k. In the spirit of being "in it to win it," I'm creating affirmations anyway. I.m going to trust that even is my conscious self doesn't need them right now, the universe will hold them in readiness for me. So here goes: I am grateful for (something positive about your body): my continuing good health. I love my (something positive about yourself): enthusiastic and empathic spirit. I can (positive habit): make better choices to maintain my health and soothe myself when I feel sad. What would your affirmations be?
I'm doing a six-week holistic diet with Liz Vequistin an effort to start feeling fit, active, and inspired. The diet started on Monday, October 26, 2015.
***** Four full days into this holistic diet and I've learned that I'm eating breakfast too early in the morning. By shifting my weekday breakfast time 75 minutes later in the morning, makes in difference in my feelings of hunger, particularly later in the day. I've long held the belief that I shouldn't get out of bed in the morning for the sole purpose of going to work. I want to get out of bed because I have a full and learned life. So, my weekday routine has typically involved the following: 5:45-6:00 AM: Wake up, make coffee, give the cats cookies 6:00-6:30 AM: Drink coffee, check Facebook, read news, play games 6:30-7:00 AM: Get ready for work 7:00-7:30 AM: Make and eat breakfast, get out the door 7:30-8:00 AM: Travel to the office 9:30-10:00 AM: Eat snack at work 11:00 AM: Start perseverating on lunch, walk around and snatch pieces of candy from the generous candy bowls scattered around the office 11:30-11:45 AM: Get lunch (eat at desk) 4:00 PM: Leave work 4:30 PM: Get home, ready to chew my hands off I'm so hungry. Grab a high protein snack. 4:45-5:30 PM: Make dinner 5:30-5:35 PM: Eat dinner 5:35-9:00 PM: Think about eating sugary treats - either give in or try using wine or tea to satiate my sweet tooth 9:00-10:00 PM: Starting settling down for sleep But, my routine means I'm often eating breakfast because of the time of day, not because of any hunger I might feel. And then I'm a hungry hungry hippo for the rest of the day. So, I'm experimenting with a new routine that looks like this: 6:00-6:15 AM: Wake up, make coffee, give the cats cookies 6:15-6:45 AM: Drink coffee, check Facebook, read news, play games 6:45-7:05 AM: Get ready for work (I'm very low maintenance) 7:05-7:30 AM: Prep breakfast and lunch to bring to work, make lemon water for the journey, maybe blog or take care of house business (e.g., pay bills) 7:30-8:00 AM: Travel to the office 8:00-8:30 AM: Eat breakfast (at my desk) 11:30 AM: Eat snack 12:30-1:00 PM: Eat most (but not all) of my lunch (at my desk) 1:30-3:00 PM: Leisurely nibble on whatever lunch I couldn't eat at lunch time (at my desk) 4:00 PM: Leave work 4:30 PM: Get home, still feeling full from my afternoon of lunching 5:30 PM: Start thinking about dinner prep 5:30-6:00 PM: Make dinner 6:00-6:15 PM: Eat dinner 7:00 PM: Make evening tea and start settling down for a 9:00 PM bed time It is amazing to me that shifting breakfast back just 75 minutes can make such a difference in how much I'm snacking and thinking about food. I am more focused in the afternoons, and am pleasant when I get home, instead of a bear because of how hungry I feel. Sounds like the shift is working in the interest of my good physical and emotional health. So what's the problem? In my brain, eating breakfast at work instead of home implies that my raison d'etre is working, instead of living. There is an inherent lack of balance in consuming two meals at the office instead of just the one. And, because of my commitment to work/life balance, this upsets me. Luckily, I have five more weeks of this diet to figure out if the rewards are worth the trade off. I'll let you know. W
I'm doing a six-week holistic diet with Liz Vequistin an effort to start feeling fit, active, and inspired. The diet starts on Monday, October 26, 2015. *****
Week one, day one! We're focusing this week on setting a healthy breakfast routine. I feel like I nailed this during the five-day cleanse, so this doesn't feel like work to me. Which is good, because I still need to finish my goal setting.
From the "diet" workbook:
List 3
goals that you would like to achieve over the next 6 weeks:
My answer:
1. Beat the sugar addiction
2. Healthier relationship to snacking when I feel anxious
3. Sustainably lose another five pounds.
How will you feel as
a result of achieving these goals?
My answer:
1. More attentive in my marriage
2. More confident in my family relationships
3. Less fearful of health risks
Is there anything that could stop you from achieving these goals?
My answer:
Those tapes that keeps playing, in spite of my knowing they are old. In spite of my knowing they aren't my story, but instead the story of the people who spoke the recorded words. The tape that tells a five year-old me, "You'd be so pretty if you could just lose some weight." And the tape recorded in Princeton that whispers conspiratorially, "I was told you are built like a linebacker...(but you are actually lovely)."
On a more practical level, my mother-in-law doesn't understand these sorts of shifts in eating (neither does my mother, but she lives 325 miles away).
Is there anything you can start doing now to make sure you achieve your
goals?
My answer:
I'm not cooking with my husband any longer. This change in my routine helps because our food needs are so different. (This also makes me feel sad, even though it is better for both of us. I can feel the tears welling up inside.)
I will give myself a daily 45-minute block of time - ostensibly after work - for exercise/movement.
I need to let my mother-in-law know what I'm up to, so she doesn't keep asking me to come visit for food/wine/cake.
I want to find a way to symbolically release the tapes. And, I need to think about that a little more.
I'm doing a six-week holistic diet with Liz Vequistin an effort to start feeling fit, active, and inspired. The diet starts on Monday, October 26, 2015. ***** I spent the last four days helping my mother downsize from the house I knew as an adolescent and teen to a new house. A newer, more manageable house in a quieter neighborhood closer to four of her six grandchildren. Thursday through Sunday afternoon I ate pizza, doughnuts, Chinese food, fast food, chocolate bars, beer and wine. I feel terrible. Tomorrow is a great day to start a whole foods, mostly vegan, definitely macrobiotic (except for that weird chewing thing they do), diet. As part of our prep we need to take measurements and "before" photos, preferably in something form fitting. We'll do "after" pictures on December 10, when the diet ends. And hopefully, by then, I'll have new, life affirming habits. So, here goes.
And now the measurements. Upper arm (ugh) - 13" Bust - 40" "Bra line" - 34" Waist - 34" Hips - 45" Thigh - 25" Come back in six weeks to see how I do.
I'm doing a five-day food cleanse followed by a six-week diet with Liz Vequistin an effort to start feeling fit, active, and inspired. The cleanse ran from on Monday, October 5, 2015 through Friday, October 9, 2015. The six-week diet kicks off on Thursday, October 22, 2015.
*****
I hopped onto Facebook while eating lunch at my desk (mixed greens topped with a mixture of quinoa, black beans, corn, slaw veggies, guacamole, and salmon). I was surprised by the more than 10 alerts my page had, and dove in a little deeper. That's when I learned I won the week-long, #wholefoodschallenge, a seven-day contest the week after the cleanse, designed to inspire participants to continue their vegan, whole foods ways. And the 10+ alerts were fellow cleansers people congratulating me on my win.
If one wanted to participate, one needed to post one picture on the secret Facebook group for the cleansers on at least five out of seven days of a vegan, whole foods meal they were enjoying. And you had to complete the post-cleanse satisfaction survey. The prize was a $50 gift certificate to Whole Foods (or Amazon if there was no Whole Foods nearby).
I posted one picture a day for the entire challenge, along with the pictures of the food factory I created on my kitchen counter each time I made a batch of something. Sort of like this:
Dinner: Butternut squash, red lentil and carrot stew served on steamed kale.
Five more dinners made with butternut squash/red lentil stew and steamed kale.
I won! I won! I won! I feel like such a good vegan.
The kick-off call for the six-week diet portion of this program is on Thursday, October 22nd at noon. I can't wait to go shopping at Whole Foods for whatever supplies I'll need on the next phase in this personal health journey.
I'm doing a five-day food cleanse followed by a six-week diet with Liz Vequistin an effort to start feeling fit, active, and inspired. The cleanse started on Monday, October 5, 2015.
*****
The five-day cleanse is technically over, and I'm in the waiting period between the cleanse and the start of the six-week "Slim, Fit and Sexy" diet. So, it seemed harmless enough to ask my husband for a bite of the leftover Kraft macaroni and cheese dinner last night. This stuff, along with its cousin Hamburger Helper Cheeseburger Macaroni, are like crack for me. After seven days without food additives and dairy, I was curious to learn how it would taste to me, and if it would cause me to fall off the whole foods wagon. (Because crack will do that.)
I put one small fork full in my mouth. Blecch! "It tastes like chemicals," I said, astonished. My husband laughed. Later, I researched the ingredients in the product, The Wegman's website gave me the clearest information:
The ingredients don't read THAT terribly to me, and I have no idea what tasted so awful. Was it the ferrous sulfate in the macaroni product? Whey protein concentrate in the cheese sauce? Or maybe the sodium alginate? It doesn't actually matter, because what I learned is that, so long as I maintain some commitment to whole foods eating, I won't have a taste for the product any longer. Which is good for my health, and good for my husband, who doesn't have to guard his beloved mac and cheese any longer.
I'm doing a five-day food cleanse followed by a six-week diet with Liz Vequistin an effort to start feeling fit, active, and inspired. The cleanse started on Monday, October 5, 2015. ***** This is me after five days on the cleanse.
Do I look the same to you? I look the same to me. Here's my before picture, as a reminder:
And yet I know I'm well-rested, have softer skin, and I'm eight pounds lighter. In anticipation of the start of the six-week "Slim, Fit and Sexy" program, which I'm calling, "Fit, Active and Inspired," I need to continue to eat whole grain foods at least once a day. (Although the six-week program isn't JUST about food. It is also about being in right relationship with one's body - and includes a free hula hoop for every participant.) Nevertheless, being better about *what* I eat is the starting point. So, to keep riding the whole foods train, I'm going to strive to "be a vegetarian before 6:00 (pm) on weekdays. How am I going to do this? Careful and creative meal planning for breakfast and lunch. The newest Wegmans' Food Market is opening in Massachusetts tomorrow. In anticipation of a grocery shopping extravaganza, I've been scouring Epicurious for interesting whole foods recipes that I can easily make at home. What I have planned is the following: Potential choices for breakfast:
Plain hot oatmeal with apples
Whole grains (e.g., brown rice, quinoa) with wilted greens, fried egg and siracha
A lentil/cauliflower/brown rice stew from my favorite cookbook, Extending the Table
During the week, I'll plan to add animal protein so BMG and I can share meals again. And on the weekends, if BMG and I have an adventure planned, I'll be careful about sugar, processed foods, and fried foods, but won't beat myself up about eating anything that isn't "on the list."
I'll keep posting pictures of my food, here and in the Cleanse Group Facebook, to keep you inspired and to keep me honest.
"Sooner or later we all discover that the important moments in life are not the advertised ones, not the birthdays, the graduations, the weddings, not the great goals achieved. The real milestones are less prepossessing. They come to the door of memory unannounced, stray dogs that amble in, sniff around a bit, and simply never leave. Our lives are measured by these."
--Susan B. Anthony
