I hate microwave dinners and why diets don't work

There was a lot of learning to do. You know when you think you know about something and it turns out you really know squat? That kind of happened to me. Part of the program was to take some classes on nutrition and making better food choices. Let me preface by saying, I (almost) always read food labels, just not all of it. I read the fat and sugar (as my mother taught me), then the carbs, as I learned from my first, incomplete, foray with a dietician many years ago. I always skipped over the calories, I had no idea what role they played in a healthy diet. I knew they were a form of energy, and I knew all the skinny girls on tv thought less was better, but I didn't know how much I needed. The only time I didn't read the label was when I KNEW it was bad for me. Why bother? I'm buying it because I want it, I'm an adult now, I can have cookies for dinner and no one can stop me. So what if I eat half a bag or oreos and a whole package of pistachio pudding for supper? I'm good, I read food labels for everything else, right? Wrong. I started attending the classes and keeping a food log. I started to realise that maybe I wasn't getting all the suggested servings of food groups in a day. Maybe I was eating at restraunts too often, and maybe, just maybe, calories were important.

The classes were amusing to me, as well as informative. I knew a lot of what they were teaching, but some of the people there knew even less. I don't know if it was ignorance or just plain stupidity, but I was amused. I tried to steer clear of the brand names that had 'healthy' in them. I knew there was trickery involved, (it was acutally salt). I just didn't know how it could be good for you with that many ingredients, most of which I couldn't pronounce. And the smell. I couldn't stand the smell of a microwaved dinner. It induced my gag reflex to such a degree, I almost couldn't eat my lunch. And it lingered, like an annoying neighbour who doesn't have a phone and needs to call an emergency dentist but makes you do it because 'I'm not from this town, it would be weird.' (true story). I've always been a decent cook, and it was easy, why couldn't they do it to? Then I realised, just because I think it's easy, doesn't mean it's easy for everyone. Just like everyone I know can type with out using the backspace key at a 2:1 ratio of the other keys, doesn't mean I can. (trust me, the word 'backspace' isn't even on the key anymore). Then I realised it is also about perception. They precieve cooking to be hard and want to be good at it right away. Doesn't work that way. Takes practice. Know how many alfredo sauces I burned (a lot)? Or protiens I burnt or had to put back in the oven because it was still oinking (even more)? But people want easy, so thats what they get, and who can blame them.

I really felt for the health care professionals teaching these classes. So few of us were there to learn, all the rest looking for excuses and magic treatments. I knew this was a long, hard, road and I was changing the way I would be eating for the rest of my life. I knew I was going to give my children a better relationship with food than I had, but it was going to take work. They had no idea. The reason diets don't work, is as soon as you lose the weight, no one maintains it. They go back to eating the way they did before and gain it all back. 'Why am I fat again? Weight doesn't come back after you lose it. Must be a gladular problem...oh, hello, burger. om nom nom nom.' There is no maintenance after the fact. They see it as 'being on a diet' rather than changing your lifestyle. Changing your lifestyle is difficult, a lifetime of bad habits and addictions to all the wrong sort of foods, throw up many road blocks. Those foods were soooo good and hard to give up. I missed cheese in large quantities, sweet, bread like confections, and the large amount of bread I used to eat. I once ate an entire loaf of sourdough bread with a spinach dip I made and couldn't get enough of. In one sitting. While watching a movie. Nearly went into a food coma while the dog cleaned up the crumbs around my bloated, bready, corpse. But up until this point, I was doing okay. Only eating out 2 times per week, making better choices at the restraunts, and eating better at home was having an effect. I was losing weight. 1-2 pounds per week, as promised. And I felt better, had more energy. Life was looking better. Then came the class that threatened to derail me.

Emotional eating is something that I didn't want to face, but knew I needed to in order for this lifestyle change to be sucessful. I always imagined emotional eating as a fat person, sobbing uncontrolably, and shoveling food into their mouth. It's not always like that, and for me it was stress. Or my daydreams of being skinny interuppted by the sounds of my own chewing. That was upsettingly ironic. So I learned a few things, one of which was the 80/20 rule. They taught you not all your food had to be good 100 percent of the time. You are allowed to have a bad food choice once in a while. So I started adopting that, very losely and not quite as stringent as I thought. I was using it so liberally, that it hindered my weight loss for a while. See, I was using it for individual meals (salad, no dressing, with my burger) and then for all the meals that same day (pizza for supper, no veggies). So it ended up being more like the 50/50 rule, or even the 40/60 rule. It was getting bad, there was cheese on everything, pizza all the time, and a not so uncommon addiction to toast with peanut butter and jam. I was enjoying food again. All the time. What was happening to me? I was doing so well, now I was derailing in a big way. I found an excuse to eat the bad things I wanted again. It was bad, very bad. And I needed to get back on track. I wasn't putting everything in my food log. Flat out, I was cheating. But whom was I cheating? Not the dietician or the nurse or the doctor. I was cheating myself, and my future children that may never happen because I couldn't get my shit together. No more 80/20 rule. Time to get real...again.

The carb-a-holic and the tomatoes of doom!

So it begins. Cutting all the best foods out of my diet. Now, for those of you who don't know, I am a very good cook. Especially things with butter and cheese and sugar and bacon (not all together, that might be weird). No more pancakes every weekend, no more hot dogs 3 times a week, time for nutritious food. My dietician suggested having certain foods on hand to snack on, namely, vegetables. Specifically carrots, cucumber, snap peas, and cherry tomatoes. I am a fan of veggies, I just wasn't used to eating them in this quantity. I also discovered that cherry tomatoes are evil. They are small enough to eat in one bite, however, its bright red exterior and delicious, garden fresh smell are a clever ruse. One in 6 tomatoes has a nasty, albeit, short sighted, defense mechanism. It's slightly elastic exterior is just tight enough to create an explosion of taste ending proportions once you bite into it. The offending fruit explodes its evil, rotten, tomatoey like centre all over your taste buds, inducing a 'oh god, my tongue is dying' gag reflex. And there is no escape, you try and spit it out, but its gooey seed clusters are clinging to your taste buds for dear life. But its all to late. The vile tomato is destroyed. The brave tomato sacrificed itself for it's tomatoey brethren, much like the kamikaze pilots of world war 2. The remaining tomatoes are then tossed in the garbage with disgust and disdain, swearing and oath to never touch a cherry tomato as long as I shall live. I call cherry tomatoes the assholes of the produce aisle, they would rather rot and die than bring enjoyment and nutrition to the world.  Well played, cherry tomatoes, well played.

The snap peas were slightly less disappointing, they want to be delicious AND nutritious, but the bag they come in acts as a stasis field. Seconds after the field is breached, they rot into a soggy, greenish brown goo, devoid of any pea-like properties. So I have peppers instead.

I was also outed as a carb-a-holic. "You like carbs", the dietician stated with the confidence and authority of a police officer ordering me to drop the doughnut with his gun drawn. I knew this was true, i just wanted to 'sneak' them in there. But the food log doesn't lie. I LOVED carbs. doughnuts, pancakes, toast with peanut butter and jam, pasta....I needed to cut back. No more fast food (difficulty level - expert), no more pancakes (difficulty level - hard), cut back on the pasta...wait, that was easy. I just had to start measuring my food. 1 cup of pasta, 2 cups of veggies, 4 oz protein, this is filling. Pasta and bread weren't 'bad', it was the quantities. Yes, having 2 pieces of white bread with butter, peanut butter, and jam was a bad idea. But ONE piece of 100% whole wheat with 2 tbsp peanut butter with no sugar, way less bad and an acceptable snack. 

What else was I missing out on. I consider myself a pretty smart cookie. I KNEW anything that had 'healthy' in the brand or product name was hiding something (it's salt). And it tasted horrible. Healthy food doesn't have to taste like chicken flavoured rubber bands with limp, grey vegetables, and a leeching amount of salt. I know how to cook, I can do this. Do I really need oil in my salad dressing? I love sour flavours, like vinegar and citrus, so I could easily omit that. And what is better than herbs and spices, fresh or dried, instead of sickeningly sweet sauces from a jar? Nothing, that's what. So I started retraining my flavour palate. I COULD make things tasty without oil and sugar. I discovered the fat free greek yogurt, so thick and creamy you could shave with it. (Is that awkward? sorry). Things were going great, until I took a healthy eating module that nearly derailed me.

 

I don't wanna be fat anymore!

So, let' s start this by being honest. I'm fat. Very fat. The medical community calls it 'obese'. I call it 'too much awesome in one place that ran out of room.' Whatever, i'm fat. Last March (2011), i clocked in at 340 lbs. On a 5'8" frame, that is a problem. A diabetic, achey joint, high blood pressure, tired all the time, sort of problem. I can blame it all I want on bad genes, being taught all the wrong eating habits and aliens, if I wanted, but it all doesn't matter. I made some bad eating choices.... a lot. And no amout of blame will make anyone else fix it, or get me some magical pill. It's my problem. MINE. So I decided to fix it. 

It started with meeting my boyfriend, a wonderfully hilarious, nerdy, wooly, bad joke cracking, behemoth of a man (6'6"). And somehow, our weirdness complemented each other. And he wanted children. Lots of them. That posed a problem. I have PCOS, poly cystic ovary syndrome. PCOS causes weight gain and prevents weight loss. It also makes you mostly barren. It has been known to rectify itself with weight loss, but that can be difficult (one of my many excuses over the years). So I decided to ask for help. I went to see my doctor. I told her, "I'm fat, help me." So, she did. She set me up with the nurse and dietician who works out of her office. The end result was to send me to a clinic for the morbidly obese, but they had to prep me first. The clinic required 6 months of pre submission care before they could send a referral. That meant 6 months working with the nurse and the dietician to adjust medication, change eating habits, and start exercising. So it began.

My Nurse is one of the most wonderfully caring people I have ever met. We instantly had a connection (remember the awesome part?) She reviewed my medication and health history, switched up some medications and sent me off the see the dietician. Now this woman was wonderful in a different, scary, ' don't mess with my diet plan' kind of woman. My first meeting with her scared the pants off me, and I knew she would be just the person to keep me on track. She went on a rant about 'healthy' food brands and names and how they mean squat if you don't read the label. I agreed with her, but was too terrified to do anything but nod, and interject with the occasional 'i know.' I handed over the 3 day food log I had been given as homework, worried about how my life would end in the next 3 minutes, and the state of my underpants. But I survived. As soon as she opened the book, it was all business. Good, informative, life changing business. She made small changes to what I was already eating, and suggested new foods I needed to add. She gave me portion tips, flavour tips, what to do when I get hungry. I was inspired and ready to rock. I left with more hope than I had ever had about my weight. Change was coming. I wasn't going to be fat anymore. 

This was me in Hawaii, March of 2011. 340lbs. (We went to a shooting range, I usually don't carry an assault rifle.)