Comfort food

We all have a comfort food, don’t we?  A food that makes you feel like you’ve been wrapped in a warm blanket on a cold day.  A food that makes stress or heartache or sickness melt away, the same way your mom can.  Mine is macaroni and cheese.  I don’t need fancy macaroni and cheese with nine cheeses, truffle oil, and bacon.  I just need the macaroni and cheese that comes in a blue box with powdered cheese.  I obviously don’t have a discerning palate.  Macaroni and cheese was my pregnancy comfort food.  Let me be honest, the first few months of my pregnancy were difficult.  I vomited on a regular basis for five months.  The only food that stayed where it was supposed to was macaroni and cheese.  Maybe that’s why I ate it like Kraft was going to stop making it.  Or maybe I ate it because it made me feel better.  Either way, I have realized my flab is made of macaroni and cheese.  Isn’t that a flabulous mental image?  I crack myself up!

What is it about food that brings us a sense of comfort?  I think food elicits good memories.  When we feel that sense of goodness, we want more.  Why else would you eat an entire box of your mom’s cookies, other than the fact that they taste great?  I think they make you feel great too!  In a previous post I talked about how gluten-containing grains contain molecules that fit into the opiate receptors in your brain.  These are the same receptors that work with heroine, morphine, etc (*).  This could explain why comfort foods -- at least those containing gluten -- make you feel euphoric.  Or maybe it’s because those comfort foods remind you of your grandmother, mother, spouse, or children.  I don’t have the answer.   

My husband does not understand the concept of comfort food.  I am not sure men, in general, understand this concept.  I think it’s because women tend to be emotional eaters.  In my mind, comfort food and emotional eating go hand in hand.  I am certainly an emotional eater.  During this challenge, I have had to learn new ways to manage stress.  Normally when I feel stressed out, I reach for a cookie or a peanut butter cup or an extra large sweet tea.  Now I can’t do those things.  I am often seriously overwhelmed by the fact that I can’t stress eat.  Why can’t broccoli be a comfort food?  I try to use exercise to manage stress, but sometimes it doesn’t do the trick.  I guess that is why I feel like I am on a journey.  Not only am I trying to teach myself how to eat healthfully, but I am trying to teach myself new methods for managing stress that don’t involve food. 

What is your comfort food?  

(*) Wolf, Robb.  The Paleo Solution; The Original Human Diet.  Las Vegas, NV: Victory Belt Publishing, 2010.  Print.

Off the rails

Today I feel like I am going to fly off the proverbial rails.  It is a cloudy, overcast day.  I have tricked myself into believing that it’s a brisk winter morning, snow falling slowly from the sky.  Apparently, I have fooled myself into believing I am still in Maryland, since it doesn’t snow in Georgia, but that is beside the point.  The only thing I need to make this brisk winter morning (in August!) bearable is a mocha; a venti peppermint mocha from Starbucks.  Mmmmmmmmmmm!  I can almost taste the collision of peppermint and chocolate burning my throat as I gulp it down.  I would pair my peppermint mocha with an oven-warmed croissant.  I would slowly tear it piece by piece, savoring every buttery bite.  Obviously, I have put no thought into this. 

There is a Starbucks just down the road.  It has a drive-thru and my driver’s side window now works.  For the last few months, it wouldn’t roll down.  Maybe I should have left my malfunctioning driver’s side window broken.  Then I wouldn’t be tempted.  H-E-L-P!

One down, 11 to go!

It’s been one month!  One month of no gluten, no dairy, and no sugar.  One month of making sure I work out three times per week.  I made it through this month and I lived to tell about it!  It was touch and go there at the beginning.  During this one-month period, I have lost some weight, gained strength, and learned to tune out that little voice inside of my head that tells me I can’t do it.  My weight loss has not been as significant as I had hoped.  When I find myself in the midst of a pity party, I realize that this journey is about gaining strength, not losing weight.  Muscle does weigh more than fat, so I am going to try to ignore the scale and focus on my lifts getting heavier each week.  Maybe I will toss the scale into the trash.  My husband also has to remind me (daily) that this is a marathon, not a sprint.  Instant gratification is what we all want, right?  Well, years of mediocrity are not going to fade away instantly.  I am going to be the tortoise here; slow and steady wins the race. 

It’s funny how I have to remind myself of my goals almost daily.  I was at the pool with my family last week, and there was a group of ladies there with their children.  These women were gorgeous, tall, extremely thin, and rocking awesome two-pieces bikinis.  I looked at them longingly, in adoration of their slender Hollywood-like frames.  Then I reminded myself that while they are beautiful, I don’t want to look like them.  I want to look like me, with muscle definition.  I want to be able to Hulk smash anything that gets in my way!  Maybe turning into a green monster is a little extreme, but you get the idea. 

I am going to take each of the remaining 333 days one at a time.  I am going to be proud of myself for my successes and forgiving of myself when I have a misstep.  One down, 11 to go!

Beef… it’s what’s for dinner

Yesterday, the family and I ventured to a very small town about an hour away to pick up our freshly butchered half a cow.  Wait… what?!  Each year we split a locally raised, grass-fed cow with another family.  They take half and we take half.  Half of a cow usually lasts us between six and eight months, although I think once my sweet baby is older, we will need an entire cow.  Our freezer is now packed with steaks, roasts, ground beef, and stew meat.  There is really nothing better than locally raised, locally butchered, grass-fed beef.  If you can buy your beef locally, do it!  The taste of the meat is fresh and delicious.  Support your local farmer and butcher! 

One quick piece of advice… when you arrive at the local butcher to pick up your beef, DO NOT and I repeat DO NOT step out of your vehicle in flip flops and accidentally step into a fire ant mound.  Otherwise, you will end up with TWELVE huge ant bites on your tootsies.  No bueno!  

Self-hatred

Since I started this blog -- about three weeks ago -- I have been inundated with emails, calls, and text messages from wonderful, caring, concerned friends and family.  The overwhelming reaction to my operose journey has been one of concern due to my obvious self-hatred.  Huh?  Let me be clear, I don’t hate myself… seriously!  I know from time to time, I use self-deprecating humor.  This is because I am delusional and think I am a comedian.  This journey is not about self-hatred.  It’s about loving myself enough to allow myself to reach my full potential.  I don’t want to be skinny.  I want to be strong.  I don’t want to be mediocre.  I want to be disciplined.  I want to see if I have enough self-discipline to last one year depriving myself of Little Debbie snack cakes and other junk.  I thought I had the mental toughness to have a baby naturally… boy was I mistaken!  Now I want to see if I have enough mental toughness to survive this year. “Why… what’s the point?”  The point is discipline builds character.  Can’t everyone benefit from an exercise in character building?  Do I have enough discipline to do this, to make it a year?  I don’t know, but I am willing to see.  I sincerely appreciate the concern and am thankful to have all of you as my cheering section on this journey!

Updates and cravings

Each Friday evening from here on out, I will update my nutrition and physical training logs.  Since I started this challenge on a Saturday, my weeks are running Saturday through Friday.  Each is currently updated from this week, just click on the applicable tab above.  Check back each Friday to see what I am eating and how my workouts are progressing!

This week, I have been craving one delicious thing.  DIET COKE!  There is nothing better on a hot summer day, than an iced cold diet coke.  I can taste the rich brown syrupy deliciousness bubbling as I gulp it down.  Oh how I long for you diet coke!

What’s wrong with gluten, dairy, and sugar? Part 3 – sugar.

You know that scene in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory -- the original, not the creepy Johnny Depp remake -- where the doors open and all of the children frolic into a land where everything is made of sugary deliciousness, including a chocolate river?  That is my fantasy!  I would drink from the chocolate river, just as Augustus did and I wouldn’t care if I fell in.  In fact, I would jump in and drink my way out.  Oh sugar, how I love thee.

It breaks my heart to have to utter ill words about my sweet sugar, but here goes.  In my last post about dairy, we discussed how when insulin levels are constantly elevated, sugar finds its way into your fat cells where it is stored as fat.  EEEK!  Wait, it’s sugar that is stored in my fat cells not fat?!  Yes.  “Sugar promotes fat storage and weight gain,” according to Mark Sisson of Mark’s Daily Apple (1). Why?  When you eat something that prompts an insulin response, insulin removes sugar from the blood stream and stores it.  First, it shuttles it into your muscles and liver.  Once those areas are full, it shuttles it into your fat cells.  When you have constantly elevated insulin levels from eating too much sugar, the only place left for the sugar to go is into your fat cells where it is stored as F-A-T.  Additionally, it decreases your body’s production of a hormone critical for appetite regulation (leptin).  Have you ever noticed how hungry you are 20 minutes after you’ve gulped down your venti mocha?  

Gary Taubes, author of Good Calories, Bad Calories and Why We Get Fat: And What To Do About It, wrote an article in the New York Times entitled “Is Sugar Toxic?”  In it, he discusses a lecture given by Dr. Robert Lustig, a specialist on pediatric hormone disorders and the leading expert in childhood obesity at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine.  According to Taubes, “if Lustig is right, then our excessive consumption of sugar is the primary reason that the numbers of obese and diabetic Americans have skyrocketed in the past 30 years.”  Further, “if Lustig is right, it would mean that sugar is also the likely dietary cause of several other chronic ailments widely considered to be diseases of Western lifestyles -- heart disease, hypertension, and many common cancers among them.”  Taubes explains that Dr. Lustig’s use of the word “sugar” includes BOTH cane sugar (white or brown) and high fructose corn syrup.  This is an important distinction, because most people view cane sugar and corn sugar as two separate sugars.  If you have time, and want to hear Dr. Lustig’s compelling argument, watch “Sugar: The Bitter Truth.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

That post made me die a little inside. 

(1) – http://www.marksdailyapple.com/the-definitive-guide-to-sugar/#axzz22RGZIeQP

(2) – http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sugar-t.html?pagewanted=all

What’s wrong with gluten, dairy, and sugar? Part 2 – dairy.

Let me first explain why I don’t eat dairy.  It completely destroys my stomach.  In order to eat a product containing dairy, I have to ingest a Lactaid pill.  This is due to the fact that my body does not adequately digest lactose, the sugar present in milk.  In other words, I am lactose intolerant.  I suppose it is my one genetic flaw.  This post uses the words milk and dairy interchangeably, because I am referencing both milk and dairy products i.e. cheese, cottage cheese, yogurt, cream etc.

Have you ever considered how strange it is that humans are the only mammals that consistently drink the milk of other mammals?  I’m not talking about those heartwarming stories of dogs suckling kittens to keep them alive after their mother died.  I am specifically talking about how most humans drink cow’s milk.  Would you ever consider feeding a calf a bottle of your breast milk?  Seems strange, right?  I digress.

Milk is literally meant to spur growth and enable a growing body.  This is why it is excellent for infants and children.  Milk is the perfect combination of fat, protein, and carbohydrates – in equal portions.  Elite athletes such as the “Fab Five” US women’s gymnastics team drink milk as a part of their post-workout nutrition.  Milk helps these elite athletes recover from their demanding workouts by shuttling protein and glycogen into their muscles (1).  Glycogen is a substance deposited in bodily tissues as a store of carbohydrates (sugar).  

We’ve established that milk is great for infants, children, and elite athletes.  What about the rest of the population?  I’m sorry to say this, but unless you are an infant, child, or elite athlete, the consumption of milk will add body weight.  No, it doesn’t matter if it is skim milk.  As stated above, it is literally meant to spur growth.  If you are trying to reduce body weight, the last thing you want to do is spur growth.  As an aside, I have two associates who have a hard time maintaining their body weight.  In order to keep themselves from being under weight, they consume dairy.  Dairy is the perfect food for them. 

Why will milk add body weight?  Milk is highly insulinogenic, more than most other carbohydrate sources (2).  Seriously, do you think you can speak English?  In other words, dairy intake stimulates insulin secretion much like sugar does.  If you eat too many things that stimulate insulin secretion – as most American’s do – you are going to have insulin levels that are constantly elevated.  According to Mark Sisson of Mark’s Daily Apple, when insulin is constantly elevated, “your body helps the [sugar] find its way into your fat cells, where it is stored as fat. Again – because it bears repeating – it’s not fat that gets stored in your fat cells – it’s sugar (3).” 

Stay tuned for part 3 – sugar.  

(1) – http://www.marksdailyapple.com/dairy-intolerance/#axzz22Q04u5Fp

(2) – http://www.marksdailyapple.com/dairy-insulin/#axzz22Pzr3Kwg

(3) - http://www.marksdailyapple.com/diabetes/#axzz22RGZIeQP