Beginnings

I'd like to start by saying that I do not believe in New Years Resolutions. Change should come in your life when you are ready to take it on. By pure coincidence I have made some decisions this January that I hope will be life changing for me.

I have spent most of my adult life trying to commit to two things: eating better and writing more. The two things are of course totally unrelated, aside from being the bane of my existence. So I've come to the point where I am ready to make changes in both arenas, and in order to fully commit to both I am going to combine them by chronicling my food reformation. I don't care if no one reads it, the point is to create some kind of accountability to both.

I am a food addict. They say the first step is admitting it, and I have been slowly coming to this realization over the last year or so. I have a problem. I have a problem. I have an addiction. It's hard to think about the sustenance your body needs in this manner, but the more I say it the more I see the truth in it. Just like any other addiction it is doing damage to my life. The most obvious of course being the negative effects on my health. But there is more: food controls my moods in a way that I can no longer put up with. I use food to celebrate, and to commiserate. I turn to food as comfort. Food is fuel, it is not a loving support system. I have to stop treating it that way.

So I've admitted it. What next? I've given this a lot of thought and I have a game plan. First I need to stop attempting to diet, and stop making being skinny my goal. I need new goals, because the old ones never worked. If I'm really being honest, being thin has always been my one and only goal in eating better. So I've banished "skinny" from my vocab. When I stopped to think about it, the only time I am miserable about my weight is when I am eating my worst. When I'm eating well, even for short periods, I feel happy, proud of myself and my weight no longer seems like such a terrible curse. So the key is to focus on that feeling... the great feeling I get from putting food in my body that I know is nourishing it.

Still, I need some kind of guide to this new world of food. I've understood for years what carbohydrates, proteins, sugars, calories, etc. do to a body, the roll they play in your overall health. But I've still never been able to really make the connection between this understanding and eating better. So I know that I can't do this all on my own, I need some rules to follow. So I'm watching TV the other day, Oprah to be more specific (No comments from the peanut gallery necessary on this one. I am a closeted Oprah fan, and I'm tired of hiding it.). She's doing an episode about revolutionizing the way we think about food. I don't believe in coincidences, I never have. The universe will tell you over and over again what you need to do to live your best life, you can ignore it, but eventually it will drop a boulder on you if it has to in order to get your attention. I'd rather not wait for the boulder. So, back to Oprah... her guest is author Michael Pollan, and he's written a book called "Food Rules". He's boiled down his stance on eating to one simple idea, which I'm paraphrasing: Eat food, mostly vegetables, not too much. He talks about things that shouldn't seem revolutionary, but do: Don't eat things your great, great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. Food should eventually rot, if it doesn't you shouldn't eat it. Shop around the edge of the grocery store, all the processed fake foods are in the middle. Eat whatever you want, but make it yourself.

So tonight I am going to buy this book. I'm going to read it, and evaluate the ideas I can apply to my life and how to go about doing it. I am going to make a plan. Then I'm going to come back here, every second day and write about how it's going. I'm not saying that I am going to turn my whole life around overnight tonight. I'm not going to wake up tomorrow wanting to eat nothing but apples... but I'm ready to start trying. I'm ready to deal with this the way all other addicts are told to deal with their demons: One day at a time.