Food and Feeling

Since I'm sick, I've given myself permission to chill on the couch until time to brush my teeth and go to sleep. A cup of hot tea may be calling my name....be right back!

After putting my water in microwave, blowing my nose, washing my hands, kissing my husband, and then stirring my tea, I am now on skype to talk to my mom. I was a great conversation, and I was sad that it had to end abruptly. I'm just not feeling so great.

Anyways....to blog:

Up until my "low carb/paleo" phase, I was pretty much following the "what would 'so-and-so' eat" plan for eating. See, I made the mistake of thinking "Well she's really skinny, so I should eat the way she eats and then I'll be skinny." This is how a lot of diet plans are sold to the general public: pictures of skinny and or built people, and the before and after pictures.

Anyways, I have a couple of friends....really a lot of the girls with whom I became close friend, who all were very slim. I decided to watch religiously what they ate...or did not eat. They ate things like ice cream, cheese, pizza, cookies, breads, cake, and so on. Also, in general, they did not excercise, or at least not like I did. I was a runner for years and years....some of my earliest memories are running to a doughnut shop a couple of miles away from my house...and then sometimes running back.

Back to what would my skinny friends eat. The thing was, most of them didn't eat a lot. Or they were the "eat when I'm hungry" kind of people. Or (as I found out later) they are the "I was sick and lost weight because anything I ate made me feel more sick" kind of people

Which, btw, left me thinking that I could only take two or three bites of something before being done with a meal.

You can see why these plans didn't work quite as well for me. Not that I had a ridiculous weight issue, I just had the wrong mindset.

So then entered Alex, our upcoming wedding, and the idea of low-carb. I only wish I had read the book before deciding to limit myself to 75 carbs a day in order to fit back into my wedding dress.

I did fit into my wedding dress, but I quit the low carb plan some weeks before the weedding. I exercised like crazy the week before we got married.

Enter into the on and off again Primal way of eating. I will tell you that it works: I was the smallest I've been since I was 15 (?), but as soon as we decided that we wanted to eat ice  cream and cookies again, anything we lost was gained right back. I slowly moved towards more moderation-mostly because I wanted to wear my clothes.

So we're back on the "eating healthy on a budget" diet. Hot dogs are included, but this week I did buy some healthy chicken thighs...and then fried them with whole wheat flour and veggie oil. Fun stuff. Sure was yummy.

I'm realizing, again, that I can't keep comparing what I eat to what others eat-whether that's my friends, my husband, my coworkers, or the person online or on TV. Just because  cop on TV is super skinny doesn't mean she's really a cop, nor  does it mean she really eats all that food on the show.

So here's to a healthier life. One filled with fruits veggies, and happiness.