Eating healthy is often hard to do..

Today's post is inspired by a family dinner had last night to celebrate my Mother-in-law's 50th birthday. Everyone went to the House of Chou, an upper scale sit-down Chinese restaurant, and ate a nice family meal together. Father-in-law did all of the ordering for the food and kindly ordered my husband and I eat a plate of steamed vegetables (without sauce) and a bowl of brown rice. It was awesomely thoughtful!!

Sometimes this makes me guilty, even though it really shouldn't since it is a positive thing. A double edged sword, perhaps? The thought that others have to go out of their way sometimes to accommodate a healthy and positive lifestyle is probably just one reason more why some people 'fall off' of the diet, or don't even start to begin with. Especially when the diet is vegetarian or vegan, more and more sacrifices must be made on behalf of the lifestyle changer, as well as their friends and family.

It's often rough - You want to do what is best for your body, but you don't want to give anyone any remote reason to feel upset or conflicted by your choices. For example someone makes you something for supper, which is so kind, but you can't eat it because it isn't strictly conforming to your present dietary needs. Makes like difficult for those who are trying to do something nice for you.

Another hardship I've noticed with eating healthy is eating enough. Nutritious fruits, veggies and legumes are often so filling that you get full before you've eaten enough (calorie/fat wise). This is not to mention the fact that North Americans, generally speaking, tend to get rather lazy about food preparation. We live in a world where Velveeta pasteurized, processed, cheese-food product over Macaroni made with enriched white semolina flour counts as a certifiable home-made meal done in 10 minutes or less. Nothing about it is actually home-made! I don't know about you, but anything called "pasteurized, processed, cheese-food product" just doesn't get my tummy grumbling with anticipation of a tasty meal. ;-) But more to the point, in such a state where such items combined together counts as 'homemade' one can likely see the difficulty one faces when trying to prepare a quick meal that requires substantial thought and effort. Honestly, it's easier to just not eat sometimes!

So this leads me to my ultimate question: How does one accommodate healthy lifestyle choices (diet, exercise, sleep routines, etc) in a world that is in a pretty unhealthy state of affairs? Does one only surround themselves with like-minded health-nuts? Does one take the lofty 'eccentric' approach? Does one try their best to explain why they are doing, without trying to insult the choices someone else is making for themselves? How do you turn down well-intentioned gifts? How to you turn down the 'It's a holiday! It only happens once per year, dig in!"? Lastly, how does one make sure they're not ostracized or excluded due to their personal choices?

Below, for your viewing pleasure, is a photo of yesterday's lunch. Bok choy, asparagus, tofu, mushrooms, sprouts and the usual fare.

Eggs out for today!

Some fabulous food!

So, as I mentioned in yesterday's post I've been eating a most raw (or lightly steamed) diet of healthy foods. The "Eat to Live" diet is free of processed foods, free of added sugars, free of dairy, free of animal product, limited in grain and gluten (And only then it must be whole grain sources) and full of healthy legumes, vegetables, and fruit. Here are a few of the things I've cooked up the past couple of days to help my family on our journey toward better health, better stamina, and a healthier colon (I couldn't help myself with that one ;-))

Asparagus, green beans, and veggie patties. The patties are made with carrots, mushrooms, onions, anise, green pepper, pepper, eggplant, flax seed and a few other salt-free spices. They're actually delicious cooked, or raw. I enjoyed them!

The picture to the right was served as a supper dish. Steamed carrots, broccoli and delicious iron-rich kale! Mmm. KAle tastes a bit like raw broccoli, so if you've never tried it before and are partial to the taste of raw broccoli I recommend it highly.  The 'hamburgers' are made with black beans, garlic, pepper, mushrooms, and green peppers. They cooked up nicely, although they gave me some trouble in keep them together. After they had cooked long enough, though, they seemed to be perfectly cooperative in keeping themselves in patty form. The burgers, a bit bland with lack of salt, were served with a homemade salt-free salsa made with tomatoes, onion, a bit of fresh garlic and a healthy heaping of cilantro.

Pictured left was a rather impromptu pumpkin soup made after cleaning out the inside of a pumpkin in preparation for Halloween.The pumpkin I was scraping out was coming out in strings, and the pumpkin itself had almost no "guts". Curious monster hybrid pumpkin! Anyway, the strings (about 3 lbs of them) were mixed with a bit of coconut meat and boiled in a homemade salt-free vegetable soup stock. After everything was cooked it was all blended in the stock, to ensure that no vital nutrients were left behind in the water everything was cooked in. Yum yum!

Pictured right is a simply a quick snapshot of my fridge after doing a round of shopping at the supermarket. What formerly was a fridge of shame for me (full of meat, processed foods, processed condiments..pretty much death in an ice-box!) is now a flourish fridge garden of joy and excitement. I love closing my eyes, reaching inside, and pulling out something new and fabulous to snack on. Eating is exciting, where before it used to be the bane of my existence, the lowest point of my day. Eating should be fun, and this diet is amazing for me. I love it! My husband is struggling a bit (he's so very 'typical American' in his meat and potatoes kind of way) but he's persevering and already seeing substantial weight loss and energy results.  This leads us to a new form of substance abuse: Food. I think more than food though, people become addicted to the chemical garbage that is put into them to make them taste better and last longer. Hubby is definitely having salt/MSG/preservative withdrawals, but thankfully we both know that once it is over and his body has healed from the toxic crap, that he'll start feeling much better. Life is worth living without the kind of foods that cause cancer and make us sick..it just takes a big set (if you'll pardon the use of that phrase) to stick with the 'medicine' we all know is best for us.

I hope everyone reading will commit today to either their 5 fruits and veggies (at least!), and promise to take the stairs instead of the elevator. At least once, just for me. ;-)

Eggs out.                                                                                     

How to make it all make sense

This post will be almost entirely about my physical back story. I figure that the first post was about my mental and emotional background, why not make another me-centric post to get everyone up to speed on where I am.

This is me, to the left, celebrating the 4th of July in 2009. I'm at my heaviest here in clothes that didn't exactly 'fit correctly'. I was growing out of everything, and I was miserable. I sat down though, to a lovely B-B-Q spread that my parents-in-law put together and I ate. And I ate. And I ate. And I was happy. Holidays only come once a year right?

Only they don't. There seems to be a food-centric holiday every few months. This makes me wonder in this day in age where food is plentiful for most what exactly are we celebrating? The outward spreading of our waistlines, the doubling of our chins, the pair of waggling skin 'wings' beneath our arms, &etc are certainly fantastic additions to any person's body... but why did I keep eating things that I knew were harmful to my health?

Because it was completely socially acceptable, and completely encouraged. When people get together they eat. I don't know why, it's just a fact of most standard North-American families. There's nothing wrong with laughing over dinner, but there's something that isn't funny about crying over the same dinner that night when you're all alone. I look at this picture of me (331lbs) and I feel sad for the old me. Even though I felt sad though, I didn't start working out and making positive changes until almost an entire year later.

The photo to the right is a picture of me taken one day shy of a year later, 4th of July 2010. I've lost a fair bit of weight by this point (306-310 lbs) but I'm still not quite 'there yet' with changing my habits and my lifestyle. I started going to Curves June 2010, and started feeling inspired to get my energy back up. Get to who I knew I can be rather than who I was, and scale be damned - I didn't care if the numbers on that scale went down as long as my stamina and general health improved.

I know all these people who had paid (or are paying) for gym memberships but never actually go. Yet still manage to keep a straight face when they say they eat healthy (while chewing on fast food) and exercise regularly. And I can't feel anything for them but complete and all-encompassing empathy. It's so easy to fall into old habits, to soothe one's self with food, and to say that just because you've got a gym membership that you're actually committed to your health. We've all done it...a Big Mac is much more fun than hitting a treadmill (at first!).

Fast forward to today, and I'm doing this amazing Eat To Live lifestyle change. Lots of raw foods, and new and enticing fruits and veggies. Limited whole grains, and no meat or dairy (not too hard since I was already meat and dairy free). I keep losing weight (278.8lbs) and am still trucking onward.

Above is a compilation of two driver's license photos taken a year apart, and the third a photo snapped recently at a bridal boutique. I think the changes in my face are pretty self-evident and a great testament to the hard work I'm putting in! This'll be the last shameless self plug though, I promise. Other posts will be much less me-centric, I promise.

It's a long hard road, but I guess I'm the only one that can walk it for me..right? The road is made a little harder by the fact that I've never been slim in recent memory. At age 12, in 6th grade, I weighed 180lbs. The reason I remember it so well was having to tell my weight to the man that adjusted the ski's during our 6th grade ski trip. Eesh! Embarrassing.Tomorrow's post will cover some of the delicious scrummies that I've been cooking. My husband, good sport that he is, read Dr. Fuhrman's "Eat to Live" book and decided to join me on this adventure. It's a difficult thing...but I know I'll make it!

Eggs out.

Every day is the first day of your very own adventure - if you want it to be.

Whilst reading a book entitled, "The Essence of TAO - An Anthology of Quotations" compiled by Maggie Pinkney , I stumbled upon a short few words that really energized me to continue moving forward with the healthy changes and lifestyle choices that I'm making for myself. These choices will be outlined in my blog, as well as any progress, setbacks, things that make life a little easier, or even things I find that make things harder.

I'm twenty-five years old, I reside in a peaceful middle class suburb with a nearby park, trees and landscaping, neighbors walking their dogs and waving hello as they make some passing comment about the change in the season. It's a nice place, and for the first many months of living here I felt so isolated within myself that it really started to become overbearing. The isolation that we, via society, impose on ourselves just because we're large is really quite stunning. I've always gawked in awe at larger women that wear the latest fashions, rock their curvy bodies, and exceed every expectation when someone tells them they 'can't' or 'shouldn't' due to their size.

For ages I wore cover-ups on my arms, dressed only in black because I felt somehow hidden and swallowed up by it, defaced or erased any photos in which I appeared, and had panic attacks whenever the thought of getting forced into an upcoming family photo surfaced. Why couldn't I have the rail-thin waifish body that the media says I ought to have? Then I'd be proud to stand in a photo with my husband and children. Really, it's all so simple (or so I thought) - Thin people are popular, have friends and have fun and fat people are unpopular, are friendless and lonely. Really, I genuinely believed that. Then began a bout of trying every diet in the book, none of which ever work long term. Yes, you drop 20lbs, but a few months (or sideways glances at a hamburger) later and you've gained it all back. All of it. With interest.

It took five people to make a difference in my life. Make a difference in that self-destructive and pain-filled cycle that was only adding on weight and piling up the loneliness. It makes me wonder how many suicides could be prevented, how many anorexics be saved before their disease begins, and how many lonely people can be lifted up if only they had five people to show them the way. I've recorded these people below, albeit not in chronological order, to thank them for their direct/indirect help in assisting me in doing for myself what should have been done years and years ago.

The first person to help me was a girl named Portia. When I moved to the DC Metro region to live with my husband, there was a long spell where I spoke to no one outside of my family and his. I was a shut-in and afraid of the world. Everything about making friends was frightening because I had allowed myself to hide in the shadows of my own weight for so long that I completely forgot that I had a bubbly, lovable, love-worthy personality! Portia and I met online, and got to chatting. She was even heavier than I was, and had this air about her that filled the room with joy and self-confidence. Around her my self-confidence felt as big as a mountain. She brought me to meetings at an organization she frequented known as "NAAFA" (National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance) where people twice or more my size were having fun. Having fun and being fat had been so mutually exclusive for ages that it never really struck me that they could somehow be combined. I went to a picnic, after Portia's most unfortunate suicide, to remember her for the last time in the NAAFA setting. I wore a black sleeveless sundress, and for the first time in my recent memory I wore it without a shrug. My arms with all of their wobbly bits were there for the world to see, and now looking back I can realize that that was the defining moment where I realized that if someone like Portia can commit suicide...well there were things going on no one can ever truly understand, but I realized that it wouldn't be me. I was going to be happy, and I thank her to this day for giving me the gift of accepting who I am.

The second person to help me on this journey was a friend named Bethan. She'd always been, puttering around on MSN, with a kind word and this unrelenting love of who I am. Really, for the longest time I never quite understood how should could possibly tolerate me. Tolerate who I was, how I acted, how I thought. For a long time my head was in a dark place, and even though I was constantly well-meaning I could never lift out of that self-demeaning slump. Bethan is a curvy lady, and she's gorgeous. All around me I attract curvy, gorgeous women who may struggle with self-acceptance on the inside but never let anyone else realize that. They're strong, the kinds of rocks that we all need to have in our lives lest we float away in that deep, dark sea of self-loathing. She started a fashion blog, about how to be plus size AND fabulous. Again, being fat and being fashionable, feeling good in your clothes and feeling hot in your curves had always been mutually exclusive...what exactly was going on here? Suddenly the world started turning a little faster. What Portia had helped build in me was the first tier, and now I suddenly found a second tier slapped on in mortar and stone. For the first time in recent memory I went to a party, without my children (so it was a bonafide social outing), and I wore a corset. I didn't wear it to flatten or hide my curves, instead I wore it to accentuate them and to feel sexy.

The third person was a friend named Amanda. When I first met her at age ten, she was one of those rail-thin people. She struggled with food, and due to issues beyond her control her health took a drastic nose-dive. The medicine she was put on to keep her lungs functioning made her gain weight. More, and more piled on and when we'd talk about boys while reading the latest "Teen" there'd always be that worm of self-loathing eating her up. I could see it behind her pretty blue eyes, even when I was a young teen. She wasn't physically what she used to be, and although she was still quite arguably beautiful, I don't know that she ever truly realized that. Thin was in, and for a long time that was all there was to it. She went dark places, places I don't wager need discussing, and after years of health problems, self-image issues, and uncertainty she met a few good friends, and her soon-to-be-husband. She entered a whirl-wind romance, the kind we all love to love and long to have, and found herself working hard at the gym and dropping a ton of weight. Not a literal ton, of course, but she was back to herself inside and out. She taught me hard work and effort are required to lose weight. I mean, we all know that and we can all recite how to lose weight in the "diet, exercise, drink water, sleep well" mantra but how many of us actually chant that mantra and then live it? Not many, but she did. That whirl-wind romance turned into a solid and happy marriage and I'm so happy and thankful that she finally has the life and love she has absolutely always deserved. She got happiness...why couldn't I also have this? In my fear I hesitated, for months, and then I up and decided one day to go to a gym. She had done it, why not I? I didn't do it to get skinny, lose weight and be 'in', I did it to be happy. I did it for me.

The fourth person was my husband. In many ways he hurt my cause, and wasn't my champion, but he always loved me and was always there. He wanted to fix and make better everything that I had broken. The thing that glued the cuts back together for a very long time was food and he would get it for me. He would enable me, he would feed me, and he would hold me when I cried over a very real food addiction. My weight climbed to over 330lbs (331, to be exact, as measured by a GP) which was over 70lbs heavier than when I first met him 4 years prior. I had allowed myself to gain a ten year old, in a relatively short period of time, and I had nothing to show for it but severe depression, mood swings, control issues and a sharp tongue. How did he help me? He loved me unconditionally and enabled me without restraint, and through him I met the final person that helped the last piece of the puzzle click into place.

The fifth person is myself. Just me. No big and amazing story, just a simple girl who likes animals and stories, art and cooking. My husband had taught me that I had to stop relying on other people to fix me. That I had especially stop relying on him to fix me because 1) it wasn't fair to ask of him, and 2) he was as broken as I was. We started working together, and accomplishing much more. Everything really clicked, and suddenly I had actualized the steps of my own happiness!

The quote I had mentioned earlier, in case you find yourself interested, is by St. Francis de Sales and is as follows, "Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections, but instantly set about remedying them - every day, begin the task anew."

In considering the ramifications, meanings, and personal interpretations behind the quote (as I am wont to do) it comforted me - I am finally in a point in my life where I am looking at myself critically, but with the affection that I've earned. I don't hate myself anymore, and I won't tolerate being mistreated or bullied by anyone because of my size. I won't allow myself to mistreat or bully me either.

Did you hear that Self? It's time you and I had our day of reckoning and you accept that I'm going to do it all for me. I'm not going to mamby-pamby around the issues. I'm going to be me, I'm going to be healthy, and I'm going to be fabulous and there isn't a damned thing you can do about it.

That's all for today, though! More posts will be forthcoming with some of the delicious and healthy goodness I've been making for my family, as well as some of the ups and downs of being vegetarian and a my very un(vegetarian)-friendly world. Sabotage, desperation, and sinister deeds to follow...sounds almost like a Soap, doesn't it?

Egg out.