A Change Would Do You Good

Hopefully, right?  So I’ve been doing this whole new diet, new pills, new everything business for 5 days now, and it’s definitely been different.  Well, some of it has, at least.  After discussing things with my mom (who is a nurse and is very up to date on such nutrition things) and one of my doctors, I’ve opted to go with a modified version of South Beach instead of the AHA diet sheet that I was given for a few reasons.

1. The AHA diet sheet I was given is out of date and flies in the face of most of the new research and a fair amount of common sense stuff that I know about nutrition (“Don’t use butter because it’s full of fat – eat margarine instead” – really?  “Fish is high in fat and should be eaten sparingly” – mrr?)
2. It’ll be a lot easier to stick to, makes about 12 times more sense, and my husband is willing to do it with me if it’s going to involve real food.
3. The food looks better.

So basically I’m on a whole-food, low-fat diet with lots of veggies and lean protein and complex carbs.  I’ll probably end up making my own bread, because I like making bread and I know I can do a better job than my grocery store.  I’ve been eating this way since Tuesday, and I’ve noticed a few things…

• Having purged my kitchen, there is So Much CRAP in  most of the mass produced food that we eat.  And not like, candy bars and ramen noodles.  Dry stuffing mix?  Yep – partially hydrogenated soybean oil.  HOT COCOA MIX?  That one had partially hydrogenated coconut oil (which is DOUBLY stupid, because coconut oil is a solid at room temperature already).
• I’m having a bit of a crisis of conscience because all the crap that we purged out of the kitchen is in a box for the food bank.  I don’t want to throw it away, but I feel like I’m passing on bad food ideas to people that really should eat good food…
• Shopping is faster and easier, but requires a fair amount of prep (but I did menu planning already).  I go through the fresh produce, the dairy, and the meat/seafood counter, and then swing through the frozen goods and pick up any “not food” items we need (like paper towels), skipping probably 75% of the store.
• Shopping is also more expensive.  Like – substantially so.  We’ll see how this food shakes out, but based on a menu planning guideline, we shopped for 10 days worth of food and it cost more than a normal 2 week trip.
• Part of that is probably because my husband has decided to do this with me, and so will no longer eat lunch from the cafeteria at work (YAY), which will hopefully save us more money than the increased cost, but we’ll see how that actually works out.

As for how this is making me *feel*, that’s a little harder to quantify.  For one thing, this kind of food is definitely superior for taking huge handfuls of vitamins.  I’ve found that if I’m taking my morning or evening handful with a meal like this, I don’t get nauseated and/or throw up everything I’ve just swallowed (which I did the first time I took them all, since I did so on an empty stomach – stupid idea!).  I also feel… different.  In general.  Hard to put a finger on why that is, but I don’t really feel like myself.

I’m trying not to obsess over food, but that’s been hard, given that this is all still pretty new.  I don’t like obsessing over food (much like I don’t like obsessing over the gym).  Part of me died a little bit inside when I went looking for “diet cookie recipes” on google.  So we’ll see – maybe I’ll be better about it in another week or two.