WONDERFUL-WORLD

Since Diva wrote a blog about trying to kick a diet into gear, I decided to share my recent "diet" experience.

As I've said before, I quit smoking in January.  As I marked off the 6th month of my quit on the calendar, I started pondering other health issues that I should pay attention to.  One is that I am going to a dermatologist for a once-over on my sun freckles.  A bigger issue, though, that I decided to look at, is my diet.  I don't mean diet as in a dirty, four letter word.  I mean nutrition.

At the end of the week, I looked back at what I had eaten.  I'm terrible about only eating one meal a dinner; a late lunch/early dinner.  My menu for the week looked something like this:

BBQ (beef and chicken), potato salad (twice as there were leftovers),

eggs, sausage, toast and grits (are grits a grain or a veggie from corn?)

grilled chicken, mac & cheese, grean beans (twice due to leftovers)

homemade burgers with fixin's and chips

cheerios w/milk (midnight snack; dinner substitute)

take-out pizza

icecream

drinks were milk (a lot of milk), Coke and Caff-Free Diet Coke, and water (though not as much as a person should drink and usually increased above one or two glasses only on days that I was active outside, like when mowing).  I also had a few beers during our BBQ.

Well, this list just looked horrible to me.  There are no fruits at all, and only potato salad and green beans for veggies.  Since the potato salad was made with mayo, I don't think it should be considered to be a healthy veggie, so we're left with about a cup of green beans for the week.  Wow.  An entire week without fruit and only scant veggies.  Since my veggie garden is pretty much spent, my veggie intake dropped to virtually none.  It doesn't take a scientist to realize that this is a horrible diet.  No wonder my body is sluggish and puffy in appearance.  I decided to try something different.  I decided to look at my body as a machine, and food as the fuel that this wonderful machine needs in order to function.  Instead of looking at food as a necessary evil or merely a means by which to satisfy my taste buds or fill my stomach, I wanted to look at it as getting the most bang (nutrients) per bite.  Many people already think this way, but many more don't - or they only claim to.  Looking at food in this way was not some sort of sudden realization or understanding of a topic that somehow everyone else had already figured out.  It was recognizing a terrible, lazy pattern of eating.  We all learned the food groups in school.  We all know how to eat better.  I (we?) simply dropped the ball on properly fueling my body.

I started with fruits.  I love fruit, so there is absolutely no reason for me not to eat fruit daily.  Berries are in season, and they are some of the richest foods in antioxidants that our bodies need, along with vitamins, and low or zero fat.  With the exception of plums, the richer the color of most fruits and vegetables, the more antioxidants they contain.  In the past week, I've had major quantities of fresh blueberries and strawberries.  How nicely different it was to sit down with a bowl of berries (no topping) for a desert and/or snack.  I've had cantelope, yellow meat watermelon (a first for me...yum!), bananas, lemons and more berries this past week.

I also tackled the veggies, or lack thereof.  Sometimes I crave celery.  I don't know what vitamins it is rich in, but whatever it is, my body wants it.  In the past week, I've eaten an entire bunch of celery as snacks.  I've also had green beans, steamed yams (mashed, with a little butter - I love that!), brussel sprouts, carrots and salad - salad once a day, every day.  Instead of dressing, I use a bit of feta cheese for flavoring.  The veggies took up much more room on my plate than anything else.

As for meats, I had a salmon fillet, talapia (sp?) fillet, grilled chicken (three times), and the tender side of a porterhouse steak.  As for grains, I had a bowl of Cherrios (with more berries) on most days, and had brown rice one day.  I've made (and drank) more iced tea (no sugar) in the past week than I have in the past year, and increased my water intake considerably. 

So here we are, a week later.  I felt like all I did was eat, eat, eat last week, but the feeling in my body is WONDERFUL!  Even my teeth feel better!  I don't feel sluggish, the puffy appearance has subsided, and I have much more energy.  My memory seems to have improved as well.  I actually noticed that I wasn't hungry most of the time. I don't think I lost any weight - that wasn't my goal in the first place, but I'll take it if it happens.  There may just be some truth to the saying that you have to eat in order to lose weight.  There is certainly truth in saying that you have to EAT right to LIVE right.

I can't help but wonder when/why/how I, and probably many of you, fell away from nutrition in lieu of faster, easier, cheaper, larger meals.  I suppose we can blame it on working too many hours to take the time, being in a hurry to get the kids to their activities, or needing to spend more time on homework, baths and laundry than on menu planning.  Every day we instinctively know (or tell ourselves) that we need to take a shower and brush our teeth.  Why don't we also instinctively put nutritious foods in our bodies?  When we are raising our children, we (most of us anyway) try to make sure they are eating a balanced diet.  Why, when they aren't eating with us, do we eat whatever makes us full, without regard to nutrition?  For many, the only "nutrition" thoughts that cross our minds is whether or not something is fattening and, even then, we often don't give that much thought.  We take better care of our cars than we do our bodies.  We change the oil, balance and rotate the tires, replace worn batteries, belts and hoses.  We shiver at the thought of putting a watered-down fuel in the gas tank.  Why do we treat our bodies worse than we treat our cars?  I've talked with some friends and family members about our views on nutrition, and the only two people that actually paid attention to the nutrients in their foods are diabetic.

I feel so much better with the simple addition of more (much more) fruits and vegetables into my diet!  Who knows - maybe during the past week I happened to eat the right amount to thwart off a disease that was on the verge of activating in my body.  I've found myself looking up nutritional values on many fruits and veggies, and then deciding what to buy at the store.  I hope to keep up with paying attention to my nutrition, especially when the cooler months arrive.  It seems easy to eat lots of fruits and veggies during the hot summer, but pasta dishes in the fall and winter tend to call my name.

I know we have some bloggers that are very conscious of their nutrition.  I am curious as to their eating habits, but also those of the other bloggers who were eating similar to how I was, and their reasons why.  Be honest - you will not convince me that I'm the only person here that had terrible eating habits.