Eating Real Food, Being Good to Myself

One of the big changes that I've made in my new apartment is keeping my kitchen more or less clean, well-stocked, and ready to prepare meals. I can't pretend I haven't had weeks that seemed more takeaway and leftovers than cooking, but by and large I've done pretty well at owning the food that I prepare.

Sometimes I make really healthy meals, like my current favorite baked eggs with balsamic kale, tomatoes, and cannellini beans (above). I bought a zucchini noodle maker and got all excited about zoodles with shrimp scampi from this recipe before I realized I really don't like or know how to properly cook shrimp.

At least the zucchini noodles came out ace.

More frequently, though, I've been making gemelli with sausage, mushrooms, and peppers in a tomato sauce, with garlic bread and ice cream. Or crepes with chicken, mushrooms, and broccoli in a cream sauce. Or a pasta dish with chicken and sundried tomatoes in a mozzarella cream sauce. Not exactly diet food over here, but the point was to enjoy cooking again and get back into the habit.

At work, I still struggle to make healthy choices for lunch. It seems uncanny that on the day when I am feeling resigned to a salad, one of my coworkers will ask to order Mexican or burgers (we order together and the company pays). It is often challenging to find the least dangerous item on a NYC restaurant's lunch menu, but sometimes I have success.

I'm a big fan of a Beet'wich, but it's hard to convince everyone to order from the place that makes them.

While I am glad that I am not gaining weight and relieved that I'm not exactly at the heaviest I've ever been, I'm also not losing weight, and push is coming to shove.

I got a physical and a bunch of bloodwork done because in addition to my usual mid-February anemia / vitamin D deficiency, I was feeling light-headed all the time and fainting most mornings. My new doctor chided me for being dangerously dehydrated and kept telling me that I'd feel a lot better about myself if I lost weight. (Here I should interject to say that my doctor is kind of dumb and sloppy and I don't plan to stick with her for long. When I said I was concerned that my depression was getting out of hand, she said, "Oh, you are depressed because you're overweight and don't like how you look?" We definitely disagree on mental health and its contributing factors.)

But I do know that getting my nutrition better balanced and my weight within a healthy range will help with depression, both organic and psychological. I am also trying to manage job stress and anxiety better, improve my sleep, and address a few other health concerns.

This week I went back through this blog and picked out a few meals that I always enjoyed and didn't find too tedious to make. I coughed up the $150 for a Fresh Direct delivery coming this Saturday full of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and healthy snacks. I'm trying not to be punitive toward myself or officially DIET, so much as to reintroduce healthier meals in place of the rich sausage and pasta fest I enjoyed this winter.

And as odious as I find it in concept, I need to start exercising regularly. The only upside of my previously very long and exhausting commute was that it involved about 5 miles of walking every work day, and that's now cut drastically down to maybe 20-30 minutes a day. I need to use the boon of free time to improve my fitness and not just catch up on Netflix and knitting.

I sincerely hope and believe that this spring will bring good things, starting with small steps toward better health. I am keeping the mantra of Be good to yourself instead of the plethora of negative thoughts I usually have, and it's a much more positive experience already.

Trying, yet again, to develop better habits

On occasion I'll click over here or look at the Blogger icon on my phone, maybe get a comment notification that isn't spam, and I feel like a total fool. "I'm the heaviest I've ever been," I think, "I've basically stopped trying, who am I kidding?"

Then I get good and angry with myself because actually, no, I haven't stopped trying, and it doesn't really matter how many times I try and fail, so long as I get up and try again. (I'm sure I'm paraphrasing someone who put it much more eloquently).

At the end of 2014, after a really turbulent year, I moved into a new apartment. My commute is reduced from 2.5-3 hours each way to about 45 min. I am noticeably, appreciably happier and calmer every single day, and I am delighted to have made such a positive change.

I made a promise to myself when I was looking at apartments: I am going to be happy and healthy in my new home. That sounds easy enough, especially when I've gained 4-5 hours of free time every work day, but it is also incredibly easy to slide back into bad habits, to give up on things and despair, to relent to unhappiness and wallow in paralysis instead of trying to make meaningful changes.

I also made the deal, or compromise really, that happy came before healthy, which is to say I'm trying not to stress about my body (it doesn't help anyway). I'm trying to be positive and enthusiastic instead of beating myself up and getting frustrated. Eventually I know I will have to get tougher and hunker down, but for now the motto is: Come on, be nice to yourself.

Changing lifelong habits and solving decades-old problems won't happen overnight. I realize that I need to be patient and persistent, gradually introducing changes towerd long-term goals.

Step one was finding an apartment closer to work and everything I do in the city. Step two is getting it to be a well-organized and productive space. I'm especially pleased with the progress I've made on the kitchen, namely picking one that I actually enjoy spending time in (my previous kitchen was terribly claustrophobic, and this one is the opposite). I've challenged myself to keep the kitchen clean and usable, so that I can get back in the habit of cooking again.

As much as possible, I am buying ingredients and not processed food. But yes, there are still the occasional cookies, candies, or ice cream. I'm planning one or two large-pot style dinners that I can eat throughout each week, and I'm loading those with vegetables. I'm making green smoothies at night for breakfasts, but if I fall asleep early or just don't feel like sipping spinach the next morning, I'm not giving up if I have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for breakfast instead.

Once I am comfortable cooking and eating real food, breaking my habit of delivery, eating out, or relying on prepackaged foods, I'm going to segue from pasta or chili to healthier choices. I'm going to try to order more salads and less Pad Thai for lunch at work. And most of all, I'm going to aim for exercising much more than I do (which has been a whopping once on the elliptical machine, for 20 min., dogging it so much that it was no challenge to keep reading my book).

I have roughly 75 pounds I'd like to lose. I'm going to break it into 25-pound increments, with maintenance periods built in. In theory, if I'm doing it right, I will be developing healthy habits as I go so at the end I will just have a healthier lifestyle, and it won't feel like I'm constantly dieting and trying to lose weight. Won't that be nice.

More than anything, I'm going to keep trying.