Food for Thought/Thoughts on Food

A friend of mine from work just completed the Master Cleanse. In case you are not familiar with this master of a cleanse; it involves having nothing but water with lemon juice, cayanne pepper, and maple syrup, straight water, and herbal laxative tea for 7 days. When I hear about cleanses, I tend to be really skeptical, but I learned a lot of interesting things from her. It has less to do with weight loss and more to do with cleaning out toxins and clearing your bowels of junk that has been sitting in there for way too long.



Until recently, I have never stopped to think about the effects of what I am putting in my body. I always figured that since I eat Taco Bell only sparingly, don't really eat chocolate or soda, and usually have a vegetable or two or three each day, and I'm not at all overweight; that I was healthy. But only recently have I discovered that I suffer from sugar and salt "hangovers" way more often than hangovers in the traditional sense ;) I LOVE my snacks, and have no problem eating a half a giant bag of Sour Cream and Onion Baked Lays instead of real dinner on those nights I get home from work and Ross doesn't get home until 8pm. I'm not fat, so its okay, right? RIIIGHHHTTT?!?!?!



No.



I am not being that nice to my body! Binging on all those simple carbs are making my poor pancreas work overtime in order to process all the crap. When I was pregnant I was borderline for gestational diabetes. I had to take that gruesome 3 hour glucose tolerance test and the numbers spoke for themselves:



Baseline: 71 (perfectly normal-pass)

1 hour (post 100g sugar): 235, and way above acceptable limits for the purposes of the test

2 hour: 145ish; Within acceptable limits for the test

3 hour: 29. Labratorically speaking, that is considered "critically low". Like the word I just made up? I think its pretty awesome.



The covering physician who doesn't know me, passed it off as a lab error. My real physician called me as soon as he saw the results to make sure I wasn't passed out behind a dumpster. The truth is, I was swerving along the Milwaukie Expressway in cold sweats (okay, maybe I wasn't swerving), chugging a Dr. Pepper and scarfing handfuls of McDonalds fries. Why Dr. Pepper? I never drink Dr. Pepper. I was craving SUGAR though. The moral of the story, and what my OB and I discussed later was that I didn't have diabetes, but that my pancreas does NOT handle high doses of sugar very well and I am at risk for developing diabetes. For the remainder of my pregnancy, I would do a pretty good job of avoiding the sweets. Then Maddy came. Then ravenous breastfeeding appetite came. Then the attitude that "I can eat whatever I want since I'm burning thousands of calories breastfeeding" came. Then lost all the weight, then the mentality of, "Hey I lost all that weight! I can cut myself some slack!" came. I didn't gain it all back (just 2 lbs) but I know I am not healthy enough.



So cutting to the chase, here is my reasonable mini goal (since radical goals like, "I'm not eating red meat from now on!" are ridiculous, since it is so unattainable without a bigger drive):



Eat MORE raw foods. Try not to eat blatant simple sugars.



I am contemplating a Raw Food cleanse for a week or so, but I refuse to do anything like that until I'm mentally ready. I am starting by trying to have my breakfast, lunch, and snacks be mostly raw foods, since I don't have as much of an affinity to eat a ton during those times. Once 5-6 pm hits, I want FOOD. Probably because of my lack of wanting to eat much before then, which I understand isn't so good. Its also for emotional reasons; I think. 5-6pm symbolizes the end of the work day, and getting closer to the end of Ross's work day. It symbolizes my family being together and enjoying eating with each other. I love to eat. That won't change, and I don't want it to. So I will just try to avoid simple sugars except for special occasions. I have done it before; when I was pregnant, and when I was on Weight Watchers. I can do it now, and use my family history of diabetes and my obvious risk for it as my motivation.



The catch is that I don't want to have "fake" sugar. I'll have the occasional Diet Pepsi, but no Splenda in my daily morning coffee. To be honest, I don't know what brought this all on. I think it is a combination of spending time with my naturopath father in law and spending more time with my sisters (and sister in law) and their healthier inclincations towards food. After hearing my friend's thoughts and journey with her cleanse, I really just made that decision.



Food Goal :

Buy more local/organic . I used to scoff at the words "Organic" and "Local", because in the real world, it has meant $5 for two tomatoes. I know some people think that its worth it, but it is not for the thrifty minded. Not only that, but its so unfair to those who are FORCED to be thrifty. My opinions about this magally changed 100% when I discovered Justy's Produce right down the street. It is 100% family owned and operated. This place is fantastic and you can get delicious organic and local food for CHEAPER than Fred Meyer- just the way it should be. Seriously; you can save loads of money by getting all your produce here (not to mention make your own bouquet of beautiful flowers for $1 from their fresh cut flowers section). Even if its out of your way, you can come visit me and my beautiful family ;)



At my last trip to Justy's I picked up a tomatillo and decided to make salsa out of these things:

Its was AMAZING salsa, and will be made again, and again. No recipe; just the ingredients above (plus a yellow tomato and 3 more cloves of garlic, and 1/2 a seeded jalepeno- not pictured. Not so smooth on the cooking photography skills yet!) and salt and pepper. All veggies were purchased at Justy's for under 5 dollars and made enough salsa to serve 4 hungry peopleGo make it. NOW. The tomatillo is a key ingredient!

Okay enough on food. I am overdue for a Maddy Update, which will be coming soon.