Finding Balance

I haven’t been writing here as much as I first thought I might during this Whole30 program, and I’m okay with that. (If you scroll back you’ll see that I’ve never been great at blogging here regularly, so it’s par for the course.) But I want to jot down the main thought that’s been running through my head over the past few days:

When I finish the program, I hope to fall somewhere in between the way I used to eat and the way I’m currently eating. Balance – what a concept. Seriously – there’s not a lot of joy in eating according to the Whole30 guidelines, and I WANT to enjoy food. Sure, a healthy diet means that food serves as fuel to get your body through the day. But food does a lot more than that – it brings people together, it carries traditions through families, it serves as a gift in times of trouble, and hell, it brings a smile to my face.

I think when people move too far down the comfort food road – which I’ve definitely done during times in my life– then you need to step back and take a look at what’s driving you to sooth yourself with food, and what you can do about it. And so I do appreciate having this 30 days to reevaluate how I personally view food, what I personally put in my body, and how I personally feel when I eat whole unprocessed foods vs the standard Susan Diet. So its been a fun experiment, I’m learning new recipes, I’m learning my triggers and cravings, and I’m figuring out what kind of diet I’d like to have when I’m done.

So hey, its teaching me a lot.

And in the end, there will be ice cream. There will be more veggies and fewer snacks, but god almighty, there WILL be ice cream.

Thoughts from Days 2, 3, and 4 of Whole30

So here's a random sampling of things I've said, thought, or texted over the past few days as I embrace the program that is Whole30:

Seriously, it's like my stomach is trying to box its way out of my body.

I'd kill for a cookie right about now.

I definitely think there's a balance to be had. Somewhere between "donuts are my BFF" and "here's a perfectly balanced plate of fuel."

I'd kill for a donut right about now.

Kale can go to hell.

I'd kill for a brownie right about now.

Wait, coconut milk goes bad after TWO DAYS? What sort of racket are these coconuts running?

One thing I know about myself is that I've always sought comfort in food.It's insane how happy food makes me.

I HOOVERED it because it was so gross. I just wanted to be done with it.

But. But. But. Why does everyone else get to eat the mini pizzas?

Whose brilliant idea was this anyway?

I do NOT want to quit. Don't leave before the miracle happens and all that.

Day 1 of Whole 30: Pretty Sort Of OK I guess

I wish I had something interesting to report about today, my first day of eating according to the Whole30 Program. But so far I've had no big revelations -- not that I expected any -- and the main side effect I've noticed is a small dull headache and some pretty significant cravings for a Coke with a Hostess Cupcake.

Yeah, no big shocker there.

Coffee made with coconut milk instead of cream and sugar is still pretty good. 

I'm doing a ton of cooking and a ton of dishes. Like, seriously, the dishwasher is running ALL THE TIME.

I keep hearing about mysterious things people tell me I need to find, like "coconut aminos" and "compliant bacon." (Side note: Compliant Bacon is my new band name.) There's a metric TON of information out there about how to rock a Whole30 -- too much information, I"m finding. I just read a Facebook post from a women who's about 17 days in and mistakenly ate one kernel of corn. She wants to know if she needs to start over.

I will never be that person.

Here's a few photos of what I've eaten so far today:

* Breakfast (photo on left): Trader Joe's sausage sauteed with onions and roasted peppers, two scrambled eggs with tomatoes and avocado, two cups of coffee.

* Lunch (photo on right): Grassfed ground beef sauteed in homemade taco seasoning, served over spinach with onions, tomatoes, salsa, and a handful of olives.

* Dinner (currently cooking): steak that I picked up yesterday from the farmer's market, smashed potatoes with garlic, roasted carrots.

I think the carrots moved from roasted to burned. We'll see. I generally never eat carrots so I need to find some good recipes.

Day one is almost in the books. It'll get tougher, but hey, I'm a bit tougher too.

Whole30: Day Zero

Here's the thing you may or may not know about me: I've gone back and forth a lot in life trying to do things that I think are healthy for me. In between those spurts, however, I've spent WAY more time doing things that are extremely UNhealthy for me. And when I back up and look at the big picture, I realize that I really don't know what it means to feel good in my own skin.

Let's start with the basics. I eat a lot of crap. Sugar has been my best friend and constant companion for pretty much my whole life. Last weekend, I hoovered a box of mini donuts in less than a day. Oh yeah, and that's not unusual. Like, at all.

Pizza? Yes please. Garlic bread? Yes please. Dessert? Never turned it down. Veggies? Not my favorite.

And I'm tired a lot of the time. I feel bloated way more than one person should. I've only got one body to carry me through this world, and I haven't been giving it the care of the love it deserves. I want to change that, and I'm going to try an experiment for the next 30 days to see if I can figure out what it means to actually feel good in This Body.

You might have heard of it. The Whole30. It's an eating program based on the book It Starts With Food. The idea is pretty simple -- for 30 days, you stop eating foods that are known to cause chronic inflammation, hormonal imbalance, digestive problems, and psychological attachment (hey there, sugar cravings, how you doin'?). And instead, you focus on whole, unprocessed foods like meat, seafood, eggs, vegetables, fruit, and healthy fats. When you get to the end of 30 days, you slowly reintroduce the foods you've cut out and see how your body responds.

Oh yeah, and you don't weigh yourself the entire time. The focus isn't on weight loss, its on fundamentally changing your relationship with food.

So, in no particular order, that means I won't be eating sugar (sniff), grains, dairy, legumes/soy, or alcohol. And aside from feeling pretty okay about the no alcohol part, the rest is going to be hard.

Here's the thing: I know how to do hard. Hard doesn't scare me anymore. Life has thrown me hard, harder, and hardest this past year, and I've made my way through it every. single. time. You can't go around it, you can't go over it, you just go through it.

If anything, what I've found is that the things that are hard-won are the things that are worth it. 
I've spent the past few days cleaning out my cupboards to get rid of things I can't eat, and restocking the shelves and fridge with a crapton of meat, veggies, and fruit. Jasmine and Josie have been epically curious about all the food that will be leaving the house for the next month. (And I'm pretty sure I found some of the recalled Kraft Mac N Cheese in there.) 

I'm not throwing any of this stuff away; it's just going into hiding. Because I honestly don't anticipate turning into Susan Who Never Eats Brownies. That's just never gonna happen. But I really do want to change my relationship with food. To view it as a source of driving This Body through life rather than a source of comfort. I've comforted myself my whole life with food, and I'd like to see if I can change that.

(** By the way, here's my obligatory statement that I really don't care what you personally think about Whole30. Actually, let me rephrase that: any empowering sentiments you'd like to share are most welcome and encouraged. Any "you know you could really accomplish the same thing just by moderating what you eat" or "my brother/cousin/uncle/best friend tried to eat that way and almost DIED" or other self-righteous sentiments can be documented in your own blog.)

My sister is doing it with me. She did the Whole30 a year or two ago and is anxious to do it again, so I've got my partner in crime and my shoulder to lean on. I'm kind of excited to see what the next month holds for me. 

Let's do this.

Chewing Gum Is Really Gross, Chewing Gum I Hate The Most.

Okay folks, I'm just gonna put this out there. I'm probably going to piss a few of you off, and I've decided I'm okay with that, because the truth is that you've probably been irritating ME for years and I've just never said anything. 

Maybe in time you'll forgive me, and if you don't, then we probably weren't meant to be true friends.

Here's the deal: if you chew gum, I hate you. And I want you to stay far, far away from me.

Gum chewers are a special breed of awful. They drive me up a wall. They chomp, they snap, they pop, they chew chew chew, and then they start back over again. Some of them don't realize how much annoying noise they are making. Others realize it and just don't care. A select few -- ones I like to call 'liars' -- will swear that they chew in absolute silence.

I'm here to tell you you're not silent. You are making disgusting noises with your mouth, and I really wish you'd knock it the hell off.

Okay, here's the part where I confess to my own stake in the matter. I read a book a few months ago called The Highly Sensitive Person, and it's like I was reading a novel about myself. In a nutshell, HSPs (as we are called) have biological differences in their nervous system that causes us to hit a saturation point with external stimuli much faster than everyone else. So things such as lights, noises, and crowds can overwhelm a HSP whereas someone else might not even notice them. As I read through this book, I kept saying to myself "oh my god, that's me! That's me!" Weird quirks about me that I never strung together before now seemed to make more sense. Things like:

• I get extremely anxious when I have to go to a crowded mall at Christmas time. I've been known to evacuate and leave family members inside because I just can't do it.
• I have to turn the car radio off when I'm driving in an unfamiliar area because my brain can't concentrate on navigation and music at the same time.
• I can't have the light in the kitchen on when I'm physically in another room. I will notice it and it will bother me until I go turn it off.
• I've asked co-workers to stop eating sunflower seeds at their desk or to take their jangly bracelets off because the sound was so disturbing.
• If I'm in a movie theatre or other large audience, I have to get up and move if I have a spit sucker near me (apologies to any old people who take offense, but it's usually an oldster whose dentures don't fit correctly and who constantly sucks spit between their teeth to correct it. Ew.). And I can hear spit suckers rows and rows away from me.

I could go on and on with other examples, but hopefully you get the idea. Apparently 20% of the population is classified as Highly Sensitive, so it ain't just me (and I know more than a few of you out there reading this are in the same boat, because I've sat through movies and concerts with you and we've both rolled our eyes at the person behind us rustling their candy wrapper.)

So I can say with all honestly that the noise from gum chewers is probably way ickier to me than it is to the other 80% of the population.  And yet, I still thing gum chewing is one of the oogiest things out there, and I wish you all would stop it.

I just learned that Singapore has banned chewing gum. I'd like to meet the man who wrote that law and shake his hand.

Here's the two things that bother me the most:

1. The Holstein Effect. You know you look like a cow chewing its cud, right? Right? You don't see it? Sadly, you are probably like a smoker who no longer realizes their car and clothing and house all smell like cigarettes. You're too far gone to have an objective view. So let me share with you: you look like a cow. And it's gross.
2. Remember trash cans? No, I don't think you do. Because otherwise you'd be using them to dispose of your gum. Instead, it's on the bottom of my shoe or on my knee. I can't tell you how many times I've stepped in gum, sat in gum, or stuck my pant leg to a table because a wad of gum was stuck up under there. Are there no trash cans in your world, gum chewers?

 You gum chewers might think this is overgeneralizing, but I'm going to tell you something: you're wrong. Sorry, but it's true. Think you're the quietest gum chewer in the world? You're not. Trust me.

Chewing gum is really gross. Chewing gum I hate the most.

A writer writes -- always

Some of my favorite movies are about writing. Imagine that -- two of the things I love most in this world, film and the written word, coming together so successfully. And one of my favorite movies about writers is Throw Momma From the Train. (As a side note, if you haven't seen this movie, I'm going to de-friend you until you take care of this. I'm looking at you, people born in the 80s.) 

If you've ever sat down to start on a writing project, large or small, and get stuck on the first sentence, then you're not alone. It happens to the best of us and it happens to all of us. Which is one reason why, when I start writing, my main goal is just to get words down on paper and then go back later and tweak them, massage them, turn them from okay into good, and then from good into great.

They say that perfect is the enemy of good, and in writing this can be a stumbling block that a lot of people can't get past. If it's not perfect the first time, or even the tenth time, then why bother? 

Why? Because good writing is rarely perfect. Good writing takes guts. It's messy. It's uncomfortable. Good writing can lay you bare. Who wants to be perfect? Not me. I'd rather be real, flaws and all, and let you see me through my writing without aiming for perfection.

That can be hard sometimes. I have to decide how much to share, what is private, what is public, and what falls in between.

I want to lean toward sharing as much as possible. But that can make some people uncomfortable. Either because other people are more private, or they consider some things none of other people's business.

I don't want to censor myself, though, if I don't have to. And frankly, sometimes I just forget to until someone comments and I realize they might have a different expectation or set of rules than I do.

After all, I truly believe the best writing comes from the gut, and that's where all the real emotion is. Good, bad, public, private, messy, shameful, proud, lovely, all of it. And sometimes it takes slipping around in the guts of everything you want to write in order to find the right words.

The night was sultry. But Larry didn't know the night was sultry until he met Owen and Owen's momma. Until then, he just thought the night was hot and wet. It took real life, complications, anger, love, laughter, and great adventure before Larry knew it.

The night was sultry.

The Importance of Routine

When you're unemployed, it's important to have a routine. It's probably no surprise to most of you who know me, but I'm a person who loves routine. I crave it. When my schedule or my body gets thrown out of its routine, I get kind of crabby. I get a bit discombobulated. (Side note: the only thing I may enjoy more than my routines are opportunities to use words like discombobulated.)

The thing about routines is that we don't always notice them -- or the importance they play in our lives -- until they are taken away. For example, there's something very powerful about the simple routine of waking up, eating breakfast, getting dressed, and driving to the office. It's so powerful, in fact, that most of the people I know who work from home still follow a similar routine - get up, eat, shower, dress, and then physically move from the bedroom or kitchen into their home office. They shut the door, fire up the laptop, and are at work.  It's just not the same when you prop open a laptop on the coffee table in front of the television. It feels like cheating.

When you lose your job, you lose a big piece of your daily routine, and all of the small but important perks of daily life that come with it. You don't have co-workers to chat with over coffee in the morning. You don't have friends dropping by and asking if you have lunch plans. You don't sneak glances at your smart phone and feel devious when you check Facebook in the middle of the day. There's no monthly birthday cake, no emails about team outings, no company-wide meeting to break up the monotony of the day.

When you lose your job, you lose a lot. 

So I force myself to have a daily routine, because otherwise my cat is going to get sick of me and I'll find myself memorizing the daily time schedule for Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz, and The Doctors.

Tuesdays and Thursdays start early. I have to be at the gym at 6:00 in the morning, so my day starts several hours before the sun comes up. My routine is coffee and breakfast and a workout, then home to shower and dress before I pick up my laptop and walk out the front door.

I find that I work best when I get out of the house. So everyday, the laptop is packed up and I walk five minutes to the clubhouse of my condo. It's a great little place to work - free wifi, comfy couches, tables and chairs with outlets, even a kitchen if I get hungry. I sit down, I open my laptop, and I write. I'm currently switching back and forth between applying for jobs, and doing some freelance work where I write resumes and cover letters for clients. But I write. Every day.

I feel like I need more routine. Maybe not forever, but at least for the next few months. Job searching in the dead of winter in dreary Sacramento is not fun, and it takes a toll on the psyche. It's very easy to get down on yourself, and when you're down, it's even easier to fall out of good habits and say "fuck it all." I find that having routines makes a big difference in my life, so I might need more of them.

That might sound dull to some people. I don't mind. There's something calming, something soothing, about routine. I always know I'll have a good book to read in bed at night. I know I'll have a pot of coffee ready about ten minutes after I wake up. I know there will always be an episode of Jeopardy in my DVR queue. I know the same smiling faces will greet me at the gym every Tuesday and Thursday, and that Coach Nick will ask how I've been eating and what my potholes are. 

What are your favorite routines?