Eating with Gusto

This weekend my youngest is traveling with me to see the oldest. My boys are ten years apart. When Bridger was first born, Dylan was the best big brother.  He rocked him, and kissed him, and made him laugh.  They were so cute together.  And then our little Boo learned to talk, and Dylan seemed to resent the Petit Prince.  He became jealous of the talking baby. "You let him get away with EVERYTHING.  You spoil him."  Well, there was probably some truth to that.  Bridger was only two.

Time has a way of softening the hard edges, and after Dylan grew up a little more himself, the boys actually became close again. Bridger worships the ground on which his big brother walks.  My heart melts a little whenever I watch them together.  And I laugh.  I have to; they're so funny together.

Now Dylan has grown up, married to the sweetest little wife, and moved three hours away to Utah's Dixie in Saint George.  My boys miss each other. This weekend will be a treat for us all.

Dyl and Jamie at Crossfit

Dylan and his wife stick to low-carb eating, along the lines of the Paleo diet. If you're not familiar with that, they eat like cave men...whatever grows out of the ground and can be hunted with a spear is what's for dinner.  That's my take on it anyway...they basically eat no processed foods, and get plenty of veggies and protein.  There's not a lot of room for homemade rolls and cookies in their diet, but on the weekends, they splurge occasionally. 

Yesterday I asked if Dylan had any special food requests for the weekend. "Shepherd's Pie!"  was Dylan's enthusiastic response.

"Do you want the real thing, or Paleo-style with cauliflower as a substitute for the mashed potatoes?"

"Real stuff!  I'll help make it if you want.  Thought about adding mushrooms and grilled onions to the burger part."

Dylan is quite the cook and manages their kitchen beautifully with weekly menus posted on their fridge.  He is a master griller and Dutch oven expert.  He continued,  "Do YOU have any requests you would like to do this weekend?"

"Hiking, but only if it's not hot as hell."  Yes, that would be me, speaking like a sailor to my child.  (You should know that Saint George IS hot as hell.  It's not just a figure of speech, so I excuse myself from resorting to this crude language.)

"It's pretty stinking hot, but we'll see."

During the summer, it's always over 100 in Saint George, unless it's raining.  It's a desert down there, so that is a rare and welcome delightful experience!

My kids are all healthy eaters; more so than I. They always have been.  We're all a little obsessed, though. 

I remember once when Bridger was in kindergarten, he was in his booster seat in the back of the car, complaining about being hungry.  

"I think there's a Reese's peanut butter cup back there; eat that." And what did my little five year old child say to that?

"Do you know how many freaking fat grams there are in that thing?"

Yeah, we have some issues.  I recall a 'last day of school" celebration when I offered to take the kids to Bullies, the local drive-in, to celebrate. I'm thinking ice cream cones and milkshakes!  It's a special day, after all.  What did my kids want? The boys wanted sandwiches, and Sierra asked for iced water. Sometimes I wonder if they are actually mine.

And WHY do they have issues?  I blame myself.  After Bridger was born, WAY after Bridger was born, I was still packing the pregnancy weight, and then some. Okay, I can admit this; after my third baby, I weighed 224 pounds. 

I remember the day I had struggled into my swimsuit to go to the pool.  Bridger was standing on the king-sized bed, and he patted my back. 

"Mommy, your back has boobs, too."  Good lord, I WAS big.

Not long after that, I began my first Body for Life challenge.  The nice thing for me was that Dylan was a high school athlete at the time and he was happy that I was eating more protein and making healthier choices.  We experimented together with our protein shakes and making healthy breakfasts. At his request, I made whole grain waffles with oat flour and flax seed oil.  We topped them with fruit or homemade syrup.  And Cool Whip.  There's always my favorite non-food of choice: Cool Whip.  I still struggle to give up that junk.

Sierra is my only girl, the Sierra Sandwich has her in the middle of the boys. She has been on board with most of the healthy eating.  She was blessed with muscles from the start, just like her brothers. She has always had the waist of a wasp and gorgeous, muscled arms, butt, and thighs. She rolls her eyes at me whenever I ask about calories.  

"I don't COUNT calories, Mama Llama." She has a great attitude. Sierra is actually one of my heroes when it comes to having a healthy mindset about life and priorities, in general.

My kids are my partners in crime.  Most of the time, we all try to eat healthy.  Some of the time, we indulge, and when we do, we do it with gusto.  We love Café Rio, Menchies, Swig (a local specialty drink drive-in in Saint George), ice cream, homemade goodies...  

Thankfully, I am the only slave to the scale. 

As anyone who has read my blog knows, I tend to be obsessive-compulsive about so many things.  I did NOT pass the awful weighing habit on to any of them.  I am just glad that my kids seem to be not only health-conscious,  but have a healthy perspective about diet and weight.  I tend to be the one throwing us all under the bus, diet-wise, most of the time.  ("Who wants ice cream? Want me to bake some cookies? Anyone up for frozen yogurt?") They rein me in with their raised eye-brows or their polite "no, thanks" when they think it's time to tone down the gusto.

I am looking forward to some silliness, some visiting, and some good food this weekend.  This IS the good life, and I'm so glad for these sweet kids to share it with.  (AAAAUGH!!!  A preposition at the end?  Can I let it go for once?  Watch me.  I can do this.  I'm going to slowly exit out of this without even fixing it.  Now if I can just not hyperventilate while I do.  Deep breath...breathing slowly. THE END.)

The Evolution of My Diet

It's all good.  Isn't it?

We grew up as a meat and potatoes family.  I married into a meat and potatoes family.  I raised a meat and potatoes family.  Our meat and potatoes family love us some SNACKS, too!  We've been known to consume Krispy Kremes by the dozens, and if it's a homemade treat, watch out!

Now that I'm "older," I have begun to question the way I eat...and drink.  I have been a soda drinker forever.  When we were kids, Mom made homemade root beer for us.  Every night for dinner, we drank root beer.  And then when I became an adult, and with my adult-level-thinking, I decided that it would be much wiser to drink DIET soda, to save myself some calories.

There is such a wide variety of soft drinks available.  Entire aisles at the grocery store are occupied by bottled and canned liquids enticing us with sugar or sugar substitutes.  Back in the sixties, there were two diet sodas:  Fresca and Tab.  Fresca was grapefruit flavored, clearly not developed for my childish palate!  Do you remember TAB?  What a miserable excuse for a soft drink THAT was.  I determined that sacharine was nasty stuff and have always steered clear of the "pink packets" on restaurant tables.

Over the years, I've tried to give up my Diet Pepsi.  I seriously love the taste.  Occasionally, I like a little Diet Dr. Pepper.  I would endure the three day headache that comes with the initial cessation of caffeine.  I would triumph over the cravings, drowning my thirst with quarts of water.  If there had been any visible, noticeable differences, like losing some quick weight, I might have pursued giving up pop altogether.  Come Saturday morning, I'd step on the scale, and if there wasn't a five pound drop from last week, I'd question what I was doing.  I hadn't lost WEIGHT, I had terrible headaches, and I just didn't enjoy that much water.  And back to soda I'd go.

After the Netflix propaganda-fest at our house lately of healthy eating, the vegan lifestyle, the Gerson approach to healing with nutrition, juicing, and documentaries about our questionable food industry, I have begun to think.  Thinking is always a good thing.  One of my biggest obstacles is mindlessly living my life.  Doing things according to habit, with no thought of consequence.

I'm realizing that my body has to process everything I put into it.  And then the guilt began to set in.  (Sorry about that pesky preposition!)  I had recently started eating FRITOS.  Food doesn't get much more processed than that.  I have no idea what's in them.  Cornmeal and grease, I'm betting.  And salt to make them yummy.  Give me a small bowl of Fritos (well, a big bowl would be even better) and a big, old, ice-cold Diet Pepsi and I was in Snack Nirvana.

Earlier on my blog, I posted my recipe for Le Beau Citron (homemade limeade).  Drinking freshly squeezed limeade made with natural stevia is what started my whole separation from Diet Pepsi.  I found that the citrus drink was so refreshing, that I didn't really want anything else.  I promised myself I could have a soda on the weekend.  That Saturday, when I ceremoniously popped the tab on my sweating can of soda, my mouth watered in anticipation of my first sip.  EWWW.  What had happened to my yummy drink?  It seemed acidic, sharp, and it assaulted my mouth.  I drank some more just to see if it improved, but I eventually emptied the rest down the drain.

If soda is full of artificial sweeteners and chemicals, what is in Fritos?  And Pepperidge Farm cookies?  And Reese's Peanut Butter Puffs cereal?  (A-hem.  Yes, these items resided in my pantry.  Don't judge.)
I started to THINK about my food.  I started looking at the ingredients.  And I started to put things back on the shelf and look for a healthier option.  (No, I did NOT put them in the trash.  Don't judge.  There are other people in this house besides myself to consider.  And what if I decide I need a little SNACK later?  Huh?  Well, now you know why I didn't dispose of the offending food.)

My husband bought a juicer this summer and loves pulverizing fruits and vegetables into a drinkable liquid.  I'm more of smoothie girl, so I add my fruits and veggies to the Vitamix and make frozen concoctions packed with nutrition, but they still give me the satisfaction of eating something sweet, cold, and creamy.

A friend asked if I were eating the Paleo Diet.  My son and daughter-in-law have done that for awhile, with good results.  If you're not familiar, allow me to simplify the idea for you.  You eat like a caveman on the Paleo Diet, but hopefully with better table manners.  If you can hunt it and gather it, you can eat it.  Plan on meals with plenty of meat and veggies.  And not much bread.  Or cookies.  Or Fritos.  No, I am not following the eating habits of any prehistoric tribe.

I am not following ANYTHING, except my heart.  I am not an herbivore, a carnivore, a Paleo dieter, a vegetarian or a vegan.  I am an omnivore, a whole foods omnivore.  I've read recently that some vegetarians have the worst diets ever because they believe as long as it's not meat, it's okay.  Their diets consist of voluminous amounts of junk food and have little to do with vegetables and fruits.  They simply avoid meat.

It was with great delight I read about Venus Williams' calling herself a CHEAGAN, a cheating vegan.  I guess I could be considered one of those.  I eat (you do realize I mean to say I have recently BEGUN to eat, don't you?  This isn't coming from years of experience as a healthy eater!)...ANYWAY, currently, I eat vegetables, fruits, grains, eggs, Greek yogurt, and cottage cheese, and when the mood strikes, I am still up for a good piece of meat, whether that be fish, poultry or beef.

My son is so worried I've become a vegetarian.  I'm not THERE.  Yet.  I am just trying to stick to WHOLE FOODS, and avoid consuming so many processed foods. Meat will still find its way to my table, but I have to force myself not to think about where the meat was before it was at the store.  I think that's a sign of some kind.  I am not going to dwell on that right now.  I'm just doing the best I can, eating as healthy as I can.  "When you know better, you do better."  This is where I am right now. And right now, I am glad there are no Fritos on top of the fridge today because all of this talk about eating is making me hungry.

P.S.  People always want to know...have I seen a difference? YES.  After a week-long trip back home to Virginia, I packed on a fast six pounds.  Within six days of returning to my smoothies, salads, fruits, grains, and selective meats, I lost those six plus two more. My skin is clearer.  I'm not craving my junk food.  I don't desire soda any more. Was there water weight lost?  Of course, there was.  All I know is I'm back on track after a week of eating NOT mindfully on vacation, and I feel pretty great physically, all things considered.