food

It is my drug of choice.  I am too lazy to choose something else, and am stuck with a substance that I can abuse with relative impunity because it is necessary for life.  It is not, however, something that I need to indulge in quite so much.

I do not eat much junk food.  I had brunch out with a friend last Sunday and ate a lot of stuff.  All of it healthy, or as much so as buffet/brunch food can be, but too much.  All of it was freshly made, some of it to order.  I had an omelet, with mushrooms, spinach, tomatoes and a little bacon.  Oh, dear, I also had three strips of bacon.  Erp.   All of it was delicious.  Butter on the green beans.  Lovely marinara-ed meat balls.  Yummy roast beef for sandwiches, which I had sans buns or toppings.  Excellent salad and fruit; managed to resist the dressings, though, as well as the breads, because they were offering margarine/poison instead of butter.  Oh, I guess that is what was on the green beans.  Missed that entirely.

I eat at home, cook from scratch, and eat kind of simply.  Meat, vegetables, whole grains and cereals, a little fruit.  Not much dairy, no cheese (causes interesting and embarrassing gastrointestinal expression).  Although, cream and half&half do not when used as a small part of soup or something.  Especially in my most often prepared and eaten soup, hot sausage, potato and kale.  Those who live in the US and have been to Olive Garden know what soup I mean.  Mine is better.  Lots better.  Really.

I mostly make my own bread, at least I do until I just have to stop eating so much of it.  Hardly anything tastes as good as a nice layer of creamy butter on a slice (or twelve) of freshly baked bread, still steaming, hot out of the oven.  I rarely eat pasta, but when I do it is whole wheat and a smallish portion.

If anyone would ask me if I was an emotional eater, I would have said "No."  Total denial.  True, I have been fat for most of my adult life, but I was an amazing and creative cook.  It was something that I could do well, and it rarely got me in trouble.  Even when someone who is not me decided at the last minute that he wanted something other than what I had prepared for a meal, he would get mad, but not hurt me.  He would grumble and complain and even criticize, but would also eat everything.  That is how good at cooking I was.

I did a lot of the cooking when I lived in the shelter and when I stayed with a friend, before I found a place to live.  I eat much more simply now.  No need for several courses and dessert.  Just me and CoolCat, him and his kibble and me eating simply, giving him all the salad he wants, as well as bits of meat, although he mostly loves meat juice, but not on his salad.  No dressing.  He hates dressing.

However, the past month or so has been hyper-stressful and my go-to mood altering is food.  No ambiguity, no equivocation, no blathering about looking for relief.  Straight to the kitchen.

Since food does not magically appear on-site, I am forced to go out and actually shop for it, make choices, pay money and haul all of it home, put it away and eventually do something with it.  Seriously.

I had a bad patch early in this past month, or so, when the results of doing something with ingredients were a dismal failure.  A sad and mostly disgusting failure.  Total erp.  I tried to eat some of it, but it made me even more depressed and stressed, so I threw out the first disaster.  And, I am not exaggerating when I say it was a disaster.  Then, the next day it happened again.  Several days later, a repeat.  The material and resource and money waste was appalling.

I managed to get back on track, but have been eating too much.  I make dinner, with enough extra for lunch the next day and way too often I eat most of it, maybe all of it.  When I shopped last week, I bought frozen pastries and potato chips.  I knew that if I opened the pastry box that I would eat all of them, so I took them to one of the support groups I attend and foisted the darn things on them.  I resisted, having a couple of mandarins.  As for the potato chips, I ate all of them.

I am disgusting, not only for all of the eating, but for how really fat I am now.  Just a month of unrepentant eating and I am huge, big as a house.  Sure, not a huge house, but a house nevertheless.

So, in the spirit of continuing to be able to fit in my car and through doorways, I have decided to eat better.  I though that I would combine it with some decent exercise, but even my recent success with two walks and a saunter are not enough to make that happen.

The only thing left is the actual eating well, better, more cleanly.  More content, better ingredients, less volume.  In the pursuit of that, I am now eating a quite small portion of last night's marina (tomatoes, onions, ground beef, mushrooms, hot peppers) with celery.

Lots of celery.  I read something about how it helps with high blood pressure...got it...and inflammation...got it.  Eating it.

I have also read about how bad wheat is for some of us, but even though it is a carbohydrate that I am careful about eating, that whole wheat thing sounds like hokum.  If it is even partially true, I am not interested, as I am now greatly reducing the grains and cereals in my diet, hoping to eliminate them entirely.  I thought for a while that I could go gluten-free, but getting all of it out of my eating is for the best.

Of course, that means that my popcorn dinners, for when I just do not have the energy to make anything else, are pretty much over.  It is probably for the best.  Totally delicious, but not a very good carrier for balanced nutrition.  No hummus, either.  Just made a double batch.  Rats.  That and raw vegetables are what I eat when I cannot stomach more popcorn.  Guess that goes to support group this week.  Maybe use up some of the flour to make crackers.

This is going to be boring without the carbs.  I now eat meat a couple of time a week; now it will have to be almost daily.  I can do this.  I need to take better care of myself.  If I get sick or develop a disease or have a heart attack or stroke, there is no one to care for me.  If nothing else, I have family who would miss seeing me, and there is CoolCat.  I am so lucky to have that sweet guy.  I have always put his well-being and care above anything else, now I need to join him there.