Pigging out...sort of

A lot has changed about the way I eat but more importantly a LOT more has changed about the way I view food.  In the picture above is an In & Out burger...without the burger.  A few years ago that would have never happened.  After I overhauled my diet in January of this year I have seriously scaled back on my meat consumption (little to no beef, chicken, pork), I still eat & love seafood & willie bird turkey bacon.  I used to mainline dairy through my veins, literally eating spoonfuls of sour cream, bowls of ice cream & lots of full fat yogurt & milk products.  Not anymore.  When I do consume dairy it is usually just because there is nothing else available or else I am too lazy to ask them to take it off (like in the picture above the cheese & dressing, forgot to specify a veggie veggie instead of grilled cheese).  So how are the diet changes going...was the road from full boar carnivore to vegan-ish scary & difficult & do I lie awake at night dreaming of steaks and chicken nuggets?  NOPE.

The change has been so incredibly easy & one I could never ever in a million years have predicted and was 37 yrs in the making.  The only thing that shifted in order for the diet change to happen was one tiny little thing... accountability.  All through my teens and twenty-something years I had an addiction to food, it provided comfort & security.  I would eat whatever I wanted, especially as I got older and had the money & independence to do so.  Every other week I would go on a fad diet, I would lament the fact that I wanted to lose 10, 15, 20 pounds and if I lost lb's then I would be gorgeous, happy and life would be perfect.  When my boyfriends weren't around I would eat eat eat, then when I was with them I would eat what they did or less, being a girl and all.  I don't remember a time since entering teenhood that I didn't think about food.  I had zero willpower and even less follow-through.  The minute I mentally committed to a diet I would stuff my face.  I would go to the gym but read a magazine instead of workout but who would know?  I would get mexican, chinese & dessert take-out and eat it all because who would know?  Just this past January, something clicked...I would know.

I would know if I worked out, I would know if I was actually training for a marathon, I would know if I said I was going to be veganish but be eating beef kabobs for breakfast, I would know if I was eating cream-on-top yogurt instead of soy yogurt, I would know if I was eating a whole pie instead of having an apple.  So yadda yadda blah blah blah.  What it came down to for me was realizing that I would know what I was doing & that MATTERED.  The catalyst was training for the Portland Marathon.  For the first time I would need to be doing something even if no one else could see it, I would need to be running, training, in order to show up on game day I would need to put in the work.  I had not done anything like that before.  Even when I didn't want to run, I did.  When I said I ran 6, 9, 10, 15 miles to people, I had actually run those miles.  Being accountable to myself and no one else was HUGE,  it changed my entire viewpoint on fitness and food.  After the marathon training & realizing my opinion of myself mattered, my focus on food shifted slowly.  At first I cut out meat & dairy due to a borderline high cholesterol test (borderline high cholesterol at age 37 which was directly related to my Tillamook sharp cheddar consumption?  Embarrassing!) I had no idea how easily it would be to 'cleanse' from meat & dairy, I was seriously addicted!  After not consuming certain products for a while, my body stopped craving spoonfuls of sour cream and greasy burgers.  Do I still enjoy rich dairy, creamy brie, pate & ice cream?  Of course but on a hugely different scale.  Now I can have a few bites & be cool, whereas the old me would need to eat everything to the very last crumb & feel physically stuffed to feel 'full.'  I just don't feel that way anymore and I am so happy.  I never thought my focus would shift, ever.  I thought I would be a slave to food for my entire life.  Now I eat veganish even when no one is watching because I enjoy it *shocker*.  I enjoy eating lighter, having half a donut instead of half a dozen, I eat apples after dinner instead of ice cream because my body craves it.  I have not felt stuffed/sick/full for so long and it feels incredibly great.

I don't diet, I don't binge, I don't have cheat days, I don't go hungry, I don't go out of my way to be "low carb low fat sugar free veggie vegan organic gluten free", I don't follow a book or a plan or a fad, I never intentionally skip meals or skip calories...I don't really 'do' anything except eat what I want, when I want.  The only person I am accountable to is ME and that is so freeing & empowering.  Paying attention to feeding my belly and not filling any other void than what is in my tummy, feels great and has been a long time coming.  I never thought there would be a day that I would go to In & Out, get a burgerless burger, only eat half of it & a handful of fries and feel OK...about everything.  Another huge component to not caring about food like I used to is FITNESS.  Every day I am running, swimming, biking or resting from previous days of running, swimming, biking.  It is an awesome feeling to know my body is tired from physical fitness & needs fuel & rest to get up and do the same thing the next day.  I went years, literally YEARS without any type of regular physical fitness regime and now I have no idea how I did that.  Being active makes me feel alive & feeling alive makes me crave good, nourishing, healthy fuel for my body.  So it is really a win-win all around.

Now the only thing with food that I DO need to focus on is FUELing for big runs & events.  Going out for 10 milers in the morning on a cup of coffee isn't working...so gotta think about that.  Especially before the 2012 Ultra I'm secretly pondering.