A Lot

I eat a lot of food.
Although I am eating better food, and much less (or, in some cases, none) of foods that are not my friends, I now realize that I regularly eat a large volume of food, much more food than I need on a daily basis. (I'd be even fatter if I didn't walk most places, and work out.)
When I say I eat a large volume of food, I don't mean all in one sitting (although I used to do that). Instead, I eat two or three meals a day, and graze throughout the day. Here's an example of what I can consume from the time I wake up through an early afternoon:

1 apple
1 plate of greens with a small chicken thigh and 1 egg
1 small sweet potato
1/2 serving (2 squares) of dark chocolate
1/2 cup of raisins, walnuts, and pumpkin seeds

That is enough food for an entire day (and too many carbs), yet I will probably eat more around dinner time. (Note: I normally don't measure the raisin/walnut mixture I consume, but did so this time just for this post.)
I need to (1) start measuring the raisins and walnuts I eat (as I did with the granola) and (2) start keeping a food diary again. Even as I type that, however, I get a clutch of fear coming up, that I am going to be deprived of food once I start tracking it. That is most interesting as I've seldom--even in these last couple of years with my major food changes (and this blog) limited the volume of food consume. That is, I've limited the total grams of carbs I consume, for example, but the not the total volume of food. Even the idea of counting calories--!!!--makes my eyes roll toward the back of my head.
One or another, however, I am going to have to acknowledge and work with that very difficult feeling of deprivation--and reduce the volume I consume. I don't think there's a way around that.

Detox

Yes, I've been absent from here for months! The reasons are quite boring and pedestrian, so I'll spare you. And yes, my curiosity about food also went out the window--as did conscious eating. 

Coney Island. © 1997 by Jeffrey Stanton.

I don't think my experience is any different from that of millions of people attempting to create and maintain better habits and lose weight. It is humbling to admit that, although I'm very special to myself, I and my food challenges make me one of millions. In that universe, I am a veritable face in the crowd.
So--I have started over. I've also downsized my expectations, and am focused only on the process, not the when. In summary, I'm kinder and more patient with myself. Here's what happened:

Food and Money

I've budgeted $580 a month for groceries--not food, groceries. Where did I get that figure? Out of the air--I had no idea what I was or should be spending on food, or what other people spent, or what that would mean on a daily basis. It just seemed like an "good" number. This past month (according to the wonderful mint.com) I spent $616 on groceries, or $36 over budget.
Now, not all of it went to groceries. I frequently get cash from my checking account ("cash back") when shopping, and have only now started splitting those amounts apart from my total (yes, mint.com lets you do that). I also buy non-food items (e.g., cleaning supplies) at the grocery store, too. So let's say that $100.00 of that $616 was for cash and dish soap. I still spent $516 on groceries last month, or $16 a day.
That is incredible to me: how do I spend $16 daily on food?!? I do eat only organic foods and dairy products, and lots of non-factory farmed beef and fish. But $16 a day?!? Goodness. As I think about the food I eat on a daily basis, this level of spending just doesn't seem possible.
It is a lot of money, too, when compared to the cost of the U.S. Food & Drug Administration's four food plans (as of December 2011). The monthly cost of the "liberal" (read: most expensive) of the four for one woman in my age group is $291.00. Granted, those plans have grains galore in them, and my food has none.
I'm not sure how to think about this. I need and want to reduce my monthly expenses, and obviously food is a big one. I'll be collecting my receipts this month to see where my grocery dollars go. Stay tuned.

Stuck Between the "I Know That" and the Not Doing

What we want is "how to." And the more you diet and the more you struggle, the more you know all the answers...Most of us can look at a buffet on a ship and tell you how many points everything is on that buffet. We've got "how to" down...
So if "how to" is the issue--how to be joyful, how to have more meaning and purpose in our lives--then we'd be done. But "how to" is not working.
The problem is bigger than "how to." The problem is about what gets in the way of implementing what we know.

--Brene Brown

 This quote certainly resonates for me. I've made lots of recent changes to my food, mostly boosting the amount of fat I'm eating, and reducing, even more, the amount of carbs I consume. Well, that's the plan, anyway.

Here's the reality: I'm still eating too many carbs, and not enough fat. And, instead of tracking the amount of carbs, protein, and fat I'm eating on a daily basis, I do, but don't write the information down. In fact,  I solemnly weigh the food and track the portions in my head. Not writing them down, of course, means all that solemnness goes to waste, and I am not capturing information I need that will help me meet my goals and intentions. I'm not doing the things I know "how to" do and the things I need to move fully and successfully into this new (ketogenic) way of eating.

And it isn't about this particular food plan. I do this (what my mother used to call half-stepping) with a lot of my eating, and around a lot of others elements of my life.

Brown talks a bit in this video about the need--the crying pressing need we all have, in this culture--to begin talking about the things that get in the way. I am fortunate in that I am able to do that in my Women & Food group, and with most of my friends. So it isn't (for me, anyway) the opportunity to have those conversations that bring about change. 

In another video, Brown talks a bit about shame, and speaks a line early on that resonates for me: 

There was a part of me that was working very hard at staying small, staying right under the radar.

 The curious bit, of course, is that I am staying small by staying big (though I now weigh the least I have in years) and not doing the things I know will help me achieve my goals--and remaining right under the radar of success.

What is getting in the way of me implementing what I know?

From Peanuts to Donuts in Two Hours Flat

subtitle: What Was I Thinking? Well, I Wasn't.

I was sitting in a restaurant today eating tofu, rice, and veggies. Then--as if from a blackout--I realized I'd been absent-mindedly scratching my ears, face, and thumb knuckles for several minutes--and that I, a person with a bit of an allergy to peanuts (see "Nuts--Who Knew?"), was eating a meal based on a peanut-laced sauce. Eating peanuts for the first time in four months, and having the same allergy symptoms as before.
I remember feeling my throat phlegming up, and asking the server if (wheat) flour was in the sauce (you know, the peanut-tomato sauce the menu stated was an element of the African Nut Bowl? Hello!). Oh no, she said. "It's gluten-free."
Now, I haven't had any alcohol since 1984. If I see alcohol as part of a food item, even as flavoring, I automatically reject it. Why I didn't do this with this, I don't know.
Well, it gets worse (or more interesting, depending on your view).  A craving for bakery goods/cookies swept over me half an hour later. I stopped at a grocery store on my way home.
I didn't even look for gluten-free baked goods. It was all about the wheat (not consumed for 4 months) and sugar. I was propulsed through the aisles like a heat-seeking missile to my ultimate target: a blueberry muffin and a glazed cake donut.
I did eat a very healthy dinner a couple of hours later. Then I addressed the baked goods: which one should I eat first? Should I eat them both? Now?

I bit into the donut, and immediately regretted it. It was greasy, chemically, with  that flat, acrid taste of excessive sugar. I then broke the muffin in half, taking a bite from the bottom. It was just a small step up in quality from the donut. I bit into the top--with most of the blueberries and the crunching topping. It was tastier, so I ate it all. I threw the rest (left) away.
The wheat/sugar hit my system, and bad: my stomach bloated almost immediately, the itching increased and spread to other body parts. It's 90 minutes later and I am still scratching--a lot.
Takeaway?  (1) My food intolerances might trigger one another. I clearly need to stay away from them all; and (2) I need to be more conscious of my food choices, even when I think I am (and especially so when eating out).

Update: How Now

It's been about 3 weeks since I radically changed my food and how I eat (again). This post details what I'm doing, what's happened, and how I feel about it.

What I'm Doing Now

• I eat about 100-120 grams of protein a day, mostly at breakfast and lunch (I usually don't eat dinner as the large volume of protein pretty much carries me through the day). I also now eat about 70 grams of carbohydrates (either pinto beans or lentils) daily.
• I eat a lot of eggs and meat--a lot. Breakfast is usually 3 eggs with a 4 oz hamburger patty and 1/2 cup of pinto beans. Lunch is either another 1/2 cup of beans, more hamburger (or seafood--I really like salmon, but also eat cheaper fish and scallops. I don't eat farmed seafood) and lots of vegetables--I was eating loads of raw spinach, avocados, and tomatoes for quite a bit. Now its more zucchini (cooked), or tomatoes and sprouts (raw). I feel a broccoli phase coming on, though...
• For some reason, chicken doesn't "work" as well for me as a protein source as beef, so I don't eat it (and I stopped consuming soy products a while ago as I don't tolerate them well).
• I've (mostly) stopped eating fruit (except for blueberries and dried mulberries) as I seem to be extra sensitive to sugar (and more so as I walk this food path).
• I am now drinking coffee again. I'd stopped as I  hadn't found a good (nondairy) milk replacement, and un-milked coffee is hard for me to take. I now use coconut milk (but religiously check the label, as some brands contain rice flour/powder, and I'm not eating rice.)
• I've been able to add back small amounts of goat milk products, which is great. I sometimes use goat milk in my coffee, and have been eating a little goat cheese, too.
• As you can see, the range of food I eat is quite narrow. That is not unlike my food pattern before starting on this path, but the foods are quite different. I'm fine with it.
• At the end of August (and in spite of earlier protestations), I started capturing in my food journal what and when I ate. I write down the amount of food. It's pretty simple because I'm generally eating the same things most days. 
• I've set up an Excel spreadsheet, and am slowly entering the journal info. The spreadsheet which automatically calculates (for each food I enter) the protein, carb, fat and calorie counts.
• I'm now weighing myself weekly. I've logged the info in my food journal these last 3 weeks.

What's Happened

• The protein and the volume of food have really made a difference. That crushing, aching fatigue is nearly gone, as is the brain fog and sluggishness. I am now marveling at how much I was able to do (not at all well, of course) feeling as shitty as I was for so many months My stamina has improved, too. The ADD also is less dominant. It's easier for me to stay on task, to complete projects, and I get frustrated a lot less easily. All good.
• My weekly weight loss has ranged from 2.4 to 3.7 lbs in the last three weeks. From July 1 and 30 August I lost about 25 lbs, an average of 2.4 lbs a week. 
• It's too soon to tell if my food changes are/will affect the rate of weight loss (and I may even gain weight). 
• I stopped working out at the gym (even walking very much) in July-early August as I just didn't have the energy. I'm pretty sure I'll go back next week as I'm feeling a lot stronger.
•  The look of my body has changed. My belly is protruding a lot less, my upper arms are smaller, and I could carry a coupla rolls of quarters in each bra cup now. I also am losing fat from my face, so it has gotten saggy. Why does this surprise me? Yet it does. Now my neck looks bigger. Odd. 

 How It Feels

•  I'm pleased that I'm now more flexible on this path, much more so than when I started in June.
• The food "data capture" is emotionally challenging. I'm glad I'm doing it (for a lot of reasons, mostly to ensure I get the protein I need), but I miss the alluring fantasy always available in the not knowing. There, I can fill the future with hopes, without having to be so awake, so conscious of the results of my choices. So there's a thrill that's gone, a lost expectation of some kind of future magic awaiting me.
• As for the rest (and related, surely), most of my meals and days are full of a  feeling of plodding along, and who wants to plod?
• I feel disappointed (and, curiously, ashamed) that I'm spending time in data capture, particularly about my weight. I want these changes to be about my health, damn you, not the weight. I don't want to be concerned about my weight, would like not to be, but am. And I hate that. But why do I think I am immune--unlike millions of other people--to our culture's praise of/fawning over skinny women, and shaming of the fat ones like me?
  Eleanor Kohlsaat (at the Make Friends With Food blog) captures it well when she writes,

I’ve talked with a lot of people who say health is their number-one priority, but when it comes right down to it, weight loss is what they care about the most. And this is not surprising: in our culture, we equate thinness not only with happiness and success, but also with health. That’s the message we get from our friends, our family, TV, the Internet, and even the medical community. Weight loss will make us healthy. Weight loss at any cost.

So that's where I've been, and where I am.

Bad Mix: New Foods + Eating, But Old Ways of Shopping

I've lived alone most of my life, yet always kept large quantities of food in the house.
I was afraid (nearly terrified) of running out of food, not having enough. I'd feel unsettled, ill-at-ease, if I didn't see food nearly spilling out of my fridge whenever I looked inside. Many times a day I'd open the door, stand there, and just look at the food. It would make me feel safer somehow, better. (I never identified the amount of food required to make the discomfort leave; the fear was such that I never probed.)
 Carb Queen

In the old days (3 months ago), I'd have to have lots of carbohydrates around: say, 2 lbs of steel cut oats, at least a pound of brown rice, rice noodles, a loaf or two of bread. And I'd need fat-laden, creamy stuff: a couple of packages of frozen mac & cheese from Trader Joe's, at least one package of cheese, and sometimes ice cream or chocolate mousse. I also required other sweets: I always had a pound of brown sugar, a couple of bars of dark chocolate, sometimes cookies in my home. Oh, and at least 3-5 frozen TV dinners.
Me and Scarlett O'Hara
My last partner complained that our freezer didn't work well because I'd overstuffed it with food. Sometimes she'd tease me. "Oh look," she'd say, feigning alarm, "we've only got 4 quarts of soy milk! What are we gonna do?!? What are we gonna do?!?" I'd chuckle, but with little enthusiasm. I knew she didn't know.
What she didn't know, of course, was hunger, the exhausting, regular, relentless hunger I knew growing up. She'd neverhad to choose between stealing food or going hungry, been fed margarine sandwiches for days on end, or nothing at all. I never revealed this to anyone; I was so ashamed of how poor we were.

My older sister and I talked about food all the time: what we'd eat if we could eat anything we wanted; how and where we'd shop, what we'd eat,how we'd cook it, the foods we'd always keep at the ready in our adult homes. For her: overflowing plates of crisply-fried shrimp, and lots of bacon. For me: just big piles of rice, gravy, and meat, followed by cake and ice cream.
I didn't know at the time, but I was like Margaret Mitchell's Scarlett O'Hara, shaking her bony white fist at the sky while declaring: "As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again." My fist was dark brown and bony, and I would have been chattel in her sanitized Confederacy, but we were sisters in desperation, in hunger.
 Now Different, Now Challenging
And now I'm in the world with a new way of living and eating.  I consume mostly vegetables and protein (these days beef, nuts, and eggs), blueberries and mulberries. And am trying to shop without fear.
I've made progress: I've been able to reduce the amount of food I buy, and spend a lot less time seeking comfort from looking at the contents of my fridge and cabinet. However, my missteps are expensive. I'm still buying too much food (especially veggies), and even my Evert-Fresh Green Bags can't keep them fresh forever.
Living without the familiar bulging fridge is still a fear trigger for me. Tonight I was cleaning up a spill in the fridge, and noticed I didn't have much food in it.( I have more than enough, but nowhere near the previous volume).
I had a momentary squeeze of anxiety. "Where's my food," I thought. "Where's all my food?"

Butterfly Kisses for Bok Choy

www.kidoinfo.com

I was in a store on Thursday, and just fell in love with some baby bok choy. They seem to be reclining like little movie stars in glowing cream-and-green.

And I wanted to rest my face on their tenderness, brush each one lightly, slowly, with my eyelashes. Butterfly kisses for bok choy.

I almost gave in to the urge--to close my eyes, sighing, and rest my right cheek gently on their perfect vegetable bodies.
I then, however, imagined the next message over the loudspeaker, “May Day, May Day! Aisle 4: Woman resting face on vegetables. May Day!”

The Six Big Things I've Learned So Far

1. Drinking lots of water, every day, is hard.
2.  I feel better when I eat lots of vegetables and fruit, and don't eat wheat, dairy (the cow's milk kind), sugar, and lots of carbs (including grains).
3. Never, ever do you lose weight in the way you want, much less where you want.
4. I am allergic to peanuts (not in the anaphylactic shock kinda way, just the itchy-face-throat-and-head way), and I did not know that. (Maybe soy, too. Jeez.)
5.  Beet juice is very, very good. Beet juice stains, not so much.
6. I mourn the loss of some foods, the feelings they gave (or took away). Even the lost   potential solace they might provide, I mourn. A strange and curious sorrow.

Hungry? Confused. Hungry?

I don't know if I'm hungry or not. I don't know the last time I knew I was hungry (for food, that is).
I know I eat. I know I feel the absence of food (sometimes). I know what its like to crave certain types of food. But I don't think I know what hunger feels like.
How do people know they're hungry? Is it that they can't go on, one more moment, unless they eat? That sounds like starvation. My dictionary defines hunger as

If We Can Put People on the Moon, Why Can't We Make Better Juicers?

 http://www.researchhistory.org

I was out with some pals today at a Laughing Planet Cafe, and the conversation turned to juicers.
I'm a juicer neophyte, but anyone who goes raw (or likes fresh juice) knows a juicer will one day be in their future. Juicers significantly reduce the cost of fresh juice, and  you can have most any juice combo at 3 am, if you so desire.
The downside of juicers? Two words: cleaning them, the first topic that comes up whenever you utter the word "juicer" in a crowd.
There are lots of parts to dissemble, little bolts to lose, pulp to scoop, and pulp to chase that just doesn't want to be removed, etc. Why does juicing have to be such a deal?

Like Alfred Hitchcock With Big Titties

From www.malepatternfitness.com

That, in a nutshell, is a description of my current body type. (Well, a slight exaggeration.) Like many carb/sugar lovers, I have an apple body type (and here's why that is not such a good thing), that one with the bulging belly. (Of course, not all "applers" have big titties. I got that blessing from my mom's side of the family.)
I can't remember I time when I didn't have a belly, even when I was very young, and/or my slender/skinny periods. 
In the past, when I've cut carbs out entirely (well, the two times I did), my belly size was the first change, and usually a dramatic one. People would say, "Hey, you're losing weight--your stomach's getting small. I would say thank you, and would think, "Other people noticed I had a belly?" That, my friends, is called denial, and being out of touch with my body.

The Purpose of This

I really like eating fat of all types--bacon, cheese, ice cream--and sugar. And I really, really like combinations of fat and sugar--blintzes, flan, cake coated with cream cheese frosting, and the like.
I also eat a large valume of food (aka "is challenged by portion control"). That means I often--usually--eat two breakfasts at once. That could be a protein shake and an egg white spinach omelette and toast, or 2 servings of oatmeal. (Yesterday, I measured out 1 cup of cooked oatmeal and thought, "That's one cup? It's not very much, is it?" And promptly added another.)
I have a lot of shame about being fat, and being a fat Black American, in particular. A living stereotype (as well as battling the attendant internalized fat-phobia and racism, a ugly, messy glob of stuff for most fat, dark-skinned American women).
And I don't eat many greens or fruit, or drink sufficient water. As a concept, of course, I know the benefits of doing so (and will tell you loudly how beneficial they will be for you), and think about that as I eat creamy, sweet and wonderful things...
I consider myself a spiritual person, and have a spiritual life that I value and work to deepen. It is that path that has led me to live differently with food, and with myself. (For some reason I feel like crying as I write this. I'm not sure why.)