Healthy Food and Diets

It’s completely unfair.

In case you never noticed, healthy food costs more than processed food, and healthy food doesn’t last as long in the fridge (or on the shelf), which means food shopping more often and spending more money. This is so unfair. According to US News, roughly 40% of all Americans are obese, and WebMD says that more than 70% of women are overweight or obese. With these numbers, wouldn’t it make sense to regulate the price of healthier foods and stop making Ramen a dollar for 6 packages? We’ve become addicted to quick and easy, and throwing together a last-minute meal with our hectic schedules means getting food out of a can or a box. Add to that the conundrum that sometimes the other people in the house don’t want to eat what I prepare because it’s…healthy.

But I'm on a mission, and I’m learning to make it work. I started by trying out vegetables I never had before, like spaghetti squash, and different cooking techniques, like roasting. Vegetables aren’t that bad if you have a variety. I tried making the well-loved vegetables like carrots and green beans and added more choices to the menu. The health-food oriented grocery store Sprouts carries many lines of vegetarian choices that are palatable. I experiment with different products to determine what texture and flavors my son and I can enjoy rather than just tolerate. Expect to pay as much for healthy foods no matter where I shop as I would for gold and diamonds. Either way, my wallet will cry.

For fruits, I stuck to the high fiber whole fruits. No canned, processed, or juiced due to the high glycemic index. I figure keeping fruit in the diet would make the rest of diet more manageable. An apple a day keeps the endocrinologist away; as long as it’s paired with a protein, of course. The fun fruits, like citrus, grapes, and pineapple are now a no-no. Less fruit, more vegetables is the mantra for a diabetic.

A salad can be done up in ways so that I don’t feel like a ruminant chewing its cud. (Excuse the cow reference. Moo to you.) There are so many things I can add to it to make it tasty, filling, and low-carb. I throw in things like ham or turkey lunchmeat, almonds, chickpeas, walnuts, red onion, tomato, goat cheese crumbles, topped off with a nice light dressing. This was the cool thing about Sprouts; I could make my own salads and pay by the pound. I could make a salad and have it for dinner one day and lunch the next. Thanks to the pandemic, that option is no longer available.

Protein is very important as well. Lean cuts like chicken and turkey can be cooked in a variety of different ways. I even began experimenting with recipes because I can eat poultry only so many ways before I start growing feathers and clucking in public. The challenge was making dishes that everyone could enjoy. And then I decided – heck – if it’s healthy, then why shouldn’t EVERYONE in the house eat it? I’m not going to cook healthy and “unhealthy” meals and keep them in the fridge. It’s become an ”eat it or starve” attitude for me. I shouldn’t have to make dishes I can’t eat; why add more temptation? I believed when I retired, this wouldn't be a problem. I'm retired now, and cooking healthy meals daily is still a daunting task.

There are many diets out there, both good and bad, and I’ve tried most of them. I was THREE when I was put on my first diet by the doctor. Let that sink in...THREE. The first stratified diet regimen my mom got me on was the Scarsdale diet, popular in the 70s. This was a strictly calorie-counting method, and we had those little calorie-counting books wherever we dined to determine what we could and could not eat. It didn’t matter where the calories came from; many foods were marketed as “diet” to appeal to these consumers. Tab and Fresca were purchased to go along with our celery sticks and broccoli florets. We weren’t fooled-1,000 calories a day was making us quite mean and unhappy. Strict calorie counting wasn’t working. We can understand why the creator of this diet was murdered by his lover.

Atkins became the rage when I was in middle school, and this diet had practitioners pee on a KetoStix to make sure there were no carbohydrates anywhere in the urinary system. In the first stage of ketoacidosis, the stick would turn purple. Snacks for me during this time period included pork rinds with Wispride cheese. I remember around Girl Scout cookie time I had relapsed due to the easy availability of Samoas and Thin Mints, and I knew the stick would not be purple but a bright shade of beige. My mom would make me test every morning to make sure I was staying on the diet. At this point my stick was completely beige, the color of failure. Desperate, I resorted to using regular water paint to paint purple over the area of the stick that needed to be purple. This worked for a while, and then my mom caught on. Wrong shade, I guess.

I tried the Cambridge Diet during my senior year in high school. Biggest mistake ever. It was basically powdered everything that was reconstituted into “food.” The powder came in cardboard canisters, and I think the cardboard would have been tastier. The powder was scooped into lidded drink cups and then shaken to death. The food tasted like death warmed over. Everything looked like soup. I lost some weight, but I was miserable. During band camp that year I’d hide in my dorm room eating my unappetizing slurpy dinner while the rest of the band ate at the mess hall. It might have been college cafeteria food, but it was way better than the meal-in-a-can space food I was consuming.

I’ve tried Weight Watchers (“Nothing tastes as good as thin feels”) three times; each time I was successful, and each time I fell off the wagon and put the weight back on. I had to get weighed in front of people and log it into my little book. The group sessions were grueling; they’re similar to Alcoholic Anonymous meetings (“Hi, I’m Barb, and I gained three pounds this week.” “Hi, Barb.”) Talking about losing weight and food struggles with complete strangers can be off-putting, especially from the ones who seemed perfectly normal to me complaining how they can't lose five pounds. I have to lose the weight of an average thirteen-year old girl. Today there’s better technology for these programs with apps and interactive websites, but none of that was present when I was growing up.

Atkins came around again, with new and improved eating plans and choices. Still didn’t work. The strict limit on carbs made the diet unappetizing and unrealistic. Life occurs, and carbs were meant to be enjoyed. Authors and publishers just wanted to sell more books and cardboard food. The South Beach Diet grew out of this concept and allowed more carbs into the mix; books and recipes galore! Lists of what could and could not be consumed were the new rage; while everyone must have looked fabulous in Miami, it wasn’t working for me in my home county. I donated my books to the thrift store.

In the early 90s I tried Gwen Shamblin’s WeighDown Workshop, a Christian-based approach to weight lost. Her photo on the DVD cover of her standing on a mountain with a flowing gauzy scarf around her head made us feel that thinness and serenity were synonymous. There were four teachers at my school who were doing it. I liked the camaraderie, the prayers, the sharing and baring of our souls. We first had to learn what hunger was (“like the Israelites in the wilderness”) and that meant fasting until we recognized hunger to differentiate it from eating from habit. We’re supposed to eat when we’re hungry, but it’s hard to tell the different between hunger and boredom. Hungry teachers are mean teachers. That group soon dissolved, and the weight came back. Her WDW empire is still growing, with TV and online components instead of the DVD’s and paper journals we had to fill out. Everything’s online nowadays.

At school we tried weigh loss challenges, Drop Five programs, and district-driven health initiatives. We even got paid for losing weight through their wellness clinic incentives. I’d started walking groups where a bunch of us would change into workout clothes after school and walk around our huge campus a couple of times. It was fun at first, but Florida is basically a sauna 10 months of the year, and it got too hot. I even asked physically fit students if they wanted to show me the ropes at the gym. None of them could come up with the courage to deal with me, I suppose.

I was recently purging books from my bookshelves, and among them were diet books. One was written by a woman who had lost over 200 pounds and was “finally thin.” Why “thin”? Can’t I weigh a little less and be super healthy? Thin reminds me of Olive Oil, and I’m thinking more of Mansfield or Monroe. I’m getting really tired of this push toward “thin” and “emaciated” because realistically I know I won’t get that far. Life happens; cruises sail; holidays occur. Those events don’t mean I have to overdo it; I’ve learned some tips to make it through those days.

Weight loss programs are flourishing on the internet. Health coaches constantly bombard our social media with pitches for their meal-prep or special diets. It’s the same old advertising in a fresh new format. It’s also harder to escape. If I look up something “diet-y” on Amazon, a bevy of ads for weight-loss programs and products infests my FaceBook feed. And least back in the day we had Richard Simmons and his “Sweatin’ to the Oldies” exercise sessions. We danced and pranced those pounds off. Those were fun; his “Dial-a-Meal” plan was not. Weight came right back. Plus three pounds.

Two current diets in fashion right now are the Paleo diet and the Keto diet. Paleo means eating like a caveman (“Ungh, fire heat food. Good!”) and banning all grain products and items that were grown or harvested on purpose. It supposed we were designed to be hunters, and so we should have plenty of meat but no beans or grains. The Keto diet craze is (surprise!) nothing more than the Atkins diet wrapped up in a bow. It’s not practical, and I feel sorry for the people losing a lot of weight on Keto because I have a sinking feeling it will all come back – plus three pounds. They swear by it, telling me I don’t understand.

Me.

They think I don’t understand.

I want to scream at them, “No, YOU don’t frickin’ understand! I’ve been on every diet and weight loss regimen in the last 53 years. "Life occurs, opportunities change or disappear, and then your Keto isn’t affordable or convenient; there’s a lot of food prepping and avoiding restaurants. Try going to a party or a celebration at a restaurant and ask for the Keto menu. You’ll be waiting forever. Even salads can be tricky because of the stuff they put into it. Cold salads, extra dressing, croutons, chocolate bars – you never know where those extra carb are coming from.

So don’t tell me about frickin’ diets. I’ve suffered through all of them. And yet...

And yet I'm still trying. Maybe this'll be my year.