Suaimhneas: Living Goddess

Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.

Michael Pollan

When I created my Best Life Practices list I didn’t consciously design the order, all 15 practices are equally important to me. They are small things I can do every day that will positively impact my life the most. This is the second in a series of posts explaining why these practices are on my list and what I hope to get out of it.

2. Eat more vegetables and fruits than anything else

Sometime in the early 2000’s I began to experience guilt and disgust over eating certain things like chicken, pork and beef. I didn’t really know what to do with these feelings or how to change my diet, because the idea of not eating meat was beyond foreign.

I was raised on a steady diet of meat and potatoes. The meat of my childhood was mostly wild (moose, deer and partridge) because my father didn’t like beef and poultry was expensive, reserved for special occasions like the Christmas turkey or the occasional Sunday roast chicken.

Pork appeared a bit more on my dinner plate because it was more affordable and sometimes my parents would buy a whole pig. Processed meat (bologna and wieners) was cheap and also abundant.

Suppers Past

A typical weeknight supper consisted of a heaping plate of mashed potatoes, a 3 ounce piece of deer or moose steak, fried in shortening, and cooked so well it was black and hard with a 2 cm tough crust all the way around, and a spoonful of canned peas or yellow beans from the garden if in-season. If we were lucky there would be gravy to add moisture to the meal and make it more palpable. I always added a generous squirt of ketchup and as much of Mom’s homemade mustard pickles as I could get away with taking.

I never knew what beef tasted like until I moved away to Toronto when I was 18 and it was only then that I discovered well-done didn’t mean blackened and dried out. I quickly found out that I really enjoyed steak and other beef. Thick juicy burgers became my ultimate favourite thing.

It was never that my mother didn’t know how to cook, she was and still is a great cook. But she wasn’t going to cook several meals to suit everyone’s tastes, so instead she cooked one meal to suit my dad’s tastes. To this day he still needs his meat to be black and crusty before he will eat it.

Dinners Past

We always took a packed lunch to school, except for the one day each year when we bought the Christmas dinner in the cafeteria. I grew up in a single-income home. My father was a seasonal woods worker. There wasn’t enough money to buy our lunch every day or even once a week or month. I think they probably struggled some years to even get us the traditional turkey Christmas dinner.

I remember the smell of the roast turkey as we lined up way down the hall waiting for our opportunity to grab the next tray. I would eat every bite of that dinner and dessert, savouring every mouthful. It was the most delicious meal ever had at school and I would be stuffed full and drowsy all afternoon afterward.

Most days, school lunch consisted of peanut butter sandwiches on white bread and a mini-sip grape or fruit punch juice bag. Sometimes there would be cookies for dessert. If I was lucky, I would open my lunch bag to find flakes of ham with mustard or tangy Sandwich Spread.

Around grade 8 I stopped taking a lunch to school. I wanted to be like the other kids and buy a hamburger or fish n chips, but instead I got involved in extracurricular activities like drama and spent many lunch hours selling chips, chocolate bars or cones of ice cream in order to fundraise. Most days I would have a chocolate bar or a cone of ice cream for my lunch on the go or I wouldn’t eat at all.

Breakfast

Growing up breakfast was cereal or toast, unless it was Sunday morning when there might be bacon and eggs or pancakes.

My parents would buy jumbo sized bags of Fluffs, a plain puffed wheat cereal with a large plastic figurine toy in the bag. That was the cheapest cereal you could buy, like Sugar Crisp without the sugary coating, so we would lace the top with spoonfuls of white sugar to compensate. Sometimes if there was a good sale we would get Froot Loops cereal or actual Sugar Crisp.

Our milk was full-fat and my sisters both loved to drink it on its own or drown their cereal. I didn’t really like milk unless it was added to a piping hot cup of King Cole tea. I also didn’t really like cereal. I often opted for toast with peanut butter instead.

I started skipping breakfast in my pre-teens. I was never really hungry in the morning anyway and I just decided that breakfast really wasn’t for me. Cereal and toast were not very appetizing. I also didn’t really enjoy the bacon and eggs Sunday morning option. Pancakes slathered in margarine and corn syrup were only a slightly more appetizing option.

Treats

Friday night was Treat Night in our household. Every Friday night my parents would go to the local grocery store to pick up the week’s necessities and we would be allowed to pick one thing for a treat.

I think I often chose a bag of chips. I liked the saltiness, but more than that, I could delicately eat one chip at a time, savouring each bite, and make them last all night long. You couldn’t get that kind of long-lasting satisfaction from a bottle of pop, chocolate bar, or an ice cream sandwich.

When I became a teenager and started running the roads with my friends, I would get money on Friday evening instead. Five dollars went a long way back then and I know sometimes I only received two dollars. When I was 14, five dollars would buy a small fish ‘n chip with gravy and a Coke at the canteen … twice! The same thing today would probably cost at least $40 and be a smaller portion.

Malnourished

There weren’t a lot of fruits and non-starchy vegetables in my childhood and by the time I was a teenager I’d stopped eating most meals. I would walk miles and miles every day to hang out with friends because none of the kids had cars and I would eat one meal and some treats if I was lucky. When I got into cigarettes and alcohol, I ate even less and walked even more.

The year I went to university, things changed. I had a huge chunk of money in a bank account from my student loan. At the bookstore on campus there were several credit card companies giving away free gifts if you applied for their credit cards. Suddenly I had unlimited access to all the fast food choices in the world, the most money I’d ever seen in my bank account, free money from credit cards that I didn’t understand weren’t real money at all, and I wanted to try everything!

I discovered coffee and almond croissants, Wendy’s Double Big Classic burgers, steak cut french fries smothered in gravy, garlic bread that dripped off your chin when you took a bite, pizza smothered in double mozzarella, and so much more. I gained weight from eating and drinking so much despite still walking a great deal to get around the city.

I moved home eventually and away from all the temptation of every food option at my fingertips, and I stopped eating. Literally. I walked more than ever before, farther and faster, but throughout my 20’s I would often go three or four days between meals and then have a large fish ‘n chip or chicken fingers with fries and gravy from the local take-out restaurant.

When I was a bridesmaid in one of my sisters’ weddings, the seamtress had the impossible challenge of trying to fit a dress to my ever changing body size. I could go up and down several inches in size from day to day depending on if I ate and what I ate. We did our final fitting the night before the wedding and by the next day she had to tape my dress to my bra so it wouldn’t fall to the floor when I walked down the aisle. Later she sewed it to the bra so I could move around without worry at the reception and the dance. I was malnourished and unwell.

Bottom

My family doctor diagnosed me with arthritis at the age of 28. I lived my whole life with creaky joints that snapped and popped loudly when bent. The stiffness and pain in my neck, shoulders, ribs, hips, fingers, and legs were just something to endure daily. I don’t think I even realized it wasn’t normal, until I couldn’t turn my head and I was bedridden.

At one point during a particularly bad flare up, I thought I would never walk normally again. After those six hellish weeks spent mostly in bed feeling all the emotions … anger, resentment, grief, fear, despair, hopelessness … one day I woke with determination and a plan to learn as much as I could about what was happening to my body and to do everything in my power to fix it. And of course my research led immediately to the food.

That was the first time I incorporated changes to my diet that had nothing to do with losing weight and everything to do with improving my health.

Weight

Given my history with food, my weight issues should surprise no one. I was born a bit underweight but by the time I started school I was obese, one of those rare fat girls in a 1970s group of active energetic skinny kids.

In high school I became a more normal size through eating less and walking more. Throughout university and first jobs, my weight ballooned again as I aimed to please every craving I’d ever had and binged non-stop. Then I spent the remainder of my 20’s starving myself and battling mental health issues that included anorexia, depression, suicidal ideation, and body dysmorphia.

Now, my mental health may be the best it’s ever been, but I am once again obese.

Recovery

For the past 20 years I’ve researched and tried all the diets, including the cabbage soup diet, the brown rice diet, Atkins, SparkPeople, Mediterranean, Weight Watchers, Canada’s Food Guide, vegetarian, vegan, Brightlines, whole food plant-based, intermittent fasting, zero fat, low-carb, high-carb, counting calories, weekly weigh-ins and more.

And guess what? Everything works! All of them! But only as long as you follow them. As soon as you stop, you gain back the weight you’ve lost plus more. So what’s the solution?

Now

I’ve decided that my 2024 experiment is to just forget about losing weight and following a particular diet. I know how to lose weight. I’ve done it too many times to count. I don’t need to focus my attention on that anymore.

This year, for maybe the first time in my adult life, I want to eat without thinking about it too much. I want to nourish my body and feel good. I want to be healthy and trust that I’m getting all the right vitamins and minerals that I need to function well. I don’t want to count, measure, or weigh anything. I just want to enjoy my food, savour the bites like I did when I was a kid.

My absolute favourite foods are sweet potatoes, avocados, black beans, and brussel sprouts. I love Mexican, Indian, Jamaican, Japanese and Thai spicing and flavours. Apples, grapes, and blueberries are the most refreshing addition to any meal or snack. I actually enjoy tofu and sometimes crave spinach and sundried tomatoes. Brown rice pasta is my favourite kind of pasta. I love brown rice so much that I can just eat it plain with nothing else! I recently discovered green mung bean noodles that are the best thing ever!

I am taking a year to just eat the things I love, enjoy my meals, and forget about the rest. I know what is healthy and it is what tastes good to me, so I believe this is the perfect recipe to not only improve my health and lifestyle for the better, but also the weight should begin to fall away as my body returns to its natural size.

Conclusion

So, I’m going to eat more fruits and vegetables than anything else simply because I love fruits and vegetables more than anything else and I think the rest will take care of itself!