I meant to post yesterday, but work (both jobs), Gone Girl, and sleep won out over posting an excited "I lost 1.7 pounds after 6 days of starting Paleo!" memo. But I did, and I am super-excited. I'm excited to see the changes in my body already--I'm more awake during the day, my clothes are starting to fit better even though my knee prevents me from working out the way I'd like to, and I'm losing weight. This is something that's not critical. I'm not obese and I apparently "carry my weight well" (according to my mother who thought I weighed 10 pounds less than I do). However, mom also informed me that 140 is the tipping point for women in our family--the "hard to go back," "what happened to your butt?" tipping point, and I was getting perilously close to that. As someone who had never been in the 130s until my best friend got pregnant and I gained the sympathy weight instead of her husband, I was horrified at what I had done to my body.
Adam tried to convince me that I was still skinny, that I looked great and he was (is) still attracted to me. However, years of reading stupid girl magazines and watching movies and seeing "Hollywood thin" take their toll and I looked in the mirror and didn't like what I saw. I'm getting older--we all are--and my metabolism has slowed down. I can't eat everything and not gain weight like I could in high school. Poor body image is something that plagues most women if we're honest, deep down in our bones honest, and I am no exception. I really hope that living Paleo will help change my feelings about my body. While I know body image is a psychological thing and Paleo is going to be a physical change, I think that between Paleo and reassuring mantras, I'll be okay.
Food is such an important thing to me. I grew up in the South, where we take pride in our comfort food, the kind that sticks to your ribs and makes you lean back from the table after every meal thinking, "Oh my God; that was amazing." If anything happens (weddings, funerals, graduations, birthdays, sickness), we show up in droves with casseroles, desserts, soups. On Sundays, my mom almost always cooks Sunday Dinner, which is the midday meal, right after church. It isn't strange to have a few people who aren't blood relatives but who didn't have any plans or who we just weren't done visiting with around the table. The meal prayer was always simple: "Thank you, God, for food, family, and friends." The three most important things to us (not in that order, but at mealtimes, food takes precedence).
I still find that cooking soothes my soul. Maybe I don't do it all the time. My husband and I eat out a lot because I just have no energy to grocery shop and cook all the time. But the meals that I do cook, I feel content, proud that I have created something that will nourish another person. I love having people over to our house (even if it does mean that quick, last-minute, "shove everything in a room and close the door" cleaning) because of this pride and comfort I get from taking care of others.
So, enough introspection. Let's move on to the foods we've been eating lately. We've had salads (avocado and egg, avocado and oranges, spinach leaves with chicken and artichokes and orange slices), chicken sauteed in orange juice with apples caramelizing in the pan (Adam's idea and execution), zucchini pancakes, and tonight I'm finally going to do the roasted citrus chicken in Practical Paleo that I've been looking forward to ever since I flipped through the pages looking for ideas.
I'll try to remember to take pictures of the chicken tonight before we carve into it, and I'll try to post tomorrow with how it went.
Food is very important to my life too. I was obese for most of my childhood and many adult years. I had Gastric Bypass in 2007 and while it's an amazing tool & exactly what I needed to change my health & my life, I've fallen into a lot of old bad habits. I never thought I was an emotional eater. I didn't overstuff myself with food just because I was depressed (what I thought being an emotional eater meant) and as an adult I tried to make healthier food choices for the most part (I'm a total Omnivore and an adventurous Foodie) but when I forced myself to record when I ate, when, and how I was feeling at the time, I noticed a pattern. While I wasn't eating too much food, I was much more likely to make poor food choices when I was bored, stressed, sad, or angry. The "comfort food" was supposed to make me feel better, but for the most part it just made me feel worse. The carbs slowed me down, the guilt over having "bad" food messed with my head even more, and I found that "comfort food" had the opposite end result. I didn't feel comforted anymore. Now I think about food a lot, not just how much of it I'm getting (too many/not enough calories, etc) but also the quality of what I'm eating & how it affects my mood and my energy level. My high protein, fresh veggie fruit lunch today made me feel better and I look forward to reading about how your food choices make you feel.
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