I just can't be trusted when it comes to food. I have been telling myself that a calorie is a calorie. I can eat whatever I want in moderation as long as I count calories and stay under 2,000 calories every day. For me, this just isn't working. If I leave room in my calorie budget for, say, a cookie at the end of the day, there is no way I am going to stop at one cookie. If I have them in the house, I will eat them all. If there is sugar in the house, I will eat it.
My goal when I started this new lifestyle was not only to lose weight, but also to be healthy...really, truly healthy for the first time in my life. Technically I have been able to lose weight eating processed, low-fat foods and then using the rest of my daily calorie budget on sugary desserts...but I'm not getting any healthier. In fact, lately I feel worse than I have in a long time in terms of my health even though I've lost 20 pounds. I have started to feel like I am never going to lose weight, like I am never going to be that healthy person that I so badly want to be. I don't want to struggle every single day for the rest of my life against this power food has over me.
So what's a girl to do?
I have decided to make a huge change in how I eat. I am going to transition to a real food diet, eating food that comes from the ground or the field in as natural a form as possible. I am going to have to sever my love-hate relationship with sugar for good. Is it pathetic that I want to cry right now just thinking about how hard this is going to be? However, I feel like if I want to be healthy and live the life I deserve, this is something I have to do.
What exactly is "real food"?
Eating real food is both extremely simple and difficult at the same time. It is simple because real food is simply that...real food. Real food is unprocessed, unrefined. Real food hasn't been altered to be low fat or sugar free. Eating real food is difficult because grocery stores are literally teeming with thousands of products posing as real food that are really something else entirely.
I know eating this way is going to take dedication. I won't be able to just grab something from a fast-food restaurant and call it a day. If I lived in a big city and had more money, I'm sure I could find more real food restaurant options. Since I live in a super small town, my options for real food are very limited. I am going to be spending a lot of time in the kitchen developing a whole new repertoire of real-food-approved recipes.
I'm working on a list of "real foods" that I'll be posting by the end of this week. I'm also going to be scouring my local grocery store to find some quick and easy go-to items that will make my new lifestyle a little bit easier, and I will be keeping a list here on shrinkella.com.
If you can think of any products that are readily available that use only real ingredients, please let me know!
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