Foodstyle Reflections

My favorite spot at the Chicago Botanic Garden: the birch trees in the Sensory Garden. There is always a slight breeze making the leaves rustle faintly, and the sun is always dappled on the path. I call it "the place where fairies live."


Back in September 2011, I coined the phrase "foodstyle". At the time I was doing daily tracking of my food, but there was still a lot of restaurant and takeout involved, and of course in short order, the tracking faded away. I went through fits and starts of renewed enthusiasm after that, with lots of talk about eating better but little follow-through. By New Years, I was unwilling to even make any bold resolutions, although I did want the foodstyle to continue. (Plus, my doctor had a come-to-Jesus talk with me in December that still echoes in my head.)

Meanwhile, around the same time I started cooking more on the weekends, posting my results in a haphazard fashion until I launched the Sunday Cooking posts in early January. By the end of March, I realized that it had truly become a habit, and even now when I look through the weekly photos, I can see the food getting healthier with each passing week.

Around the same time I made that realization, I complained bitterly about the Bottom Line Challenge that  I had signed up for with my co-workers. While I was still working on the foodstyle, I wasn't mentally ready for exercise too -- and it showed in my awful, petulant attitude. Eventually I stopped complaining about it, and just tried to do a little bit every day. I went on a few walks over the weekends, but mostly I just walked more in my day; took the stairs at work more often, parked further away at home (mostly because of the parking lot paving project), made myself stretch and move more than I had been. I haven't started anything formal like Curves or swimming, but it's on my radar.

Well, eight weeks have passed and next Wednesday is our weigh-in for the challenge.  I am going to be down around 8 pounds. EIGHT. That means I lost a pound a week. YAY!!!!

Even better, when I lose one more pound I will have accomplished the goal my doctor set in December; she made me commit to losing 9 pounds this year. At the time I thought that was a weird, low number, but now I get why she picked it. 9 pounds just sounds reasonable: a little less than 10, not as daunting as 20. You can, as I am proving to myself right now, lose 9 pounds just by making small, incremental changes. I didn't have to launch a major diet, pay anyone a lot of money, make any massive commitments or drastic sacrifices. I just had to eat better, do it consistently, and get off my dupa once in a while.

It feels like a damned miracle in some ways, but if I really look at it, it's not. I have had all these pieces of weight-loss tools floating around me for a while now, but nothing has gelled together, and I hadn't really tried to make them. Every time I did commit, I would fall off the wagon and go back to crappy stress eating and making excuses.

Things have gelled together, at last. Each little piece that I have tacked on has stuck. The foodstyle get better when I added Sunday Cooking, and Sunday Cooking got better when I added the Bottom Line Challenge. And I got better at all of it as I finally started seeing genuine downward momentum on the scale.

So what are the elements of the foodstyle as of this moment?

1. Prepare food every weekend to feed us through the week.

2. Everything must have veggies somewhere in it, and for casseroles or quiches, at minimum 2/3s of the dish should consist of veggies. Tuna casserole with only peas in it is not okay; spaghetti squash au gratin or lazy galumpke with a bag of shredded cabbage and my homemade sauce is.

3. Food prep should include cutting up fruit for breakfast and lunch, making sure I have other foods for those meals, and having back-up plans in the freezer for when I am "too tired to cook".

4. Don't have junk in the house. For ice cream, we always have those WW English toffee bars in the freezer, and there are granola bars or string cheese if we get the munchies. That's it.

5. I don't track my food in a log, but I keep track as the day goes by in my head. On Wednesday I ended up having salads with chicken for lunch and dinner, and in the early evening I was still unsatisfied. I realized I had not had enough carbs or protein that day, so I toasted a piece of cinnamon bread and put some light cream cheese on it. That was all I needed. Conversely, if I do have toast or a sandwich early in the day, I make sure I have more veggies and proteins at dinner and fewer carbs.

6. Eat seasonally, and as much whole, unprocessed food as possible. Not only is better for me (and better for the world, blah blah granola cakes) but most importantly it tastes better. And when it tastes better naturally, I am less likely to use cream sauces, butter, all the fattening stuff -- or if I do use them, I use the good ones and in moderate amounts.

7. Conversely, if I do want the fattening stuff, I let myself have it, but only if it fits into my day or I know I can get back on track within a meal. I am even getting better at "treating myself" with food when I am stressed. Yesterday, for example, I didn't have much food with me for lunch, so when Phillip was running to CVS to pick up a frozen lunch, I asked him to get me a small bag of pretzels. We were debating options for that kind of snack, and while I was making jokes about wanting chocolate-covered or just a bag of candy, truly what I wanted was something was something that would sustain me, not give me a temporary sugar high.

I ended up forgetting all about the pretzels sitting on my desk, but I did go out to dinner with my husband instead. Because I hadn't indulged earlier, and I knew I would be home today with a house full of good stuff, I had a half-portion of a light pasta dish, and a small portion of a bread pudding and gelato dessert. I enjoyed every bite of it. :) Today the scale was down anyway, and I dove right into a big bowl of strawberries, yogurt and a little granola for breakfast.

8. We have not ordered pizza since April 26. An entire month.

!!!!!!!!!!!!

Really, I have to stop on that one. Holy crap!


Of course, there is more to do. The exercise piece needs to keep growing, and soon I want to see some of this success in the mirror. I make up a lot of excuses for why I don't post as many outfits anymore, but the truth is I am very unhappy with how I look right now. I just don't feel attractive or fashionable, unless you can call "hiding as much fat as possible" a fashionable style option. But that WILL come, as long as I keep chugging away at the foodstyle. And then you will see my grinning mug on here more often. :)

In the meantime, there will be plenty of pictures of what I am putting into that mug. Or pictures of pretty flowers as the summer unfolds in front of me while I am out walking. :)



(Helen, these are allium, or wild onions. I think you were asking about them in your blog last week. They are in full bloom here now.)

Have a lovely, long, relaxing weekend, everyone. That's what I plan on having too.