Food Cliques

I apologize for the lack of exciting posts with photos for the past few days.

I have been doing a lot of the following:

Get up, get to the gym for half hour workout, come home, pick out a very business lady like outfit, get ready, eat my premade breakfast, chug 2 cups of coffee (not all at once, yowch), go to work, present to (xyz) faculty members, sit in/hold meeting, scarf down lunch at desk, send follow up document for said meeting, fix other documents, send (xyz) email times ten, scarf down snack, work some more – go out with friends for dinner – go home and crash.

Just in case you were wondering. Since today is whatever Wednesday – meaning, rest day – I did something more exciting than normal. I had my visit to the nutritionist!

Prior to my visit, she sent me a food journal in the mail since I needed to record my meals for 3 days prior to our appointment. I did so, even though the past two days I’ve eaten way more crap than I normally do in an average week. Such is life though, so it needs to be on there.

I went into the office building and met the nutritionist – Michelle – who was very nice and fit looking, and had her lab coat on. People seem more legit when they wear lab coats don’t they? I would try my mom’s on as a kid (she’s a nurse practitioner who works in the ICU) and pretend I was a doctor. Ha.

When I went into her office, she had the little fake pieces of food on her desk that serve as the example for proper portion sizes. She asked the initial height, weight, history questions, why I want a consultation, etc. She asked about my food preferences – I told her I wasn’t a huge meat eater but other than that, I was game for anything. She looked at my food journal and what I’d eaten for the past three days. I waited for the “ohhhh yeah, you shouldn’t have eaten that.”

“Wow, you have really great food choices…I think you eat better than I do!”

Um, hi. Compliment of my lifetime much? That was exciting.

We went on to review my journal and look at the Guide To Healthy Eating – which is somewhat like the Food Pyramid. Essentially I lack in dairy and vegetables most days. Very interesting! I guess that means I need to bust out the juicer and make those salads more often.

In order to lose the weight that I want to lose, I’ll have to eat around 1600 calories to drop a pound. Which is fine with me, I don’t want to be dropping 15 pounds in a month and be tempted to eat my IKEA dresser. I am down with slow and steady as long as there is a decrease, not increase, in the number. And then she said the magic words that sold me on following her every order…

“So with this we’re not going to count calories, we’re going to count food groups. Don’t get mired in the calories right now, just focus on checking off each group as you eat it during the day.”

Can I get an AMEN. For some reason I have the strongest aversion to counting calories. I know it works and has worked for so many people. Even Michelle said that basically, weight loss boils down to calories. But to focus on them as your goal is too overwhelming. I think, for me, it feels too diety. I’ve done it before and it always results in a binge. I know that keeping accountable with calories is important and I know this doesn’t give me the liberty to go hog wild and eat what I want, when I want – but just hearing someone say that that shouldn’t be your focus felt so liberating to me.

So, I’m checking back with her in two weeks time. In that time, I am to document my food each day (oh weird, how ever should I do that!?) and check off my food groups to balance out my eats for the day. These are the “steps” to healthy eating:

1. Meals: Choose at least 3 food groups to have at each meal.

2. Snacks: Choose from a food group you didn’t eat at the previous meal.

3. Food Selections: Choose lean or low-fat foods more often.

Done, done, and done.

In thinking about it, the foods also formed into little cliques in my mind.

The Vegetables are like the Nice Kids in high school. They’re not the snooty, popular people, but they get along with everyone and do well in any sort of situation they’re put in. They are very versatile and very easy going.

The Fruits are sort of a more elite clique – like the theatre kids. They’re kind of dramatic (but in a beautiful way) and you can’t have too many of them around at the same time or it’s just somewhat overwhelming.

The Proteins are the jocks. They provide strength, they’re always working on something, and they power through any sort of situation. (Apparently protein controls your hormones as well, which controls your metabolism. Good to know.)

The Dairy group is like the honor society kids. They’re smart, they  and they help you with your homework.

The Grains are like the burn outs. There are a lot of them, they’re ALWAYS available to hang out/not do much, but they are essential to a full and enjoyable high school/food clique metaphor/ experience.

Basically, my next two weeks is going to be a lot like Mean Girls. And I am PUMPED!

Karen: If you’re from Africa, why are you white?
Gretchen: Oh my God, Karen, you can’t just ask people why they’re white

Get ready for some food clique action Big Girl style.