Confessional
Every afternoon, my two older children have swimming lessons at our local pool. With three kids, the smart thing to do would be to bring my bathing suit and play in the water with my three year old while waiting for the older two to finish their lessons.
Actually, I've planned on doing that, I really have. However, I sunburned my back so badly at the beach on Mother's Day that a soft tee shirt is excruciating. I'm going to have to wait until it heals before I get back in the water. Not that I'm so excited about prancing around in my swimming suit, mind you.
A few weeks ago, my husband and I took the kids to the pool that our homeowners dues pay for. There was no one there, and I allowed myself to lay back in the water, floating without a care in the middle of the deep end. I breathed in and out, in and out, and let myself drift on the surface. I stopped thinking about my large thighs. The water held me up, and I felt the tension just melt away. I must have floated for ten, fifteen minutes at a stretch, only bobbing up to check on the kids. It was so peaceful that I have been craving a repeat performance. Alas, I am a lobster.
Granted, swimming in a public pool with my three year old, and half the town isn't exactly peaceful. But it would keep me safe from the siren song of the concession stand.
The Fat Fallacy is all about eating real food. Real. Not things like Skittles and Coca-cola and nacho cheese. Gummy worms are not real food. Red Vines? Totally not real food. I knew I would be coming home and having a nice dinner of homemade mac and cheese, and I was looking forward to it. I walked my three-year-old around the pavement four times before I thought to check and see if they would have anything "real" to snack on.
I ended up getting tortilla chips coated with Que Bueno! Nacho "cheese" out of a pump. I only ate a few, and felt guilty as hell, but man. Why do I love that stuff?
My friend Kim pointed out to me that as consumers, we just accept the additives and mystery scientific-sounding ingredients in our food. We don't even know what half this stuff is, and yet we put it in our grocery carts, and into our mouths.
"What is "red#40"? It's a dye. Right. But what is that? They don't have to list the ingredients of dyes. There are dyes in lots of things: paint, plastics, clothes. Do we really need them in our food?
The same goes for drinks. If you don't know what it is, don't drink it. Just try to say the ingredients on the back of a can of bubbly black, clear, or neon cola. Read the labels and you often see lactic acid in there - that's the muscle toxin that gives you cramps when you exercise. Another one is phosphoric acid. Prior to returning to graduate school, I was a research chemist and had to keep this stuff under the hood if I was even going to take the lid off."
~Will Clower, The Fat Fallacy, page 188-189
Kim's whole point was this: if you tell someone that their food had just a little dog crap in it, would they still eat it? I wouldn't. Even if it was a microscopic amount. I'm not eating dog crap. Nope. Not doing it. Yet, today I sidled up to the counter and bought myself a paper dish of Que Bueno, which could contain dog crap, for all I know. I just don't know.
I'm going to be putting all future foods through the dog-crap test - if I don't know for sure, I'm not eating it.
Comments
OK, girl, you're making me rethink the handful of gummy bears I just scarfed while writing a post...
Good point.
Mary, mom to many
Posted by: owlhaven | May 16, 2006 10:37 PM
Ignorance is bliss, but unfortunately it's not all that healthy. I try to eat an all natural diet when I'm pregnant, but man, is it HARD. Everything I really like is full of crap. EVERYTHING.
Posted by: Amanda | May 17, 2006 5:20 AM
That is a fantastic idea.
The trouble is, the dog-crap food is easy, cheap, and EVERYWHERE. And also, frequently very tasty.
But the image of a chihuahua squatting over a tray of nachos is, I think, very effective.
Brilliant.
Posted by: EverydaySuperGoddess | May 17, 2006 6:23 AM
Glad I finished that mouthful of coffee before I read your post, otherwise my computer would be dripping Maxwell House right now! That is so funny, and so true.
You are vastly ahead of most of America by simply THINKING about what is in your food. Just try to tackle one thing at a time. Like maybe give up soda, or ho-ho's, or whatever, just one thing. Tackle that, master that, then go on to something else. That's my motto. Because if I try to make all the changes I need to make right off the bat? That's too much. Ugh.
I looked at my wedding pics the other day with my husband. We were both sooo skinny and young. My husband looked at me and said, "What happened to those people?" I looked back at him and said, "Honey, we ATE those people."
Posted by: Missie | May 17, 2006 8:05 AM
I don't have kids, but I am really enjoying reading your blog. I recently went on a rampage in our house and decided from now on everything HAD to be a whole food and natural and blah, blah, blah. This was spurned from an Oprah episode "How to live longer in 90 days", my husband has decided Oprah is the devil and I should be banned from watching it :-) I do have to admit though, I am really starting to dig the taste of real food...I ate a pear and thought I was in heaven...I used to only get that euphoria from Fritos.
Hang in there...the pay-off is worth the toil.
Posted by: blueslady | May 17, 2006 9:24 AM
I saw a clip on the Today show this morning from the movie Fast Food Nation. They were discussing [some kind of] crap in some hamburgers. And now I read your post about dog crap. I think I'll take it as a sign and read the ingredients from now on and stick with more natural foods.
Posted by: ppwgal | May 17, 2006 10:24 AM
Jenny - how's the portion control going with the "real" foods? I've beens switching over to better choices (though we eat fairly well to begin with) - my current goal is eliminating high fructose corn syrup products. I'm eating a ton though :/
Posted by: HG | May 17, 2006 10:57 AM
Portion control is surprisingly not all that hard...since I literally packed away all my dinner plates.
We are now only using salad-sized plates for every meal, and instead of using bowls, we are using cups that hold about 8 oz if filled to the brim.
I'll blog about this tonight, but what seems to be keeping us satisfied is small portions with a lot of variety, and S L O W I N G down so our bodies have a chance to tell us whether we're satisfied.
I put up a photo album over there in the left sidebar to record what I'm cooking and how - all those servings are on my Target Hula Girl plastic plates.
What's killing me is eliminating snacks altogether. I'm a mindless grazer, so I have to REALLY pay attention. It is so hard - one battle at a time, eh?
Posted by: BigSlice | May 17, 2006 11:41 AM
Portion control is key for me. Ditto the salad plates, and I buy the smallest packages of chicken and steak and pork. We cook it all, so we might as well cook less of it and avoid the temptation of serving larger portions.
And I've found that if I don't open it (or better yet, don't buy it in the first place), I leave it alone. But an open box of Thin Mints or Godiva? It's toast.
Posted by: mothergoosemouse | May 17, 2006 12:02 PM
I really love the photo/recipe book. Everything looks really tasty. I am seriously craving some bruschetta right now, and that Lazy Chicken sounds nice. Thank goodness for Trader Joe's.
Posted by: ken | May 17, 2006 12:44 PM