I finally hit the wall as far as indulging myself in favorite treats. In fact, I think I will “unlike” chocolate and also ice cream on facebook. For years I thought they were my friends but the mirror shows me otherwise. (And as a woman living in our culture, this wonderful article on body image shows that I am not alone in my love-hate relationship with mirrors!)
Instead, in 2012 I am going to cozy up to snacks like raw unsalted almonds or dried apricots whenever I have a craving for my old friend sugar. I’m going to try the new trend (according to the New York Times) of being a “semi vegan“. I’m 11 days into this plan and so far it seems to be working pretty good. There is a great slide show at Self Magazine that shows the 20 Superfoods For Weight Loss and I was pleased to see that I had already instinctively included more than half of them in my shopping cart–after all, you would expect some knowledge to sink in after reading every diet book that ever came out in the past 30 years.
My goal is not to “get skinny”. I believe that real women have curves and even at my rock bottom thinnest Nicole Ritchie did not come to mind. Nope. My goal is to be healthy and that means not getting sick. I want to have energy to play and to create art for a very long time to come. If the love handles disappear, all the better! And don’t worry about my former friend Ice Cream…according to facebook she has 6,572,730 friends and won’t miss me at all!
BTW: mirrors are feng shui cures so read about that here.
WHAT I’M EATING IN 2012 (Does this mean I’ll be grainier, nuttier, and not as sweet?!):
Breakfast: any fruit I want, whole grain cereals or oatmeal with milk or Greek yogurt, chicory coffee or jasmine tea
Lunch: a small serving of soup or a spinach salad with hardboiled egg plus nuts/cranberries/other veggies/ with a lot less salad dressing than I used to use
Dinner: at least 2-3 veggies plus either whole grain pasta or brown rice with or without salmon/tilapia/shrimp (yes, I know this is not vegan)
Snacks: fruit, home made trail mix, low calorie fruit sweetened granola bars, almonds….something with a little oomph to satisfy even if it isn’t low calorie
More water! More variety of veggies (recently I sauteed some radicchio and even my bf liked it!). More often in smaller quantities.
I’ll post back in on this in a few months with some before and after pics. 🙂