Meatless Monday: "Mostly" Meatless and Other Musings

Less than two weeks into the new year, I'm still doing a lot of unofficial goal setting for the next 365 days. While I'm not really making a list of resolutions or goals, I am spending some time thinking about my intentions and the direction(s) I want to go. After stating last week that my weight has nosed its way into the unhealthy zone, not surprisingly, something I've been spending a lot of time contemplating is my eating habits. So I thought I'd share my thoughts about that with you this week in lieu of sharing a recipe.


In the grand scheme of life, a little weight gain is not a big deal, I know, but I haven't been able to get away from this sinking feeling of utter defeat. After all, hadn't I made a serious pact with myself to be healthier just a year and a half ago? Two years before that, hadn't I taken off almost 15 lbs. through Weight Watchers and vowed to keep it off? Don't I say every New Year's Day "This year is going to be different?" What exactly is my problem??

Just in time to coincide with my (and almost everyone else on the planet's) New Year's resolutions to be healthier in 2010, Michael Pollan (renowned author of The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, whom I've spoken about on here before), has come out with a new book that promises to give us all easy-to-understand-and-implement food guidelines to live by, 64 rules in all. The book is Food Rules: An Eater's Manual and, I have to say, I'm intrigued. In an interview with New York Times writer Tara Parker-Pope, Pollan seemed to nail my problem right on the head:

"[I]n the end, so much of the discussion about nutrition is a way to avoid talking about how much people are eating. People would rather talk about anything else than quantity."

Yes! That's exactly it. It would seem that what I have been willfully ignoring is the fact that I'm just eating too damn much. I've been putting too much on my plate (and finishing every bite) and eating when I'm not really hungry, like when I'm bored or procrastinating. (That last one is a big work hazard for freelancers who work from home. The stocked refrigerator and pantry shelves and a kitchen full of handy appliances are just far too conveniently located.)

In Pollan's NYT's interview, he also mentioned the flack he's gotten for an eating rule he included on the cover of his book In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto - "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

"The adverb 'mostly' has been the most controversial. It makes everybody unhappy. The meat people are really upset I'm taking a swipe at meat eating, and the vegetarians are saying, 'What's with the "mostly?" Why not go all the way?' You can't please everyone. In a way that little word is the most important. It's not all or nothing. Mostly. It's about degree. But in the whole food discussion, I've learned the most from that, that little 'ly' and people's reaction to it."

This really resonated with me because I feel like I get the same reactions to my Meatless Monday posts sometimes - meat eaters and vegetarians alike are offended. But I'm not trying to criticize anyone else's eating habits or philosophies; I'm just trying to find my own personal balance between that 'all' and 'nothing.'

Finding that balance is definitely a struggle. I've mentioned before that I sometimes wish I could go fully vegetarian, but it's years later and I'm still not any closer to making that commitment. Maybe I never will. My husband has been talking about it more lately though too. As I've mentioned before, partners can be allies and saboteurs when it comes to eating habits, so maybe his influence - or our combined influence on each other - will lead us more in the vegetarian direction. And if he doesn't sway me, maybe another book I recently added to my to-read list will --
Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. A description of the book on Goodreads.com says:

"Jonathan Safran Foer spent much of his teenage and college years oscillating between carnivore and vegetarian. As he became a husband and a father, he kept returning to two questions: Why do we eat animals? And would we eat them if we knew how they got on our dinner plates?"

Again, I'm intrigued - and I'll be sure to share my reviews of both these books with you once I've read them, . . . which, unfortunately, may not be for a couple of months because I'm up to my ears in work right now, I have a monthly Amnesty International book club obligation, and I've already got a list of other books I want to read that's about as long as my arm. Then again, Pollan's book is only 112 pages long, so I should be able to squeeze that in sooner than later. So, stay tuned!


Other Meatless Monday posts

Fitness File: 1st Steps

I'm happy with my life and myself. I'm not obsessed with scales, dress sizes, the mirror, or counting calories (despite my tongue-in-cheek April post), but I decided I'd had one too many consecutive days (months?!) of feeling lethargic, out-of-shape, and unhappy about how my clothes were fitting me, . . . so I strapped on a sports bra, laced up my sneakers, and went for a run today.

OMG . . . There's nothing more defeating than that first foray back into the world of fitness. You've finally scraped together enough motivation to actually do something about your sad situation only to find out Things Are Worse Than You Thought! I ran. Slowly. For barely 20 minutes. When I finished, I was completely out of breath, my face was flush with every ounce of blood in my body, I had to fight the urge to regurgitate breakfast, and there wasn't a muscle in my body that wasn't screaming (even though, yes, I did stretch).

The obvious challenge I have ahead of me is whipping my butt back into healthier shape. What I need to admit to myself, though, is that the mental component of that challenge is going to be just as difficult as the physical component. I was bean-pole skinny throughout my childhood, adolescence, and much of my young adult life, and I ran track all through high school, so there's a part of my brain that has this notion that running and getting back into shape should be easy for me. This, of course, is the same part of my brain that has conveniently forgotten that my high school track-running days were 16 years ago.

I had done a good job back in 2006 of learning how to eat better (thanks to Weight Watchers), but I fell off the wagon and never got back on. Now, my plan is to combine the good eating habits I learned at WW with a much more regular exercise routine. And to keep myself accountable to this new mission I've set for myself, I'm going to try to keep track of how I'm doing on this blog.

I'm starting out from the standpoint that this should be a life change, something ongoing, so I'm not going to set a weight or dress size goal like I did with WW. I'm just going to judge my success by how I feel and work at maintaining good habits indefinitely. So, you can expect "Fitness File" to be a regularly occurring post from here on out.

Counting Calories

Yes, I’m going to wipe my finger along the inside of the entire bowl of my Weight Watchers Smart One frozen meal to get every last bit of cream sauce. You see, I’ve already counted the calories. There’s no escaping! They’re MINE!