When I first met Corey, he had carrots in his fridge. I remember opening the fridge door, blearily, late at night looking for water and literally seeing a solitary, sad little bag of carrots. It fascinated and terrified me and I thought it might be a bit of an anomoly but then he made me "stir fry" for dinner. That word is in quotes for a reason.
Stir fry in my world was hearty noodles in some kind of sauce, preferably something salty and sweet, teriyaki maybe? Those noodles would be covered with tendercrisp veggies, more sauce, and perhaps some shrimp. A healthy meal, right?
But stir fry in his world was veggies. That's it: just a frozen mixed bag of veggies and I'd been admiring the novelty of his muscles and washboard stomach but as I was eating that tragic little stirfry, I realized that those muscles come with some serious deprivation.
I've kind of eaten like crap the majority of my life. My Mom made homemade desserts with every rich meal when I was growing up, and I was a cocktail waitress from University through most of my twenties and so my diet was largely wine and late night donairs. I'd inhale mistake food in the back of the restaurant: fries and gravy, whatever was convenient. I am pretty sure that if I tried to run 5K back then, I would have spewed 3AM chickpea balls all over the road.
About a year ago, I resolved to get my fitness back and stopped inhaling rice pudding and Lindt chocolate and started eating "healthily." I started running 3-5 times a week, and I cut down considerably on my wine consumption. I was doing OK, I was pretty fit and I was eating a lot of yogurt and a lot of wraps. Then I met Corey, and I briefly considered subsisting on celery with him and then decided rapidfire: holy shit, no.
He's become less radical and I've become more disciplined: together we've been eating a Body For Life kind of diet with 6 small meals per day that balance proteins and carbs. I'm eating about 1900 calories a day and you know what? It's harder than I thought. I'm by no means starving, but by being aware and scheduling everything I put in my body, I realize how heavily I depended on that "full" feeling before. I also understand how much I mindlessly snacked: when I was fixing my son dinner, when I was on an achingly long conference call.
There are a lot of foods I was eating that I thought were healthy, and are actually total Silent Jerks, messing with any weight loss goals you might have, and masquerading as innocent.
1. Wraps - There is something about wraps that always seemed healthy to me. Maybe it was their thinness or open invitation to veggies, I don't know. But did you know that one of those large wraps (tomato or spinach or cheese or even whole wheat) can run you 400 calories? That's more than an entire Body for Life meal. You can cook fairly awesome dinners for 400 calories. I now use the smaller low-cal wraps. You can find them in your bread section, you just have to look for them -- they're around 80-100 calories and a lot more manageable.
2. Deluxe Yogurt - I used to mow through a quart of Liberte's lemon yogurt like a deranged human plow. God, that stuff is good. Super creamy and sweet and delicious but it is yogurt so it's OK and...the first time I actually looked at the label on that yogurt I almost tumbled into the dairy rack. 240 calories and 14 grams of fat for 6 ounces. I never kept it to 6 ounces. I now subsist on Source Yogurt by Yoplait which is only 35 calories per 100 grams. I won't lie, it doesn't taste nearly as good as the uber sweet, thick stuff but it is decent with cottage cheese and a bit of fruit or dried cranberries mixed in.
3. Mega Salads - I remember serving a young lady, over 10 years ago when I worked in a Greasy Spoon restaurant. She ordered a "large caesar salad, with extra dressing on the side" and she confidentially whispered "I'm on a diet, just the salad." I think it might be pretty common knowledge that caesar salads are bad news for people watching fat and calorie count -- but Cobb salads and Spinach salads with their creamy dressings and cheese seem to have sidled through. I used to make giant salads filled with brie and full-fat dressing and I understand now: just because a salad has lettuce does not mean it's healthy. Corey and I make a lot of Greek Salads with light feta and I skip the dressing altogether in favor of balsamic vinegar, which is full of flavor but easy on the calories.
4. Juice - This one, for me, was the easiest change. A glass of apple juice has about 117 calories. It's not a lot, but if you add up all the juice, soda, and milk you drink in a day, it's probably several hundred calories. I don't have juice in the fridge at all anymore, and have replaced it totally with water. I don't miss it.
5. Wine - So - I never really thought wine was good for me, calorie wise, but I didn't think it was really that bad, either. Two glasses while I was up late writing? An extra 230 calories or so, much better than a heaping bowl of creamy rice pudding, right? Not really. Alcohol is metabolized differently than food and are more easily translated into fat -- articles.asp?id=563">this article does a great job of explaining. I've cut way down on my wine consumption and usually limit it to one night a week, if at all. I think it's made a big difference.
I've changed up my eating on the above 5 items and I'm really not doing much more now than I was 10 months ago, exercise wise. But I definitely have muscles where I didn't before, my muffin top no longer exists and a lot of my clothes are too loose. Food makes such a massive difference.
Next post I'll talk about the Angels in the Fridge (cottage cheese, hot sauce, and egg whites are pretty heroic in my book) but if you have any Jerkwad foods I've missed that I should be aware of, please share!
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