Guilty Pleasures… What’s Yours?

So what is it about this eating thing that brings us pleasure the very moment food touches our lips. The aroma draws us in, we softly close our eyes and imagine the taste and texture. Our guards are down and before you know it, you’re open… It’s like a booty call at 3am, and it becomes a battle of being good, or having a small taste and being naughty. Naughty wins, as you head to the kitchen in the dark, you don’t even bother with turning on the lights. You don’t want anyone to see or hear you. You softly open the cabinets, then the frig, then the cabinets again, then back to the frig… Should you have fruit, how about some Greek Yogurt, a spoon full of peanut butter or a big ole glass of lemon water. Decisions, decisions… You’ve decided on the snack that you already had in mind before you made it to the kitchen. Was it the creamy butter pecan ice cream, the chips or cookies, or all three? Either way, you’ve decided to indulge for however long it takes you to devour this food. Yes, you’re in heaven. It’s the best Guilty Pleasure you’ve had in almost 24hrs, and you don’t care what artery clogging disease comes of this until you’re finished.  

Suddenly, you feel remorseful; you wish you could turn back the hands of time to not so long ago. But you cannot; now you feel like a spoiled child and a food junkie all in one. Yes, this feeling is possible… My husband has said, “I wish you felt the same way about having sex as you feel about eating food…” He got the blank stare. After all, what can I say, this love affair that I have with food is deep, it’s true and apparently unwavering. But it is artificial love, the endorphins trigger a nostalgic feeling similar to sex or morphine. Yes, I am comparing to this guilty pleasure to the same pleasure we receive during or after sex. Except no cigarette is needed.

So what can you do to replace this feeling? Of course sex is number one on the list, but working out and hot peppers have the same effect. I know it’s easier said than done. For instance, I love carbs, not pasta, but breads, sweet breads like pancakes and corn muffins. And I can’t forget about ice cream. Those are my Guilty Pleasures; I’m slowly learning to cut back and make wiser choices. We both know that the feeling we get from these foods are short lived, and I think that’s what we need to keep in mind… So what’s your Guilty Pleasure food?

  

 

Professional Dieter… Are you one?

I’ve read about 80% of these books

During a leisure conversation at work I mentioned my undying quest for weight-loss. Within an instant one of my co-workers began spewing off her diet tips. It went something like this only with a strong Spanish accent, ” You know what you do… You gotta cut all shoogers (sugars) from your diet, and when I say shoogers I mean all fruit too… Oh, and carbs too, you gotta cut the carbs out completely.” I just looked at her with a blank expression. “What? You don’t believe me?” she’d asked me looking as though she was insulted. So many diets and diet rules began to swim in and out of my mind, the ones that worked and the ones that didn’t, counting calories and handfuls of this food, eat this not that. I was dazed for a second as I stood over my mailbox with a pile of papers in my hand. I said, “I know what to do, and what to eat, when to eat it and how much. I’m a Professional Dieter.” My co-workers laughed. “A professional Dieter?” I nodded my head yes with a humble smile. “I feel you…” one of them responded. Our conversation ended. I didn’t feel the need to prove that I’d known what to eat and how to eat it, for it didn’t matter if I wasn’t applying any of my healthy eating knowledge, to my actual life. Truth is, I’d been on a diet almost half of my life. Seriously, I think that I started my first diet when I was around eight-years-old. I remember sitting alone on the steps just outside of my building in East Orange, NJ. It was summertime and I had on some average length shorts. I kept looking down at my chubby legs, I remember repositioning them, first I crossed them, then I held them together tightly. This position made them look slim, and then I told myself something that’s probably not even genetically possible. I told myself that I would one day have skinny legs. Today, I think skinny legs are unattractive, but as a young girl skinny legs were in. So at eight-years-old I began the Bahamian Diet, a diet created by Dick Gregory in 1987. The Bahamian Diet was/is a powdered, meal replacement drink that like most drinks, are to aid in weight-loss. For a majority of the day my father would mix the powder with orange juice and we would drink it. It was nasty, it tasted like sand mixed with juice, but eventually I grew accustom to its taste. It didn’t matter, I didn’t lose any weight and I was always hungry. My mom thought it would be good if we tried Nutrisystem since it involved actually eating food. It seemed simple enough, all we had to do was order a meal plan. Within days this big box arrived at our home, and since we were hungry we decided to try out a few of the meals, notice I said a few of the meals. Long story short, I would uncontrollably eat about two meals at one time, resulting in no weight-loss. I can go on and on into my adulthood about the woes of my dieting life. The problem was and still is that the thought of dieting represents deprivation of some sort. When the reality is simple, all we need to do is get off of these diets. The mind-set of being on a diet has created this warped idea of starvation, fasting, taking fat-burners, and the need to take a colon cleanser. No one stops to think about the real steps that it takes towards being healthy. It’s not about starvation and just looking good or better in our clothing. It’s about how we feel on the inside, living longer, feeling good, and whether our skin is glowing or not. I mean after all who wants grey skin???Lets be real, who cares how you look on the outside if you feel like crap inside. In my mid-twenties I’d woke up one morning and I got tired of being fat. I was tired of the yo-yo dieting, and quick fixes of fat-burners that never worked. I decided to actually use my gym membership and get a trainer. Within almost 10 months I’d managed to revamp how I saw weight-loss and food. I’d lost almost 85-90 pounds. How did I do it? I ate way less junk, I began eating 5 small meals a day and working out 5-6 days a week without fail. My trainer would say, “If you’re well enough to go to work, then you’re well enough to work out.” There was no magic to it, well I guess it may have seemed like magic now that I managed to gain all plus more of the weight back. Which leads to my main reason for writing this Blog to you. If you’re like me, a professional dieter then it’s time for us to get real. I’ve read numerous books on health written by some of the best weight doctors and fitness coaches and I’ve probably dabbed in almost every quick fix possible. I’ve tried cutting out meat, breads and sugars. I know the best foods to eat to burn fat, all of the natural supplements to add into my daily regimen. I’ve been on the cabbage soup diet, the lemon-aid diet etc. The truth is none of the above worked long-term for me. Let’s get off diets and get on with life. Just take a look at the first three letters in the word (D.I.E). So now, I’m challenging you and myself to seek optimal health… How, you maybe asking? If you haven’t already done so, figure out what works best for you. Go see a nutritionists and for goodness sake please, please work-out. I will be documenting my progress and keeping a diary of my personal woes towards health and fitness, and I invite you to join me in sharing this journey. After all, I’m a recovering Professional Dieter and I know that a diet isn’t something temporary, your eating has to be a life style change, something you can see yourself doing for the rest of your life healthily and happily.