Impossible is a typoRunning my pants off and loving myself along the way

And FatGirl says: NOOOOOOO! For the love of all that is good and holy, why, why dear god are you taking away my coffee?? I’ll be good. I promise. Just don’t take the coffee. Woe, woe is me!

It’s a new year and I have several pounds of Christmas cookies strapped to my butt right now and what better way of dealing with that than torturing myself by giving up coffee, sugar, white flour and dairy for a week. Yay!

Everyone and their cousin Bob has a detox program right now. Basically, the idea is to remove food science chemical additives from your diet as well as common allergens and “toxic” crap like sugar and coffee. Then you add them back into your diet in a controlled fashion to see if your body reacts to it. Keep what foods work for you, get rid of what foods don’t. I’ve done several detoxes over the course of my weight loss journey, most on my own which basically consisted of eating brown rice and veggies for a week or so. I did almost a whole year of “No Processed Foods” which was great and I’d love to do that again. I was cooking professionally at the time in a cafe that did all scratch cooking so it really wasn’t a big deal for me to whip up homemade pasta or crackers. I did an official detox with a wellness coach and bought some fancy herbal supplements that were supposed to support the detoxification process. It was alright, no complaints really

I can’t say that I lost a substantial amount of weight or felt remarkably better after a detox program, but doing a detox breaks me of some bad food habits. I really don’t need 8 cups of coffee to be productive in my day. I don’t really need Ritz crackers and butter for a snack. I don’t need a half dozen Dove chocolate squares after dinner. I’ve been pushing my schedule really hard and I’ve been pretending that it’s easier and faster to eat crap. Sure, in the moment, a slice of pepperoni pizza IS faster than eating a salad, but I totally pay for it later by feeling bloated and yuckie. And really, it’s just habit and mindset and a pattern of settling for less. And that’s what I find beneficial about a detox program – pressing the reset button on my food habits and getting back to healthy eating.

I’m going to start a detox program next week, and I have a ton of content lined up. I can hear the chant resonating through cyber space – “Next week?? Do it now!”. I may be fat but I’m not stupid. I know full well if I go cold turkey on sugar, bread, coffee and butter someone will get hurt and it won’t be me. So I’m easing out of those foods over the next few days to get myself really well set up.

Let me know your detox experiences? Do you think it’s all just marketing and nonsense? Have you detoxed and what were your results.

It’s going to be an interesting ride. Oy.

"Thinking of the immortal words of Socrates who said: I drank WHAT?"

FatGirl hustles about the tiny Queens NY kitchen, knocking cats out of the way. “Dear God, what is wrong with these people,” she mumbles through gritted teeth. Like a Narcotics Agent searching for illicit hideyholes that some wannabe gangsta carved into the kitchen cabinets, FatGirl creeks open the one cabinet that contains food for about the 40 billionth time. She’s already checked and rechecked and checked again the other cabinet with the pots and pans. And yes, Dear Readers, she even checked inside the pans. She’s thorough and skilled in finding sneaky places that people hide chocolate and snacks.

Throwing her arms up in disgust and frustration, FatGirl exclaims “16 boxes of pasta but not a single cracker or Hersey Kiss?? Do these people never eat? I’m dying of starvation!” FatGirl slumps in defeat, wedging herself in the tiny chair by the tiny window, slamming her head oh-so dramatically on the tiny kitchen table.

FitGirl puts a calming hand on FatGirls shoulder. “They went out of town. They probably didn’t want food to go bad while they were gone.” she soothes. Lip trembling, a tear edging her eye, FatGirl moans “But what about me?” Sniff. Sniff.

With superhero bravado, FitGirl jumps up and proclaims “I know! I’ll make your a smoothie!” FatGirl cracks one eye to give FitGirl a disbelieving one-eyed glare. FitGirl efficiently hustles about, clanking silverware and opening the fridge. FatGirl moans and whines and thrashes about playing the woe-is-me part to the hilt.

“It will be delicious!” FitGirl cheers. FatGirl is unmoved.

“It will be creamy!” FitGirl coaxes. FatGirl is interested.

“It will be sweet!” FitGirl cajoles! FatGirl is very intersted but faking disbelief.

In the sudden hush that follows the blender turning off, FitGirl triumphantly places a glass before FatGirl. “Ta DAAAAA!”

“WHAT THE HELL IS THAT! It’s GREEN!! Are you trying to poison me??” FatGirl recoils from the glass as if it was a snake.

“I know! Isn’t it pretty! Have a taste!” FitGirl edges the glass closer to FatGirl delighted by her prowess with the blender.

“BUT WHY IS IT GREEN?” FatGirl makes mocking gag noises.

“It has spinach in it! And ginger, and apples, and pineapple! It’s delicious!” FitGirl beams.

“For the love of KitKats! Smoothies don’t have spinach. They have ice cream, or fro-yo if you’re desperate, and bananas, and sometimes chocolate. Smoothies do not have vegetables!” fumes FatGirl.

“Oh stop being silly. Just try it. You might actually like it!” FitGirl quips over her shoulder as she ducks out of the kitchen and the brewing drama storm.

“Fine.” FatGirl takes a sip. “Stupid spinach, blech” and another sip. “MM” with the third sip. FatGirl looks at the glass. “This is actually kind of good” she says with a quick look around to make sure no one hears. FitGirl from just around the door frame, licks her fingertip and makes a tic mark in the air to indicate Battle Won for FitGirl.

The Spinach Smoothie

1 cup of spinach

1 small apple

1/2 cup of fresh pineapple

a few grates of fresh ginger

Some green tea to make it blend all smooth

a pinch of cinnamon

a pinch of black pepper.

Blend till smooth and enjoy!

You talkin' to me Watermelon?

I’m having some food issues. Yeah I know, this is a “Fat Girl” blog, so you’re expecting me to wax pathetic about how I just ate a box of donuts and now I’m all weepy about it. That’s not the kind of food issues I’m having. Well, not right now at least.

Go FatGirl Go

I have a lot going on in my life right now. I’m taking a class that requires a good deal of travel to NYC. I work. I run. I blog. I write. I blah blah blah. I’m in hustle phase right now and it’s super fantastic. But what I’m not doing is putting a priority on health and fitness. I’m not taking the time to plan food and cook so I end up trying to throw together a lunch at 7am with snacks  and odds and ends rescued from my freezer and oops I forgot I have class so that means pizza while running to catch a train. Or I simply don’t eat and try to go 12 hours on a single Lara Bar, counting on the nutrition in the milk in my 4th cup of coffee to get me through the day.

This way of being isn’t working. I get irritable. I spend far too much money on food I didn’t really want to eat in the first place and I’m not meeting my heath and fitness goals. And I physically feel like crap, which leads me to Problem #2

Problem #2

And yup, we’re talking about “Number Two”. And no, I’m not going TMI here. I’ve been having tummy troubles off and on for the past few months. I feel like my body has to work really hard to digest the food I eat. My tummy makes noise that are not hunger-related noises. I’m all bloated at times and well, poo is an issue, that’s all I’m saying. I was worried for a while that I’m developing food allergies. Yes, I’ll go get tested at some point. I even did a wheat-free-week to see if gluten was the issue. No dice.

What I’m feeling right now takes me back 10 years to when I decided to go vegetarian. I feel like my whole body has to work extra hard to digest animal protein. This is a problem for me. I’ve got it that to achieve weight loss, you need to up your amount of protein. The whole new Weight Watcher’s Points Plus program is structured around that. So I started eating eggs and meat for breakfast, chicken with my lunch and some other animal for dinner, sometimes tuna as a snack. Whoa, meat left and right! I’m eating my veggies too but maybe I need to take a break from the meat.

The Meow Detox

I’m house sitting this week because Charlie, pictured above, can’t be trusted to take his seizure medication on his own. I went food shopping for what feels like the first time in a very very long time. I got spinach and kale and almond milk and apples and pineapple and holy cow, a “personal” watermelon! Isn’t that melon like the cutest thing ever! I made a superfood smoothie with spinach, ginger, pineapple and apples! I dived into Foodily to find a breakfast quinoa recipe (super yums but I didn’t rinse the quinoa enough as its a touch bitter). So I’m going to spend a week eating green things and enjoying whole food and not being as crazy on the run as the past few weeks have been. And hopefully by the end of the week my tummy will settle down and Charlie and I will still be friends. Getting a cat to take a pill is slight more dangerous than taking a cupcake away from a crying fat girl. Just sayin’.

Yeah, say that 10 times fast.

I’m not one to jump on the bandwagon of fashionable food fads (wow, I’m getting fancy with the alliteration today!). Well no, that’s not true. I will try out fads and then the fad fades and well gee, that was fun and pointless. I like treating my body and sometimes my life (hello ex-boyfriends!) like experiments, sometimes with clipboards and spreadsheets and everything. But at the end of the day most of these experiments fizzle out (goodbye ex-boyfriends!).

Wheat and Gluten Free foods are all the rage right now. This is not to say that Celiac Disease isn’t real and terrible and I profoundly feel for anyone having the disease, but I’m not so sure that there is as much “gluten intolerant” folks out there as your local expensive healthfood store will make you believe. It’s ever so fashionable to go “gluten free” right now, just like it was fashionable to be vegan a few years back, and go “low-carb” before that.

So why am I being all trendy and going wheat free for a week? Well, Welcome to TMI-Ville. You see, I’ve been having tummy issues for quite some time now ranging from mild discomfort and indigestion to well, let’s just say I’ve been having tummy issues. Could wheat and gluten be the problem? Sure as could a myrid of other things, but I’ll never know unless I experiment.

I’m not actually going gluten free, because that’s far too tricky. My time eating animal-free taught me that eliminating entire ingredient categories from your diet entirely is really really difficult. It boggles my tiny little red head where milk protein and wheat products show up. So I’m going wheat-free, the light and lazy way. Basically, I’m not doing any bread or pasta or wheat flour baked good for a week. If I feel remarkably better after a week. I’ll reassess how wheat fits in my life.