skinny ink

from the blog: http://candimandi.typepad.com/

2.5 more pounds OFF of my body!!!  I celebrated last night with a glass of wine (don't tell Arthur Agatston, M.D.).  That's a grand total of seven pounds lost in the first week of dieting.  Cravings are still in check and I've decided that at the end of this long road, I'm going to reward myself with a tattoo, on my arm, my least favorite part of my body.  The above-image is a personal favorite.

Very little to report, other than that.  I've almost finished The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, which was the perfect reading pair with my dieting.  I started the book not only as a dieting aid, but also as a brainstorming aid.  Come the spring, I have to write a 60 page history thesis on a topic of my choice, and so far I can only narrow the topic down to "food."  60 pages is a lot, but I don't know if I could fit the entire food industry into it, at 12 point font, double spaced.  A few years back, I wrote a miniscule 12 pages on a group of individuals from the 19th century who started a vegetarian commune in the middle of Kansas.  Their philosophies were part of a larger food movement at the time, based on temperance, vegetarianism and a dangerous dose of optimism.  Individuals like Bronson Alcott and Sylvester Graham (father of the graham cracker, which he believed would be the main nourishment of the future) led this movement straight into the ground; losing family members and dreams in the failure.  I would like to fill that story out, maybe researching vegetarianism in a larger context--its philosophies, its successes as a movement, as well as its failures, and relate it to modern vegetarianism led by men like Peter Singer and the canon.  Maybe...

Sidebar: Coop just awoke, my loveable six-foot zombie.  He can barely form words fresh out of bed.  It's just the cutest.

Kelly becomes her mother.

South Beach diet, week 2.  I always thought that only boring adults did diets that come from a book, but here I am--I've lost four pounds in a week, which is four pounds more than I was losing on my own "Eat nothing and like it" diet, therefore Arthur Agatston, M.D. is my new best friend and his diet book is my Bible.  So thanks, Mom, for lending me the book... I'm beginning to wonder if I'm 22 or 52.

It hasn't been pleasant.  The carbs I'm not struggling with, it's the lack of sugar, namely fruits that's killing me.  I have a lone orange chilling in a fridge full of chicken, salmon and leafy vegetables and it keeps tempting me with its sunny disposition and sugary innards.  But I will stay strong until the end of this horrible Phase I.  My boyfriend joined in on the diet fun--I can't tell if it's for his own health or my own.  But it's sweet, and so comforting to have my favorite partner with me through all this.

Phase I will end the day before my birthday, which seems like the perfect day to splurge and reward myself for (hopefully) losing the customary 10 pounds.  If I do not lose those promised pounds, Arthur Agatston, M.D. will be on my shit list and his book will be banned from my household.  Let's just hope it doesn't come to that.  I'm getting a new dress for the occasion, and I'm crossing my fingers I can squeeze everything into a medium, especially the girls, which have been the most difficult to deal with.  I'll be ever so slightly sad to see them go back to 34 B where they belong.  Coop's sadness over the situation is more pronounced.

Laterrrrr

another diet blog

So, here are the facts: I want to lose 25-30 pounds, at about 5 pounds a month for the next six months. By consuming about 1200 calories a day, exercising four days a week, drinking alcohol only twice a week (spoiler alert: this one will be painfully difficult), and complementing the physical change of my body with a mental one, I will increase my confidence, form a better understanding of my body, and build a deeper connection with the food that I consume.

I think the first thing to address when one wants to change their body, is how they got to where they are in the first place. I've been slowly gaining weight since I turned 18, though a couple bouts of depression and consequent drug and alcohol abuse kept this weight gain from being perceptible. But here I am now, 22 years old, happy, in a healthy relationship, with basically no complaints other than the 30 pounds that I've acquired.

I blame the relationship. And in a way, I'm lucky that I can do so. About the only good that my depression did was keep me thin-sadness for beauty-and that was not a worthwhile tradeoff. However, my man and I have certain habits that are less than healthy, despite the psychological benefits of being in a happy relationship. Binge eating, for example. Drinking two glasses of wine with dinner every other night. Dessert. Lattes. Late night munchies. All of these activities are sooo tempting and sooo detrimental to a diet, especially when you have a partner to enable you. I have the mentality that just because I'm happy, it is okay to splurge, but when you splurge often, and with a buddy, it takes its toll. On your thighs.

It could also be the reintroduction of meat into my life after six years of vegetarianism. I do not regret this decision at all. I am not the person I was when I turned 16 and decided that eating animal flesh was evil. The more I learn about American foodways, the less effective I think vegetarianism is at solving our problems. A lack of transparency in the food chain lies at heart of American food culture, and simply rejecting a part of that problem does not solve anything. I've realized that being an omnivore is very interesting and delicious, and I embrace this evolutionary taste. For me, making smart choices about the meat I consume is more important than abstaining from it entirely and in buying local, sustainable meat and seafood, I insert my opinion into the twisted path that is American foodways. For my body, however, this choice added about 200-400 calories onto my daily intake, and that aint cool.

So that's where I come from, here's where I'm going: I decided to keep a blog as a way to force myself out of the mentality that going on a diet is some sort of embarrassing secret that I should do, with guilt, as if I was punishing myself. I realized this morning while sipping on some lovely green tea that my sister gave me, that the embarrassing part already happened: I gained thirty pounds. It's there, physically evident on my body; no denying it happened. So why should I hide the fact that I'm doing something about it? Rather than wrap this diet in guilty vibes, I see it as an opportunity to improve myself, physically and mentally; in this way, I feel strong and empowered.

Since I'm attempting to improve my body, I thought I might work on my mind, too. I've sketched out a tentative book list, which will focus on the way individuals interact with their food. I'll begin with The Omnivores Dilemma, by Michael Pollen, followed by some articles by anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, Marion Nestle, perhaps re-read Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser and will finish off my diet with a more broad look at ecosystems and our place within them, with Rachel Carson's infamous Silent Spring. I'm sure more will be added to the list as I do research.

So, there it is, in painfully close detail. If you'll excuse me, I have a run to go on.