Healthy Eating

If you'd told me a year ago that I'd be writing a blog about what I'd learned about eating healthy, I wouldn't have believed you.

But now it's been almost a year, and I consistently get at least 2 fruits and 3 vegetables a day, more often 3 fruits and 4 vegetables. (Plus 3 servings of whole grains!) I've tried a ton of new things, and I wanted to blog about what I've discovered in the past year.

1) I Needed the Right Motivation
I was never opposed to healthy eating. I just didn't think I could do it. Most of the healthy things I had tried, I didn't like.

But as those who know me already know, I'm very driven by competition. So when my work did the Feel Like a Million challenge, in which you got points for various healthy things each day, I had to win it. And you could get points for up to 4 vegetables and 3 fruits a day. I wasn't going to leave any points on the table. So I had to find a way to eat healthy, without eating things I didn't like.

I ended up being first place in my company of 240 people. Me. The healthiest person in the company. Unbelievable!

2) I Needed to Address Misconceptions
When I started this challenge, I actually thought whole grains would be the hardest part. I hate whole wheat. I think whole wheat bread and pasta tastes like vomit. And it didn't occur to me that whole grain was more than just wheat. Until my sister said, "Don't you like Cheerios?"

Well of course I like Cheerios. They're delicious! I wasn't eating them regularly, but it was an easy thing to add to my diet. Just start the day with a bowl of cereal instead of a bowl of Goldfish crackers.

And then I realized granola is a whole grain, so I started eating granola bars instead of pudding for dessert after lunch. And hey, there is a form of whole wheat I like...Wheat Thins! Morning snack was now Wheat Thins instead of...well another bowl of Goldfish crackers.

And as the year progressed, I found more. Like when I decided I wanted to try bell peppers for the first time, and asked my sister which color was the least spicy. "What do you mean?" she asked. "Bell peppers aren't spicy."

That was shocking to me. I always thought all peppers were spicy. Like jalapenos and chili peppers. And I can't handle even a little bit of spice. Now bell peppers are my favorite thing to add to a dish! I was missing out all these years only because I assumed they were spicy.

3) I Needed to Try New Things
This was a big one for me. I have food anxiety. I like to stick with what I like, and what I liked was macaroni and cheese, spaghetti, and ice cream. My vegetable servings were maybe 3-4 servings of carrots a month, plus the tomato sauce on my spaghetti.

Growing up, we had vegetables on the side for dinner, rotating between broccoli, peas, beans, and corns. Of the green veggies, the only one I could tolerate was green beans. So it was the only one my mom made me eat. Which meant by adulthood, I hoped I never had to touch another green bean. But I still had no love for peas and broccoli.

But as it turns out, there are a lot of kinds of vegetables! I already mentioned my newfound love of bell peppers, but I also tried spinach, zucchini, summer squash, and others. I found recipes and experimented with new dishes. At one point in November, I remember sitting there and audibly saying, "mmmmmm" as I ate some of my roasted vegetables. And then I thought, "I can't believe I'm sitting here enjoying a bowl of vegetables this much."

Here's a more complete list of the new things I tried - things I had never eaten before: goat cheese, kale, cantaloupe, great northern beans, spinach, black olives, sweet potatoes, eggplant parmesan, eggplant meatballs, zucchini, bell peppers, summer squash, strawberry/banana smoothie with real fruit, veggie burger, tomatoes (which I'd had but not liked except in sauce form), brown rice, protein-enriched pasta, Greek yogurt, cauliflower, and spaghetti squash.

4) I Didn't Feel Better
Everyone kept saying how much better I would feel if I ate healthy. And once I started eating healthy, I kept getting asked, "Don't you feel so much better?"

No. I didn't. I felt AWFUL. My stomach hurt constantly. If I had a cheat day where I ate more junk, I felt better. But as long as I kept up my healthy new diet, I felt like crap.

I thought it would just take some time. My stomach had years of unhealthy training to get over. But 5 months in, I was still having constant stomach cramps.

And then I decided to become a vegetarian. Not because of my new healthy diet, not as an effort to deal with cramps, but because of my love for animals and because of the evils of factory farming.

Within a week, my stomach didn't hurt anymore. I can't explain this. I ate meat with my junk diet before, and I didn't feel stomach pain when I did. All I know is that's how it happened for me. And now that I've been a vegetarian for over 6 months, I consistently feel better than the 5 months before it.

But I still don't notice a difference between now and when I ate junk. I don't feel like I have more energy. I feel the same. And that's okay. Healthy eating has its long-term rewards for my health, and I didn't feel bad on my old diet. So I don't need to feel better. I feel more proud of my choices.

But hey, I've lost 14 pounds!

5) I Didn't Have to Cut Junk Foods
I didn't have to, because I just started to eat a lot less junk. Not intentionally. I just wasn't as hungry for junk because I was filling up on fruits and veggies. So I still eat some, but not a lot anymore.

And let me tell you, my breakfast (along with Cheerios) of a strawberry-banana smoothie is so yummy. It's a great way to satisfy my sweet tooth.

6) I Didn't Have to Compromise
Right from the beginning, I said I wasn't going to make eating miserable. I already had anxiety related to food, and I wasn't going to make food a chore or an unpleasant part of life. If I'm going to eat three meals every day, I want to enjoy them.

And I do! It was all about finding the right things—the things I really find yummy—and eating those.

I still don't like salad. And that's okay. I can be a vegetarian who doesn't eat salad.

I think this is the biggest key. Had I compromised to fit foods I didn't like into my diet for that competition, I might've stuck with it for those 6 weeks. But I wouldn't have kept it up once the points went away. This is the problem with dieting. People make eating this unpleasant thing, and they can only keep that up for so long.

Instead, if you find healthy foods you enjoy just as much as junk, it's not hard to keep up. You want to.

7) If I Can Do It, Anyone Can!