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Welcome to my blog. The purpose here is simple: to chronicle my thoughts, actions, plans, and goals in getting healthy in the year 2017. Feel free to look around and offer encouragement or suggestions.

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

My Kitchen Called...

...to say it missed me.

SO yesterday was my birthday. That means this previous weekend was my birthday weekend (my logic is astounding, I know) which pretty much meant I let my hedonism run rampant from Friday to Monday. While I have no regrets about it (I believe I mentioned my disdain for regret), I definitely feel the difference in my body that comes of eating out for nearly every meal and indulging in foods I normally wouldn't. Today I was back in the kitchen for the first time in days. In all honesty, it felt similar to coming home after a long vacation. You had fun while you were gone but nothing feels like home. My designated days were on suspension, but I've jumped right back into them today. It seems fitting that today should be a vegetarian day. There is nothing quite like eating nothing but vegetables all day to bounce back from horrid eating. My lunch of sauteed squash and baked sweet potato almost made me sigh with joy. I realized I miss cooking for myself. I'm good at it; as tasty and delightful as restaurant food may be, I can make just as good at home with the bonus that it is all natural and great for me.

I want to take a moment to let the hippie in me free to tout the benefits of eating as naturally as possible. I may have said this before, but nature gives you everything you need to live a healthy lifestyle. Why add a bunch of chemical additives, most of which are laboratory accidents, to something that already has tons of goodness in it? That's not food, that's a science project. I personally have become almost obsessive about reading ingredients and frankly it has done me a lot of good. There is no reason the food in my food should be the third or fourth ingredient in the can/box/bag/whatever. True story: a friend tried to give me a bag of frozen chicken breasts. I read the ingredients and CHICKEN was the third ingredient. In chicken breasts. And then there were about five ingredients after that, including artificial coloring to make the char lines. Needless to say, I did not take the filler-chemical-and-then-chicken breasts. But all of that can be avoided if you just buy actual chicken. Then there's no confusion. I buy all my meat raw, then vacuum seal it and freeze it myself. It thaws and tastes just as good as if I had cooked it straight from the tray. I buy all of my produce from the farmer's market, with a trip to the produce section if I absolutely have to have something that is out of season. Here comes an ultra hippie statement: everything I eat is of the earth and has passed through as few hands as I can possibly manage. I'm not saying you should eat all organic, grass fed, cage free, whatever other ungodly expensive earth friendly alternative is out there everything. I am saying that quitting the pre-made stuff and making your own foods from the most basic ingredients is the only way to truly control what you eat. Don't be fooled by claims that things are low fat, low cholesterol, low calorie, whatever. They get that way by sucking the food out of food and adding taste good chemicals with absolutely no nutritional value. Don't believe me? Go pick up a low fat whatever and its full fat counterpart. I will bet money as to which has more ingredients and more chemicals...you know, all that stuff you can't pronounce. You want low fat, low calorie? Eat all the vegetables you can stand.

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