"Bring me four fried chickens and a Coke."

The rabbit food pyramid

 

"So what kind of diet are you on?"
 A:  I'm not on a diet.

"What does your trainer let you eat?"
 A:  LET me eat?

"No, I mean, um...like what do you eat now that you're, uh...doing this...whatever you're doing?"
A:  As much as I possibly can.

"You mean, like that food pyramid up there?"
A:  Not exactly.



As much as I possibly can. That's the best answer I can come up with. Short, sweet, to the point and most certainly accurate. I have a handy-dandy booklet that my trainer gave me in which I write down everything I eat. I keep track of calories, protein, carbs and fat. My caloric intake allowance is 1600 per day. Right now, all he/we are concerned with are my calories. (Which makes me wonder what's going to happen down the road, but I try not to think about it.)

My handy-dandy food log

I don't worry about high carb, low carb, low fat, fat free, no sugar, high protein trends that a lot of people seem focus on almost exclusively. I could eat a pint of Ben and Jerry's New York Super Fudge Chunk ice cream and one Snickers bar, and still have 89 calories to spare! I could have 4 1/2 Caramel Kreme Crunch donuts from Krispy Kreme and still be 25 calories shy of my daily allowance. I could have a double cheese burger, a medium fry and a small frosty from Wendy's and still have room for two or three mints.

(Right now, my eating disordered mind is suggesting that I stop writing, go purchase all of the above and have it for dinner. The voice tells me that it would be fine if I simply abstain from eating again until Saturday. This is the voice that got me where I am, though, and it's probably NOT going to happen. Stupid voice.)

OR...

I could have 53 1/3 large carrots, or 160 large celery stalks, or about 7 cups of chicken, or 7 1/2 frosted cherry Pop Tarts or 20 1/2 hard boiled eggs or 2 1/4 lbs of bacon or a whole box of Peanut Butter Captain Crunch cereal or... whoa, whoa,WHOA! Who in their right mind is going to eat 160 stalks of celery?

As much as I can might be a bit of an over-statement.

I make my food choices based on what I want to eat. Then I look at the numbers and figure out how to make it  happen. For instance, I love Mexican food. For some reason, I always feel like I'm "cheating" when I eat it. So I played around and came up with a recipe for chicken enchiladas that has 177 calories, 19 grams of carbs., 16.5 grams of protein and just 5.5 grams of fat. Less fat and calories? Omit the low fat cheese. Wa-la! I shred a bunch of lettuce and toss it with a little low-fat ranch dressing (2 Tbls., to be exact, for another 80 calories.) If I'm really hungry or if I just need to engage in hard-core eating behavior, I'll have 2 servings of the enchiladas and the whole meal is still under 450 calories. Tons of protein, very filling and it shuts off the stupid voice inside my head. Nice.

I still struggle with food and it's hard for me to write everything down. It's hard because the food log holds me accountable, and that totally bites. Especially when I have days like this:

Never said I was perfect, did I?