No More Excuses

Cones for the girls

Last week was my 6 week postpartum check-up. The doctor gave me the green light to resume life as normal. (Audible sigh.) Now I've lost any legitimate excuse I once had and treasured to NOT exercise, NOT get out of my sweats, NOT make dinner every night, NOT make it to church on time or at all, NOT take a roll in the ol' hay, etc. There's something so nice about those 6 weeks of allowed irresponsibility.

Anyway, as far as getting back into those jeans go, I've been blessed with a head start. Thanks to all of the throwing up, acid indigestion and lack of appetite due to lack of stomach space, I actually lost ten pounds during my pregnancy. Not bad. (Don't hate me; I started chubby.) I also give credit to a matured palate and change of basic personal food rules.

Somewhere along the way these last 10 months, I think I finally came to understand what some of you have known for awhile about food and eating. Dang it, Kim, you were right after all about all of those Diet Cokes.

I grew up with a something-like-a-nutritionist father who although worked himself to the bone creating diet plans and diet products, never ate his broccoli, raised his nose at fish, and only took pleasure in ice milk. Do they even make that anymore?

I never saw salt or red meat on the table growing up, didn't eat chocolate until college, and didn't know that real butter never comes in a fat-free tub. He had it all wrong.

Taking cues from my ever-aging and changing body, I really want to change the way me and my family eats. I feel like I've been taking baby steps for years--cutting out some of those childhood cream of mushroom soup recipes, exploring with vegetables, indulging my food snobbery, etc.--but it hasn't been enough.

I just read "Food Rules" by Michael Pollan and wow, can a nutrition manual speak to you? This one did. It just made so much sense to me. After reading his eye-popping introduction, in three parts he lays out general policies of eating, 64 of them, one per page, answering the question, "What should I eat?"

My top 20 favorite food rules:

1. "Eat Food." Not what he calls "edible foodlike substances."

2. "Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food."

3. "Avoid food products containing ingredients that a third-grader cannot pronounce."

4. "Avoid foods you see advertised on television."

5. "Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle." Basically, shop fresh food, not processed foods.

6. "Eat only foods that will eventually rot."

7. "It's not food if it arrived through the window of your car."

8. "Eat mostly plants, especially leaves."

9. "Treat meat as a flavoring or special occasion food."

10. "Sweeten and salt your food yourself."

11. "The whiter the bread, the sooner you'll be dead."

12. "Eat all the junkfood you want, as long as you cook it yourself."

13. "Eat like the French. Or the Japanese. Or the Italians. Or the Greeks."

14. "Pay more, eat less."

15. "Consult your gut."

16. "Do all your eating at a table."

17. "Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a pauper."

18. "Treat treats like treats."

19. "Cook."

20. "Break the rules once in a while."

So, dang it all, no more excuses. I'm starting a couch-to-5K running program today, and I just might make the kids eat tofu again this week. They'll eventually learn to love it, right? And I'll lose my hankering for Coke Zeroes and french fries?