DIEt! Changing your eating habits doesn’t mean you have to Diet.

A heart attack will stop you in your tracks, especially when your tracks are feet up in a recliner, doing nothing.

I was a fat girl (heaviest 326 lbs.), a smoker (couldn’t breathe), an unhealthy eater (hence being fat) and a couch potato (no movement again fat). During the heart attack, I made the immediate decision to stop smoking. I have not had a cigarette since the day of the heart attack. I also made the decision to start exercising and to eat healthy, which lead to weight loss. I have always felt like I was heavy all my life, but the truth is, I saw myself heavy but I was really normal (thanks to the media for messing me up with my body image). I in turn was always on a diet, I now know that dieting is really killing your body, that’s why diet has Die in it.

Over the past year and a half I have discovered, the foods that are grown from the earth, that God has made for us to eat, if we eat them the way they should be eaten, our bodies will actually crave them. Causing us to be healthy and our bodies will be at the weight they should be from a minimal amount of effort from eating.  Exercise…who needs it? We do; our bodies, our minds and our souls. Just eating healthy is not enough, we have to exercise to maintain our bodies, muscles and organs, but that is a topic for later. Today’s topic is food and eating healthy.

If you are just starting to eat healthy, your question may be, Where to start? I suggest starting where I did, Bethenny Frankel’s Naturally Thin: Unleash Your SkinnyGirl and Free Yourself from a Lifetime of Dieting. Bethenny lays it all out for you to understand in an easy way for eating healthy. Now this is a place to start because everyone is different, our bodies are different and react in different ways to different kinds of foods. So you start here then move to what works for you. Its trial and error finding the right mix of the right foods that works well with your body. I started here and then moved to an almost Gluten-free diet, not because I have celiac disease but my body doesn’t like processed flour and I run better not consuming lots of gluten. I say almost Gluten-free due to pasta I don’t seem to have a problem with pasta, just crackers and bread.

My first step was to clean out my kitchen and my body; I got rid of the junk and stocked up on the healthy. Fruits and veggies, natural foods, I cut out the bad carbs and made sure the good carbs were in check. I watched my protein as to not to over eat on that or on my fruits (pre-diabetic plays havoc with your blood sugar). Vegetables were my new friend, I found that light steaming, sautéing in EVOO (extra virgin olive oil, for you non Rachel Ray buffs) with garlic for seasoning or just broiling in the oven was my new way of getting them in my diet (I mean on my plate and in my body). If the veggies were green, red, yellow or orange I wanted them, soon and I mean within a few days, I was craving vegetables over sweets and snacks.

I have completely cut out bread of any kind, bread is empty calories and hard on my stomach. I have found I don’t really miss bread, I eat sandwich stuffing with a fork and I taste more flavor that way. Crackers used to be a staple, but they were having a time settling in my stomach. I talked with my cousin, Kate Baker, who is Gluten-free and she helped break down the Gluten-free diet for me. I now buy Gluten-free crackers and they are awesome. I can now have healthy snacks, which is Smuckers’ Natural Peanut Butter and Fruit Preserves (which have less sugar than jelly) with Almond nut crackers. This allows me a snack that is satisfying, but not loaded with calories or Gluten. I did try Gluten-free pasta, but it didn’t have an impact either way, my problem is bread and crackers. I also cut out red meat, not for any other reason than it didn’t sit well on my stomach.

This will lead to my next topic, a gross out topic, but a topic that many are not prone to talk about, but which many runners’ deal with. So I am going to talk about how I dealt with it and share my knowledge and hopefully help other new runners deal with it.

Before I get to the “gross out” topic, I want to say, I now love to eat healthy, because I feel so much better when I do. I have energy, I don’t feel heavy after a meal and I have lost and I am losing weight. I am also no longer pre-diabetic, I have been taken off the pre-diabetic watch list, my blood sugar levels are normal. Also my Cholesterol is like that of a child’s, my LDL is 29 and my HDL is at 97, which is just unheard of after a heart attack and being pre-diabetic.  Now let me do say this I do “cheat”, which means I don’t deny myself any food that I really want. Pizza, French fries, Chocolate, ect. But I eat sparingly and I don’t over indulge. I maintain a balance. I don’t have the bad food, pizza, without a balance of the good, veggies.

So now my eating habits consist of a healthy breakfast, a good lunch and a light dinner. Now if I know I am going out to eat for dinner, I will eat a light lunch and then I can have a good but indulging dinner. Here is an example of what a day’s meals are for me:

Breakfast – Activia Yogurt – Single serve, Fiber one Bar (gives me fiber in the morning), a piece of fruit (a banana or pear), two eggs (hard boiled) for my protein. I have a cup of coffee before I run but that goes with my gross out topic so more on that later.

Morning Snack – (5) Almond nut crackers, Smuckers’ Natural Peanut Butter with Peach Preserves.

Lunch – Some type of pasta or protein meal (chicken) with vegetables, maybe some Special K Snack Crackers (these are awesome they come in different flavors and are very low in the Gluten dept.).

Afternoon Snack – A piece of fruit, usually an Apple

Dinner – Veggies: broccoli, carrots, red peppers, green peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, all cut up and tossed with Italian dressing. This is my favorite if I am going out for dinner I will have this for Lunch.

I always try to have the majority of my calories in the morning, less at lunch and just a few at dinner.

Other snacks – Tostitos and Salsa, For a chocolate fix (a hand full of M&M’s on a microwave safe plate (a small salad plate not a dinner plate), place in microwave for 20 to 35 seconds and then eat one at a time, going by color will make them last a long time).

Now remember everyone is different and you must find your own combination of foods that work for you. Good luck and happy, healthy eating.

Next is the “gross out” topic, Runners’ Trots so stay tuned.