About this blog (start here)...

If you had asked me a year ago or a month ago, I would have freely admitted that I hated to cook.  I knew, in very general terms, how to cook, but was never impressed with the results.  Ten years ago when I got married, I was literally terrified at the prospect of cooking for me and my new husband.  I could never figure out what to eat, how to cook what we wanted to eat, or cook it in a timely fashion so we weren't eating at 9pm.

My husband, being a genius, figured out very early on that he might die of starvation if he didn't cook for the two of us.  When we were first married, he had gone back to school and was working part-time so he had a marginal amount of more free time than I did and the arrangement seemed to work well for us.  Five years later, he graduated from school (yay!) and started working full-time.  However, during the transition from student to worker bee, he didn't manage to shake off the cooking responsibilities.  See, I had become accustomed to a certain type of lifestyle -- one that didn't involve me cooking...or cleaning bathrooms.  With both of us tired after a long day of work, we were starving, strapped for time, and lacking inspiration.  We ate a LOT of hamburgers (either homemade or eating out), just because they were relatively cheap, easy, and quick.  Plus, you get to eat French fries when you have burgers (drool).  Sunday became pizza day because it was my husband’s family tradition growing up; even though we both knew it was a convenient excuse to alleviate the guilt of ordering take-out instead of cooking at home.

I want to say that things really hit home in 2013 as we hit our mid- and late-30's.  We weren't able to eat hamburgers and French fries without unfortunate consequences (*burp*), and I just felt terrible afterwards.  It wasn't just the guilt; I literally did not feel well because I had a heavy burger and all the accoutrements sitting like lead in my stomach.  With no decent options in our fridge, lunch was usually a quick trip to McDonalds (more burgers and fries) or Safeway (China Express = MSG = headache).  This would leave me feeling tired and sluggish the rest of the day.  I had no energy to do everyday things -- like cleaning the bathrooms as I was informed.  After ten years, other people in the household thought it was my turn.

As you may have surmised, we were not immune to weight gain eating the way we were.  Although it had crept up slowly, I didn't think my weight was "that bad".  Sure, I had gone up a few pant sizes; sure, I could feel every bump in the road via my belly fat a la Homer Simpson, but my body mass index (BMI) was still in a healthy range.  It wasn’t until I went to the doctor and had to stand on their evil scale of doom that things hit home.  I have an unfounded belief that the scale at the doctor’s office doesn't lie because it looks all industrial and must be calibrated based on the weight equivalent of the atomic clock.  Unlike my home scale which I think has a variance factor of plus- or minus- five pounds because the batteries haven't been changed in a few years.  That, and it was only $20 at Costco, how accurate can it be?  Anyway, the evil scale of doom insisted that I was only eight pounds away from the heaviest I've ever been, which was about twelve years ago.  When I look at pictures of me at the heaviest weight I've ever been (no, I'm not saying what it was), I remember how uncomfortable and unhappy I was and how I looked like the chick that turned into a blueberry in Willy Wonka, only not blue.  I think I would have preferred to look like an Oompa Loompa because they actually aren't that big for working and living in a candy factory; plus they have a natural Jersey-inspired tan.

With this fresh in my mind, I found myself having a rare coffee date with my friend, Amy.  She had just finished reading a book called, It Starts With Food, written by Dallas and Melissa Hartwig, and was all jazzed up about their Whole30 program.  Whole30 is not a diet per se, but rather a change in lifestyle based on the paleo-diet movement.  The program is premised on eating nutrient-dense foods that would have been available prior to the development of grain-based diets.  Sometimes called the caveman diet, it does not mean you are limited to eating only meat, but it does mean cutting out grains, legumes, dairy (with very limited exceptions), and added sugars.  In doing so, you avoid the ultra-processed, calorie-dense, but nutritionally-deficient foods that are so readily available.  It isn’t the same as the Atkins diet, which measures “net carbs” and allows you to drink breve lattes made with half and half; nor is it the same as the South Beach diet which restricts certain fruits and vegetables that have a high-glycemic index.  For the record, we tried South Beach about seven years ago, and every ten days, like clockwork, we’d run to the grocery store and buy a pan of frosted brownies that were consumed with two forks and no plates.

The Whole30 program is very black and white: this is what you can eat; this is what you can’t eat.  Generally speaking, there is no differentiating between vegetables and fruits that are or aren’t allowed.  The only exception I can think of is white potatoes, but that’s about it.  It also doesn’t involve weighing food, counting calories, or getting on a scale every day. In fact, weight loss is not the primary goal of the plan.  The primary goal is to have a healthy relationship with food while restoring your body to proper working function that will allow you to recognize when you are full.  The book gives a great example of eating empty-calorie Oreos that, even after eating a few, leave you feeling hungry for more, versus eating a steak and starting to feel full after just a few bites.  I won’t go into further details at this point, but if you are curious I encourage you to click on the link and explore the Whole30 website which can provide you with more information from the folks that did the research and can explain the science.

Driving home from coffee, I decided that this was something we could do; something we had to try.  I walked in the door and laid it out for my husband; prepared for resistance or an argument, but hoping I could sell him on a plan that allowed him to keep steak on the menu.  With genuine trepidation, he agreed that we needed to make a change and was willing to give it a try.

So, the good news was that I had a husband on board with his wife's new cockamamie diet, but the bad news was neither of us had a clue of where to start.  I had just started to read It Starts With Food, and had a very rudimentary idea of what the program entailed.  As I mentioned earlier, my husband can cook, but he cooks burgers, ribs, turkey pot pie (which is actually quite fabulous) – foods that we could not have as we worked to change our eating habits.  Going into problem-solving mode, I Googled a few curry recipes and ordered two paleo-cookbooks: Well Fed by Melissa Joulwan, and Practical Paleo by Diane Sanfilippo (thank heavens for Amazon Prime and free 2-day shipping!). 

What followed was nothing short of a Christmas in July miracle -- I started to cook!  Not reheating, not defrosting, not adding flavor packets; honest to goodness cooking that involved measuring cups and measuring spoons and using the appliances in my kitchen – culinary science!!!  Even more surprising?  I was actually starting to enjoy cooking – weird, I know!  Being a typical Type-A personality, I approached cooking with the mindset that it is merely following a set of instructions, which I am very good at.  Surprisingly, this approach has not sucked, and most of what has been created has been very decent eating.

Now, about a month later at the time of writing this post, we are already starting to feel the benefits of this change in lifestyle.  Clothes are fitting better, energy levels are up, and I haven’t been feeling the blood-sugar crashes that left me so grouchy and irritable that my husband kept a stash of emergency granola bars in his glove box.

This is just the beginning, though; I still have a lot to learn.  Every day I Google a ton of topics like, "how to boil an egg", "can you freeze coconut milk", and "what can you use if you can't find cardamom pods".  To stay motivated, and hopefully motivate others in a culinary or dietary rut, I have decided to keep track of the delicious triumphs and epic fails in this blog, as well as a few observations made along the way.  It is not the point of this blog to convince you or anyone else that this is the only or best way to eat.  If that's your takeaway, great!, but everyone has a different relationship with food and their body and it's not for me to tell you how to change that; I'm not a doctor, a nutritionist, or research scientist.  I'm just a nerdy woman who is getting a kick out of cooking for her little family and this is how I’m doing it.

Mange!

Kimmy

UPDATE: Since starting this blog (not that long ago), I quickly realized that I didn't want to limit the entire focus to be on food.  Granted, it's a large part of our lives, but not the only part.  I still plan on featuring as many cooking experiences as I can, but will expand the scope to what I call, "My Life in Progress".