Eating Clean

I thought about this concept quite a bit today.  For one thing, it's fascinating to me how quickly my tastes changed and really, how little I had to do to make them do that. 

I ate my salad for lunch today. It contained:  a whole bunch of greens, from a giant box of them I bought at Sam's  (Right, I know, I didn't buy it at the local farmers' market.  It's one step at a time here), a can of tuna fish, packed in water, the remains of the barley from Sunday (and I have to be honest and say I probably ate most of that pot myself, no one else seems to have my same enthusiasm for barley), some cucumbers and I think some raw mushrooms, and definitely cherry tomatoes.  I will be honest and say that the cucumbers had been served in a Knorr salad mix, which I now buy by the box from Amazon.  It's dill and herbs and you add water and oil.  I add a third of the oil called for.  And I threw on some of Marie's Raspberry Vinaigrette.  So it probably wasn't completely clean, with the packaged dressings, but it was close.  It was certainly more filling than the sushi and made me feel better afterwards than the pizza. 

Dinner was two pork chops, broiled with BBQ sauce, divided among three people.  I also made an impromptu potato salad making a dressing of Greek yogurt, Meaux mustard, a splash of balsamic vinegar and a dash of olive oil.  I added scallions and celery.  (It was good).  No salt, by the way.  I also made a salad of hearts of palm--canned, because I have no idea how else you would get them--and cherry tomatoes, with a splash of Newman's Own sesame marinade.  I haven't looked at the label, but I'm hoping it's okay.  So there was the BBQ sauce tonight (most of which fell into the broiler pan) and the marinade.  Otherwise it was clean.  I guess.  I hope.

My Dunkin Donuts iced tea, large, with two granulated sugars (not the liquid stuff, which is awful) tasted very intensely sweet to me this morning.  The last time I tried to scale back to one, it was not good, but maybe it's time to try again. 

I must be better off for all of this.  I'd like to say I'm packed with surplus energy, but honestly, that's not quite the case--but I feel less sluggish.  I felt so strange after the pizza, and I suppose that's how I felt all the time.  So I suppose I have to agree--our food is anesthetizing us, against feeling life, and enjoying real food. 

Do I feel militant about this?  I'm not sure.  I've always been of the school of thought that said, do you want to live forever or do you just want it to feel that way?  But now I'm thinking they might be on to something. 

I know in my heart that I've made these changes for good, since my former way of eating was unsustainable, at least in good health.  However, I have to say that to a significant degree, I'm sort of standing back watching myself and wondering how well this is going to work and how well I can keep it up. 

I made the changes in my diet by playing to my strengths.  Other than McDonalds, (and Doritos.....) I'm not a huge junk food eater, or a huge candy eater.  So I stuck with the things I like that are good for me and I'm doing my best to avoid the things I like that are bad for me. 

I mentioned portion size before.  I would have to say that was probably my biggest downfall--I can eat a lot.  I like a lot.  I like, I'll confess to it, mindlessly shoveling something in...it's soothing.  But after a month of decreased portion sizes, I don't think I could stuff if I wanted to.  As for the shoveling, I did have a few fits of that, but I tried to keep it to Triscuits. 

I don't know.  I'm doing my best.  Soon I'll get on the scale again, but since I'm having such clothes success, I wake up, think, gee, I ought to weigh myself, and then forget.  As I said before, we'll see what the numbers tell us.