In addition to the caffeine, I had read a little of Jillian Michael's Master Your Metabolism and new that diet soda was bad for you, so switching from Coke Zero back to Diet 7-Up, while and improvement, was ultimately not a good idea either. So one day at Target I finally picked up a copy of her book and after a couple of weeks I started reading it.
I still had six Diet Cokes in my fridge when I started reading it. I haven't had one since. I haven't had a Diet 7 Up since Friday.
My biggest problem with her book is that I can't read it fast enough. I wish I had picked it up a long time ago. I feel like I've been poisoning myself for years.
The general idea of her book -- although it gets a lot more detailed than this -- is to eat organic, to avoid certain foods, especially processed foods, and to eat the right kind of foods in the right amounts, and at the right times. It's kind of mind blowing getting a grasp on what's bad for you and what's good for you, what improves your metabolism and what slows it down. All of the things that I had been eating to lose weight over the years, like diet soda and granola bars and "healthy" breakfast cereal, actually contain things like high fructose corn syrup and assorted chemicals that make my body react in the exact opposite way.
I had always thought that it was really just a numbers game. I counted calories. I burned calories at the gym. I figured that was it. But I never really felt good. I mean, working out is great for relieving stress and feeling better, but having the energy to work out well was always a problem for me. Turns out I was eating the wrong stuff, and not enough of the good stuff, so at the end of the day when I was still feeling shitty, I would snack on bad things.
Today I'm trying to get into the habit of eating every four hours -- 8am, 12pm, 4pm and 8pm, or around there. I'm trying to eat a bigger breakfast and not eat after 9pm. I'm avoiding foods with ingredients that I cannot spell or pronounce. I'm eating raw almonds and walnuts, organic raisins, yogurt, bananas, green tea, etc. I'm looking forward to trying steel cut oatmeal. I even bought wheat germ today to put on my yogurt and it was delicious.
The wildest part is learning what to avoid. I always thought a baked potato, because it is low in calories, is a good choice, but no. Corn is also to be avoided. And who knew that high fructose corn syrup is in ketchup? Also, I'm glad I decided to try Trader Joe's organic hummus. It's weird how something so simple -- eating food that's been around for centuries yet has been manipulated and processed and changed by the food industry -- can be so overlooked.
