What's Eating You?

Gah. Eating is such a pain, you know? If you do it right, it is. Meaning that you're not living the life of a total omnivore and then dealing with the results by taking The Little Purple Pill or swilling antacid or, as my mother did, never going anywhere without your little metal tube of Tums, which she chewed after every meal.

I mean it's a pain and a lot of work if you try to eat healthily, listen to your body, avoid things that make you feel bad, get enough protein and vitamins and minerals and carbs (which are not, unlike what they try to tell you, A Bad Thing), maintain a healthy weight, have enough energy to carry you through the day, and AIEEEEEEEEE!!

It's enough to make you really wish the world of the Jetsons existed: you know, where there was a little cube of food that provided everything you needed in the way of nutrition. Wouldn't that be fabulous? You'd swallow it, and it would provide everything you needed in the right amounts, and you'd never have to worry about it again.

Yeah, yeah, yeah: I know I'm in the minority here in thinking that actual eating is just way too much trouble. I have issues, OK? I know that. I was put on my first diet (not weight-loss diet; I'm using "diet" here in the real sense) as a baby when they were trying to figure out why I was sick all the time. From then until I left for college, I wasn't allowed anything with milk or milk products, citrus, or chocolate. No bread or cookies or cakes with milk. No ice cream. No cheese. Now, I can't really remember this--I swear I had cheeseburgers as a child. I swear I tasted ice cream. But I'm not really sure: I have no memory, and I know my mother was fastidious about what I ate. Of course, looking back, I'm pretty sure most of my childhood illnesses were because both my parents were chain smokers, but who knows, really? None of that matters; it's just an explanation of why I am the way I am about food: if I feel less than optimal, I assume it's diet.

In the few years between high school and the time I got married, my diet became an ugly thing, full of potato chips and white bread, cold weenies, Twinkies (omigod). You know: crap. Then I met The EGE, and he slowly, slowly began transforming our diet into a thing of beauty. I felt better than I ever had, ever. More energy, less illness of every sort, all of that.

Of course it helped that I wasn't living in the house with smokers, but never mind. The older I get and the cleaner my diet is, the more aware I am of how important it is. I look at other people my age and want to take them by the hand and go into their kitchens and pantries and help them clear out the crap so they'll feel better. Sometimes I just want to smack them, of course, when I listen to them talk ruefully about how getting older sucks and how tired they are and how many medications they're on now. These conversations are often in the grocery store, and while they're talking I'm looking in their basket and going, "Duh." If I put that stuff in my body, I'd feel like crap, too. Who thought up pork rinds, anyway? Slim Jims? Pepperoni? Go down there and read Pollan's Rule #4. Yikes.

Anyway. So I constantly tweak my diet as my body changes--I got rid of nightshades when the arthritis in my fingers was a problem, for instance. Stuff like that: just because you could eat X when you were 20 doesn't mean it's working for you now.

But let's get to my point here--I swear I have one; this isn't just some random nattering about what I eat. Just as background: when I had the skin-scratch allergy tests in high school, they were positive for everything, from ducks to pine trees to whatever else they tested, all up and down my back. Who knows how accurate those were, but the thing is that I've always had allergies, and so I'm used to a certain level of congestion and sneezing and stuff. But a couple months ago it was worse, and I thought I was getting a cold. But days went by, and it kept on but didn't get worse, so I started looking at what I was doing. The only thing different was that I'd started having a cup of chamomile tea every afternoon. I got online and checked, and guess what? Read this--you can google "chamomile ragweed" for more info. Isn't that interesting? I had no idea, never mind that I've always sworn tea tastes like stewed lawn clippings. Duh. I can't eat cantaloup or banana and have never liked them, so this makes sense to me. I used to eat bananas because I thought they were good for me but always felt lousy when I did.

Anyway, so I stopped drinking the tea and whoa: the "cold" went away. And I got to thinking about how many of us feel lousy and blame it on everything except our diet. If our diets consisted of real food--fruits and vegetables and whole grains and nuts, it would be one thing: easy to figure out if something were bothering us by eliminating that something for a week or so and seeing how we felt. But that's not the case with processed foods that have  a dozen or more ingredients in them. (I try to stick with Michael Pollan's  rule of not eating anything that has more than five ingredients listed on the package (scroll down on that page; it's #2).) Who knows what's in there? You don't know what you're getting and what you should eliminate and where, even, to start. And it's not easy if we eat out a lot, or if someone else cooks for us, or, or, or.

Recently I'd decided I was going to have to give in and go to an allergist. My nose was stopped up all the time, so much that I had turned into one of those total mouth-breathers. I was wearing the oh-so-attractive Breathe Right Nasal Strips to bed (and you know, let me tell you that, coupled with my mouthpiece so I won't crack all my teeth in my sleep, that was just the crowning touch on the nighttime fashion ensemble) and smearing Vicks Vap-o-Rub under my nose, and--well, you get the (really sad and pathetic) picture.

And then I thought, "Wait a minute. Let's try to figure this out." I also had this cough every morning after breakfast, and I started looking at everything I eat from the time I get up until noon. A cookie. Fiber wafers. Half a raisin bran muffin. Coffee with CoffeeMate. I've been tinkering--when did the coughing start? After the first cup of coffee? No. After the fiber wafers? No. After the bran muffin? Yes. (Yeah, sure it's a pain to eat one thing and then wait an hour and then eat the next thing, but it's worth the effort, it really is.) I gave that up a couple weeks ago, and I can breathe through my nose. Yippee! Well, not totally, but there's never been a day in my entire life when THAT happened. This is such a vast improvement that I'll take it. Gladly. What was it in the muffin? Well, who knows: it had a whole list of ingredients, and that right there should have warned me away from them.

Sure, I'd like to get rid of the CoffeeMate--it's got way, way too many ingredients in it. But I can't put cream in my coffee, no matter how much I'd like to (I love coffee with cream but it makes me cough: after a week of drinking it, I'll have a cough that will last until I quit. Allergies? Intolerance? Sensitivity? Who knows? You can go here to start reading about what's what.)

So now I'm trying to see if I need to avoid wheat--that was one of the first ingredients in the muffins. I don't get much because we don't eat a lot of prepared foods. But there's some, of course.

Oh, and here's something that might be useful if you suffer from uh, let's see how we can avoid The C-Word. No, not cancer. We can say that word now. The one we still don't like to use in polite company is (((constipation))) I tell people I come from a long, long line of thin-lipped, tight-assed, constipated white women. That's probably not true, but I know it was a problem for my mother, and let's just not go any further, OK? Let's go here instead:  the chiropractor told me last week that most of us don't get enough magnesium and that magnesium citrate might be a good supplement "for colon health." Turns out it also plays a role in regulating the heartbeat, among other things. Who knew? Go here to read more.

Anyway, anyway, anyway--all this just to say: if you're feeling less optimal and fabulous than you'd like, take another look at what you're putting into your body. Pollan's food rules really are fabulous--taken from WebMD, here. Here's Pollan's website. Go buy his books.

Pollan says everything he's learned about food and health can be summed up in seven words: "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants."

Probably the first two words are most important. "Eat food" means to eat real food -- vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and, yes, fish and meat -- and to avoid what Pollan calls "edible food-like substances."

Here's how:

1. Don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. "When you pick up that box of portable yogurt tubes, or eat something with 15 ingredients you can't pronounce, ask yourself, "What are those things doing there?" Pollan says.
2. Don’t eat anything with more than five ingredients, or ingredients you can't pronounce.
3. Stay out of the middle of the supermarket; shop on the perimeter of the store. Real food tends to be on the outer edge of the store near the loading docks, where it can be replaced with fresh foods when it goes bad.
4.  Don't eat anything that won't eventually rot. "There are exceptions -- honey -- but as a rule, things like Twinkies that never go bad aren't food," Pollan says.
5. It is not just what you eat but how you eat. "Always leave the table a little hungry," Pollan says. "Many cultures have rules that you stop eating before you are full. In Japan, they say eat until you are four-fifths full. Islamic culture has a similar rule, and in German culture they say, 'Tie off the sack before it's full.'"
6. Families traditionally ate together, around a table and not a TV, at regular meal times. It's a good tradition. Enjoy meals with the people you love. "Remember when eating between meals felt wrong?" Pollan asks.
7. Don't buy food where you buy your gasoline. In the U.S., 20% of food is eaten in the car.

It's a lot of work, trying to figure out what your own personal body needs, but it's so worth it every day when you have all the energy you need and don't have to take anything for heartburn or gas. I read all the time about women who are struggling to lose weight, cutting out this treat or that treat and bemoaning the sacrifices, and I want to take them by the hand, too, and go into their kitchens with them and tell them: don't think of a "diet" as something you go on and make sacrifices so you can lose weight. Think of a diet as something you figure out for yourself so you can feel marvelous on as many days as possible. While you may think you love cupcakes above all else, they'll never be as wonderful as feeling good.

In short, here's my rule: Don't abuse your body with food. Avoid eating crap. Learn what your body wants and give it that, in small doses, with love and joy.

Time for a bowl of quinoa and chopped prunes. I hate it. My body loves it. Guess who wins on this one?