My Quarter Life Crisis: You are what you eat. In my case that's a whole lot of awesomeness.

Big Girl Disclaimer #347: When you set out to lose weight, changing how you eat is much more difficult than exercising regularly.

I was inspired to write this post because on Saturday morning I stepped onto the scale to find that I gained three pounds in the three weeks since I last weighed myself. And even though I mentioned before that you shouldn't let the numbers on the scale rule your existence, this particular number pissed me off royally. When you work your butt off six days a week, you want the numbers to go down, or, if it's PMS week, to stay the same. When your efforts don't show up on the scale, you have a Hulk moment. Or a Hulk hour (day).

For one thing, my body was still hurting from Cardio Sculpt class on Wednesday. I'll most likely write a whole post devoted to the intricacies of Cardio Sculpt, but suffice it to say for now that the class is a lot like how it sounds. The whole hour consists of 3-minute intervals of different ab/upper body/lower body/butt intensive workouts with some spurts of cardio mixed in as well. I love the structure of this class because you're constantly moving and focusing on different parts of your body with each consecutive station. When I first took the class, I left it feeling like I had accomplished a lot within a short amount of time. Twelve hours later, the delayed muscle response kicked in to remind me that I don't normally do a lot of strength training, and I could barely climb up steps or squat to pee without flinching in pain. This week's Cardio Sculpt focused mostly on abs and upper body strength. For the next three days I would wince every time I laughed, coughed, sneezed, or picked anything up. Mind you, I'm really not saying any of this to sound impressive like I'm some super athlete; I could barely finish half the stations without falling on my face or cracking up (I think the instructors are starting to catch on that I often resort to nervous cackles when I'm completely out of my element. Or they think I'm nuts). Anyway, I woke up on Saturday morning still feeling my exertions from Wednesday. I decided to hop onto the scale because 1.) I was overdue for a weigh-in and, 2.) my sore abs tricked me into a false sense of security. My logic has always been "The sorer I am, the lower the number will be on the scale". I looked down at the new, bloated number and with the man-sized portion of humble pie I just got served, I decided it was time for me to rethink my eating habits.

...After I would throw an outlandish, calorie-dense dinner party for my girlfriends later that night. Somewhere around the second or third stuffed fig, or sixth butternut squash ravioli dripping in butter sage sauce, I thought that I may have discovered the scale problem. A problem that I decided to not think about until after we finished our individual martini glasses full of tiramisu. Except that I didn't think about it that night or even on Sunday when I plowed through the cheese enchiladas at Jose's Border Cafe. Like most of my naive, fat brethren out there, I guess I had this crazy idea that if I work out regularly, I won't have to think about what I'm eating. It'll all just sort itself out in the end (Lies!).

This may have been true when I first started working out. When you go from being completely sedentary to exercising three or four times a week, you're bound to shed some pounds. Also, to be frank, I didn't really eat all that badly to begin with. My problem has always been quantity, not quality. Whenever I read about other people's weight loss journeys and how they would talk about eating whole meals in the middle of the night or consuming 6,000 calories in chicken sandwiches and milkshakes, I would shake my head in disbelief. I just never really clumped myself in with the average obese American; or at least not on a food level. For one thing, I'm a vegetarian. I haven't eaten meat in almost five years and a few months ago I gave up dairy and refined sugar, too. (If you've ever had a conversation with my sister Kimberly about the subject of dairy or refined sugar, you would know that it's much easier to give up dairy and sugar than it is to have a conversation with my sister Kimberly about dairy and sugar.) Also, I happen to be a total food snob, too. If you opened my fridge and freezer, you'd find gallon bags of frozen produce, edamame, tofu, tempeh, Ezekiel bread products, and veggie burgers. Back when I did eat dairy, I even made my own yogurt. My pantry is loaded with pounds and pounds of dried beans, barley, farro, brown rice, homemade vanilla extract, fair trade dark chocolate, and several cans of diced tomatoes. You will be very hard pressed to find any processed foods in my cupboards. It's not because I'm too uppity to eat a donut or boxed mac n' cheese (I'm not), I just happen to prefer real food and lots of it.

Before you see the next two pictures, you should know that I do eat healthy food...like this piece of bok choy from A.T. Buzby Farms!

When I started exercising last year, I took more time to go grocery shopping and plan menus. Nowadays as I'm working full time, volunteering with church activities, and working out about six times a week, the eating habits are taking a hit (but not a HIIT). It's not that I work out and come home to reward myself with huge meals and desserts. It's more like there's an ongoing battle of Me vs. Time, and I'm constantly losing (which is why I give all the fit mothers out there some major kudos. I have no idea how you juggle staying trim and being a parent all at once). As my parents/sisters will tell you, I have a serious problem when it comes to time management. I've always believed that people will find time to do the things that they want, but struggle to make time to do the things that they need, and I am certainly no exception. What's funny is that I will get up at 4:15 in order to get dressed, drive over to the gym, and attend 5AM Spin class, but then I will give almost no consideration whatsoever towards making meals for myself that day. Weekend dinner parties like the one I just cooked for are actually few and far between for me, but if I had my way (and the time) I'd cook/eat like that every day of the week. As it is, I usually stick to veggie burgers, salads, or, as is the case most often, I'll outsource.

Which leads me to Bad Food Habit #2 (With Lack of Time Management being #1): I habitually eat out. For as much as I love to cook for other people, I absolutely hate to cook for just myself. Don't get me wrong, this is not some kind of reflection upon the state of my singleness. I love everything about being single except for the meal plans. I really did make valiant efforts to make my own lunches and snacks in the beginning, but then I discovered that my office was only a few minutes away from an Indian buffet, Moe's, and then Whole Foods. These were much more provocative alternatives to peanut butter and banana on Ezekiel bread. What I found, though, is that by frequenting Moe's two or three times a week for a salad (aptly named "The Personal Trainer") I've now acquired "regular" customer status amongst all the Moe's employees. In fact, I'm so much of a regular that one of the cashiers actually gave me a wallet-sized photo of her 2 month-old son (*In my defense, I'm a total Chatty Cathy everywhere I go, be it the gym, stores, restaurants, church, etc. I was on a first name basis with all the vendors at the PSU Farmer's Market). Despite eating healthy foods at said restaurant chains, I concede that I'm probably consuming a gazillion more hidden calories than anything I'd ever make at home. I'm also spending money I don't have that should go towards replacing the much beloved, greatly rusted, 18 year-old Buick Lesabre that I've named Lazarus on account o' the number of times it has died and been revived. This habit is way overdue to be broken.

Bad Food Habit #3: Food is my freakin' love language. I don't want to revert to the age old "Blame the parents" theory, but let's just say that I come by this love language very honestly. My mother is Italian and a meal is never just a meal at our house; every dish is qualified with an emotion. I think the fact that all three of her daughters became vegetarians is perhaps one of the greatest disappointments of my mother's life. My father, not an Italian, encouraged us to try anything and everything, whether it's a cannoli from Philadelphia or a piece of marinated cow tongue in Japan. So I did and I loved every bite. I recently read this People magazine article about Adam Levine in which he defends his promiscuity by saying something to the effect of, "I just really love women. All women." And while I think that statement is pretty hilarious coming from a guy who only dates supermodels, it actually hit me that I feel the exact same way about food: I just really love food. All food. I'm not going to say that I don't use food as a coping mechanism for whatever emotion I'm going through (guilt, sadness, anger, happiness) but I will say that it's mostly just love. I especially love eating great gobs of unhealthy food with friends and feeling as though we're all flipping off health consciousness together as a community. The problem, however, is that we're not all in this together. My friends don't have my health problems or a grandfather whose nickname was Fats.

Sfogliatella from Isgro's bakery in Philly

So here I am, sitting at my computer, trying to figure out an answer to my problem. The only thing is that there are millions of answers to this one. Low carb diets, small portions, gluten free, calorie counting, journaling, no meat, no dairy, no sugar, Bob Harper's Skinny Rules, etc, etc. The best aspect of my pre-quarter life crisis (still hate that title) life was the fact that I got to stop thinking about what I was eating. I stopped looking at food in terms of ounces, carbs, and calories and there is a beautiful kind of freedom in that kind of non-thinking. But as I have said over and over in this blog, I cannot go backward, only forward. And I certainly cannot spend the next quarter of my life undoing all of my hard-earned efforts in exercise by eating thoughtlessly.

I don't yet have my answer, Fat Brothers and Fat Sisters. All I know is this (a year later): If you want to lose weight, you have to exercise regularly and eat well. There is no either/or. Not long-term, anyway. I will most likely start food logging again (www.loseit.com), I will probably start eating smaller amounts of food, and during a specific week in the month I will definitely bite your head off if you dare to ask me if french fries are part of my weight loss regimen. Yes. they. freaking. are.