The cost of healthy eating

It's difficult, with all the doom and gloom in the headlines about the economy every morning, to not constantly be worrying about money.

All this constant worry about money, however, equals one giant knot of stress in my stomach.

Sometimes, one giant knot of stress in the stomach leads to more worry, perhaps even a doctor's appointment, or a series of them, referrals for tests, missed days at work (= even less money) and even possibly a round of painful endoscopies, colonoscopies, cleanses, etc.

I know what it's like — my husband went through all of that just after we were married.

It was hard for him, living in Miami, where if one guy will paint your house for $300 in two days, five other guys are in line right behind him saying they'll do it in one day for $250, $200, $150, — you get my drift. Job security was laughable; working conditions characteristically deplorable. I can only imagine what would have happened if that were all going on today for us, amidst this global financial crisis.

The correlation between health and money goes both ways, you see. You cut out healthy organic foods when you get a pay cut because you can't afford Whole Foods any more. You drop your gym membership but don't hop on the treadmill at home any more either — just too tired, maybe even a bit depressed. You sacrifice everything but the stuff you can't live without — coffee, milk, sugar and (of course) your Blackberry.

But it'll come back to haunt you. Try fighting with your HMO or PPO when there's trouble with the endoscopy coverage. Try looking for another job while you're feebly attempting to combine not missing work from being sick with faking enjoyment the days you do actually make it in. Try explaining to your wife that you'd rather spend money on a new video game and "live a little" than go shopping with her for your favorite healthy foods, as you stuff another corn dog into your mouth while your children play in the yard outside, oblivious to their father's skyrocketing cholesterol levels.

I'm a victim of the crime myself; I constantly go over my monthly food budget and yet I'm buying frivolous, unnecessary items such as sugar-free pudding and fat-free Cool Whip instead of asparagus and roasted red peppers. We all fall into one trap or another. But I can't keep piddling away my salary on tasteless chicken and mediocre steaks. Things have to change.

How? Maybe that's the problem. I don't know how, or my bank account would be much fatter. Should I switch to the cheaper grocery store, the one with those "specialty brands" where you have to supply your own grocery bags and do it yourself? I look at the ads each week — I even have a seven-page Excel spreadsheet with about 300 line items, comparing prices across 10+ purveyors of Bounty paper towels, kitty litter, tomatoes, Butterball turkey breast and countless varieties of fruits and vegetables. But has it ever come in handy? No. I can't exactly drive from store to store, buying what's cheapest at each one, because then I'll be wasting gas! All I've gathered is to never pay more than 2/$4 for DanActive, Wheat Thins and Activia. Genius.

I've tried coupons — but if I'm starting out by trying to follow the "only buy if it's on sale" rule, it's a rare joy when something's actually on sale and I also happen to have a coupon. And even when I have a coupon, it's for the name brand — and the generic's always cheaper. So how about doubling coupons? Does any grocery store in the Chicagoland area actually double coupons? I've sure never heard of it around here. (It is on my to-do list to call around and find out, however.)

I guess I'll do what I do best — make a list. The scintillating list of all my grocery store money-saving options under the sun. Something's gotta take, right?

I can:

• Shop at the discount stores — Sam's Club, Aldi, Ultra, Westbrook, Brook Haven, Meijer, CostCo. No exceptions.
  
• Make shopping lists, and refuse to buy anything not on the list. If you forgot, apparently it wasn't that important to begin with.
  
• Shop alone (this is hard to do — my husband actually likes to come along — but he often picks out stuff we don't need) — then you'll only have to deal with your own temptations, not your partner's or your kids'.
  
• Only allow two "treat" foods for each member of your family, assuming you all have different tastes in snack/dessert foods (I'll shamelessly admit that I stole this idea from someone else).
• Don't buy "three for $5" if you really only need one — usually, they'll still honor that price if you only purchase one out of the three.
  
• Instead of constantly updating a useless Excel spreadsheet, circle what's cheap in all the weekly ads and buy 1) what you need 2) when you're out and about and 3) when you need it! Wait, this could really work, people! I usually try not to make a trip out for just one errand, to save gas and to be good to the environment — but if I'm going to Starbucks, I might as well swing past Ultra on the way there, right?! This is all actually starting to make sense! What good is an Excel spreadsheet if produce prices change with the seasons, manufacturer discounts vary biweekly and store specials are a dime a dozen?
  
• Match the coupons — even check on line, before you go — to what's on sale where you plan on shopping. If nothing matches up, just leave the coupons behind and don't forget about the generics. I'm not talking toilet paper, but shredded cheese, block cheese, bread, etc. Often the generic is cheaper even when you have a coupon for the brand name — and I plan on finding out if that's still the case even when you double coupons.
  
• Buying what's in season/local produce can often help, too. If you get to know your local farmer's market, you can also get to know the cheap guy at your local farmer's market. Mine is an older couple with a big white truck. 10 banana peppers for a quarter? Where else are you going to get a deal like that? If you live in a temperate climate, you probably have farmer's markets available year round. Lucky duck. Go there! You'll never find more fresh and flavorful options on the cheap. Just remember to resist the $40 orchids.
  
• Pay in cash, not with a card — even if it's debited directly and instantaneously from your bank account — because it's harder to part with actual bills than it is to swipe a card. Put your grocery budget money in a marked envelope, and when it runs out, it's time to get creative with the eggs, rice and peas left over in your kitchen. Fried rice, anyone?
• Buy in bulk when you can. This doesn't just mean at the big warehouse stores; it's also cheaper to buy a bag of onions or potatoes than it is to pick out a few and put them in your own plastic bag. Plus, those little mesh baggies do wonders for the shelf life of your average kitchen sponge if you tie one on and use it for extra scrubbing power on some of your hardest gunked-up pans.
• Don't buy the convenience foods — things like pre-washed lettuce in bags and pre-sliced mushrooms. Wash a head of romaine yourself (you can also better tell how fresh it is when it's not hiding behind colorful plastic packaging) and slice the darned mushrooms yourself! It takes no time.
• If something that you regularly use is on sale, buy it even if you don't need it right that second. Don't pass up a good deal this week because when the craving hits next week, you'll get sucked into buying it at a higher price.
  

Ahhh, I feel better already.

I'm remembering why I started this blog. It's like a public brainstorming session. Does anyone else out there have any grocery store money-saving tips they'd like to share? Have you ever even thought about your weekly grocery bill, and what you can do to get more for your money? Share your ideas with me! Whether you're the drummer in a band or the retired mom living next door, I want to hear what you have to say. We can all help each other out, even if it's just a quick phone call to say that your favorite juice is on sale this week — want me to pick up a few bottles for you?

I have to make a grocery trip today, so we'll put my rules to the test. I am convinced that having a smaller waistline doesn't always mean your pocketbook has to downsize too. Eating healthy, all-natural foods is a right that should come easily to us in this country. Please, don't cut back on the organic milk, strawberries and broccoli next time you run out just because the future is a little more uncertain than it was two years ago. Respect your body and the food you put into it, and it will do wonderful things for you in return.

All in my head?

For someone who loves food so much, I really have a problem: I'm allergic to a lot of basic, yummy foods.

I'm allergic to a lot of things in general, like dust, cats, mold and pollen (all of which are pretty hard to avoid if you breathe air), and when it comes to food, it's also extremely difficult for me to avoid some of my "trigger" foods:

• Peas
• Shellfish
• Walnuts
• Soy
• Peanuts
• Corn

I love peas, but they're the easiest to avoid — unless I go out on a limb and order Chicken Vesuvio at an Italian restaurant, to which some chefs throw in frozen peas even though it's not listed on the menu as an ingredient. They can't list everything, I know — so now I know to ask.

Shellfish are also fairly easy to avoid, once you get over the shock of no longer being able to eat lobster, mussels, clams and oysters. Fortunately or not, it's not every day that I'm at the fish market or dining at Monty's in the Grove, drooling over coconut fried shrimp.

Walnuts are probably the next easiest to avoid, if you know where to look — yummy specialty salads are often chock full of them, candied or not, and they're often paired with cranberries and goat cheese or feta, another dead giveaway. You can also find them in lots of banana breads and muffins by the tell-tale brown, dense nut pieces peeking through the yellow-cake goodness. (Mmm, cake!)

But then it starts to get tricky.

When was the last time you ate an energy bar, or a granola bar, or cereal? Bread? Crackers? Probably within the last, say, three hours?

I can avoid all the soy lattes, soy sauce and soy nuts I want, but if you walk to your pantry right now and look down the ingredients list of nearly any brand of oatmeal, tortilla or protein bar, you'll see it as a common emulsifier: Soy lecithin, my arch-enemy.

Don't even get me started on corn and peanuts. With all the paranoia in this country surrounding food allergies and "intolerance" to certain ingredients, tons of labels now say in the itty-bitty print on the bottom, back or side: THIS PRODUCT IS MADE IN A PLANT THAT PROCESSES PEANUTS, TREE NUTS AND CORN. Or some variation on the theme.

Great. Juuuuuust great.

My allergist even told me once that the ubercautious factory warnings on lots of single-serving snack packs may just mean that Holly Hairnet worked the morning shift at the factory next door, where she's Quality Control Manager of the Zone Fudge Graham bars (which contain soy), and now she's on the graveyard shift at my bread factory, making sure all the little twist-ties are red and not yellow. She probably washed her hands, is wearing gloves and paper slippers, her lab coat is washed nightly in a 10% bleach solution and she doesn't even get close enough to breathe on a speck of flour, but I can't eat the thing now that I've been warned, gosh darnit!

So how's a girl to know what to eat and not eat? How much is too much? How will I know when my sink full of allergy symptoms is filling right up to the top, on the verge of overflowing, sending me into cardiac arrest at just the mere sight of my brother-in-law's Surf 'n Turf?

After all, when I occasionally (shh!) buy peanut butter when the craving hits and I just have to have a few spoonfuls of the stuff right out of the jar, all I get are a few sniffles and perhaps a momentary tightening in my chest, suggestive of the remnants of my mild childhood asthma.

But I also get tight in the chest when I watch the mom having an asthma attack in The Hand that Rocked the Cradle. I'm not kidding! Just talking about it right now is making me forcibly breathe more deeply.

I only carry around an EpiPen because my gynecologist's daughter has a severe peanut allergy, and she — not my allergist — recommended I get one. However, it's never been used, I don't know how to use it, and it's probably expired by now. I've been boxed into this place of fear by everyone who knows about my condition, yet when I dared to mention that sometimes I think it's all in my head, my last allergist literally laughed in my face.

I understand and appreciate the fact that it's their business to keep me coming in for shots every week.

I appreciate it when they let me know that I'm about to be hit with an $800 serum charge that my insurance won't cover...in the sense that, at least they warned me.

I even appreciate the smalltalk. They're nice people, if you can get past the 312 jabs in your arm each year.

The thing is, I don't appreciate what it's done in creating this poison prison that I live in. It's hard enough having to cook for a husband who can't eat garlic and onions, the basis of nearly every dinner dish on the planet. Now you're telling me I can't enjoy white corn in the summer, chips and salsa at my favorite Mexican restaurant, chicken teriyaki Lean Cuisines? What can I eat? It's like that episode of Seinfeld, when Kramer is pretending that he's the voice of MovieFone. "Why don't you just tell me the names of the foods I can eat?"

This is usually where my anger climaxes, and I'm forced to make my own mental list of what I can and can't eat, resolving year after year to swap regular M&Ms for the peanut kind, opt for the Zesty Italian dressing rather than the Asian Sesame variety and just generally try to feed my body the foods that I know to be safe.

My list goes something like this:

Most other fruits and vegetables, straight from the earth — Apples, bananas, grapes, grapefruit, oranges, spinach, kale, asparagus, broccoli, turnips, onions, garlic, mangoes, etc. (Okay, I'll say it — mmm, mangoes!)

Meat, in all its shapes and sizes — Beef, chicken, turkey, pork, sausage, fish, lunch meat, stew, hot dogs, ground anything.

I can drink lots of things too — Coffee, tea, milk, juice, water, soda, alcohol, wine, mixers, spritzers, lemonade, Crystal Light, you name it.

Perhaps it's the universe's way of telling me that I can get all the vitamins and minerals I need without high-sugar breads, white flour Club crackers and processed peanut butters. Shrimp is high in cholesterol. Walnuts are high in calories. Skim milk doesn't have half the vague research and hype surrounding it that soy milk does. And who needs soy sauce? All it is is a recipe for swollen fingers and hunger an hour later.

After all, the world always has ways of pointing us in the right direction: It's better to eat the orange than drink the orange juice (path of least resistance). If it's raining on running club day, maybe it's better to take the day off. Spinach is on sale this week — and it's much more nutrient-packed than boring old iceberg. We look for signs in every other area of our lives, so why can't I apply that same natural curiosity to dieting? Whether it's heartburn, headaches or hives, our bodies have ways of weaving foods in and out of our dietary patterns.

There are some things we can fight against in the diet/nutrition world: Our genes (one new cellulite cream after another), our jeans (when they finally fit around my thighs, I can barely keep them up around my waist = Invisibelt) and our cup size (padding yes, surgery no) — but as much as it pains me to say it, I'm beginning to get used to playing it safe and am resigning myself to the belief that maybe it's better to go with the flow on this one. I may not be able to eat everything I want, but deep down I know that wants aren't always as smart as needs. Apparently, I don't need shrimp scampi to enjoy my Friday evening out at Carlucci's. Perhaps, instead, I can feed my body what it wants and needs, if I just put a little more effort into making healthy swaps and paying attention to how my body reacts in exchange.

The next time you scarf down half a pepperoni pizza (something we all should be allergic to, wouldn't you agree?), take note immediately after: How do you feel? I'm guessing greasy, bloated and stuffed to discomfort. Regretting the decision to pick up the phone and call the delivery guy instead of boiling some water and pouring a bit of EVOO and garlic salt over the box of whole-wheat spaghetti that's just waiting to be taken down from the shelf in the cabinet by the stove.

Now, how do you think you'd feel after noshing on a simple, sweet breakfast of Greek yogurt, a quarter cup of granola, fresh peach slices and a drizzle of honey? I'll bet you $5 that you feel great. Ready to take on the world. Full of that satisfied, accomplished, kick-butt kind of energy.

Now that's something I'm not allergic to.

Food fights

I've yet to meet any two people — husband and wife, brother and sister, even twins — who share the same taste in food. Today's post? Welcome to my world.

My husband and I couldn't have more different food philosophies. I love garlic and onions; they literally make him throw up. I like to munch on all sorts of fruits: Pineapple, mango, grapes, plums; he can't even digest a raw apple or banana. I went through a chicken-only phase as a child; he's from Argentina (otherwise known as the Land O' Meat). Yet ironically, the Argentine national beverage, yerba mate, is on my list of favorite tea-like beverages, while for my spouse it's practically another form of gastronomic torture.

Culturally speaking, our dietary patterns and tendencies are polar opposites. In today's Buenos Aires, both adults and adolescents are most likely to heat up a cafe con leche for breakfast (made with whole milk and sugar) and head for the door. Sometimes they'll scarf down an alfajor (the gourmet version of an Oreo cookie) or a tostado (an unusually long piece of melba toast, made with enriched flour), liberally spread with any combination of butter, jam and/or dulce de leche, and that's it — they can't be bothered cooking up some lean protein and washing fresh veggies for an egg-white omelet in the morning.

During the city's bustling lunch hour, men and women in the corporate world pour out of their office buildings and head for the local parrilla or grill, where they're likely to be served skirt steak or flank steak with a hefty portion of French fries and a large Coke. If they have time to spare, they're smart to save room for a cone at the El Polo ice cream shop, where the line often wraps all the way around the corner, a true indication that helado is another thing the Argentines take rather seriously.

With such an enormous lunch under their belts, most families make it all the way to 9 or 10 o'clock at night, typical dinnertime in Bs As. And, of course, the main meal is often red meat again. I don't much like my meat pounded, breaded, fried and served with an egg on top — although I highly recommend the pizza Venezolana, cheese pizza with an egg cooked in the oven atop each slice — but with the Italian influence in Argentina, you're apt to find Milanese dishes on every menu. Wash it down with a few glasses of Malbec, and you're ready to call it a day.

It sounds like a perfect storm of clogged arteries and diabetic comas, and yet since my husband moved to the United States about seven years ago, he's put on a whopping 30 lbs while trying to adapt to our culinary customs. (I know we have a long way to go in this rather obese country, but that will have to be another post, another day.)

When he first arrived in America, he was shocked at the price of everything from Parmesan cheese to grapefruit juice. For a while he subsisted entirely on SPAM, rice, tuna, pasta and canned veggies. Even when we tried to resume his "diet" of meat and potatoes after finding a reasonably priced Cuban butcher in the ghetto in downtown Miami, he continued to pack on the pounds. I finally bought a working scale one day at Target and determined that I, too, had put on about 17 lbs since we got married, so I knew it was time for us to go on a diet together. Living in Miami, the South Beach Diet seemed perfectly appropriate. I read the book in English and Spanish. I planned out our meals in seven-day blocks. I bought BJ's entire stock of string cheese. We stayed on the Phase I plan for (shh!) two years, and it became the topic of every conversation.

The first week, we both lost seven pounds — one pound for every carb-free day. Girls at work asked me if I needed new pants. "They're so baggy in the back," they would say (a backhanded compliment if I ever heard one). Even the guys said that if I kept eating "like that," I was going to disappear. But I was the resident diet expert, and I loved it. It felt fantastic.

However, (*sigh*), anyone with half a brain knows that there's a big But to all of this, and I didn't continue to drop a pound a day for two years straight. So, if you've ever experienced the switch after coming off of South Beach or Atkins, you probably know what's coming.

GAS.

Yes, I can say this without shame. If this uncensored warning helps another desperate soul realize that trying to melt off the pounds without eating a single net carb in 24 months is STUPID, my work here will be done.

I can remember it like it was yesterday. I had just enjoyed my first ham and Swiss cheese sandwich and an apple after finally deciding enough was enough on my crazy low-carb binge. I was wrapping up after my break, elatedly tossing the apple core in the trash and sweeping away the breadcrumbs without a care in the world.

Luckily, my cubicle was located near the door.

Suddenly, while innocently trying to resume reading the latest issue of our breast cancer journal, I had to run for the nearest exit. From one minute to the next, I had about as much gas as the local Shell station. I was so bloated, all I could think about was the woman from the Gas-X commercial, blowing up like a balloon in the middle of the movie theater, unable to control what was inevitably about to explode from her every pore. I kept my eyes to the carpet as I speed-walked to the bathroom in that "Nobody talk to me" sort of way, just in case I encountered anyone meandering down the long hallway, absentmidedly fingering the annoying textured wallpaper.

Somehow, I made it to the bathroom without floating right up to the 39th floor, glad to find no one else inside and at first not really putting it all together — I just figured it was stress, or I had eaten too quickly. We all get gas pains now and then, right? As the days passed, however, I had to throw out half a dozen peaches, four bananas and countless containers of raspberries and strawberries that went bad as I painstakingly, slowly had to wean myself back onto "normal" quantities of fruit. Convinced there must be something newly medically wrong with me, I consulted family members, my nutritionist and of course my husband, and I ultimately decided to switch from regular milk to Lactaid, at least as a start. I was certain I had become lactose intolerant, and I eventually resigned myself to the fact that the underlying cause of my misery must have been the two years I'd so foolishly enjoyed South Beach, without a single ounce of full-fat cheese or even the mere sight of a sweet, plump blueberry. What my husband and I had once relished with such enthusiasm was now rearing its ugly head, attacking my body for being so foolish for so long.

Honestly, I was probably in denial about the whole thing. At the time, however, I was running up to five miles on the treadmill each day and I never felt flaky, light-headed or slow from the lack of complex carbohydrates in my diet. (Either that or I just chalked it up to being blonde.) It wasn't until after I left South Beach that I thought I'd never be able to eat another orange. There I was, embarrassingly puffy and miserable at work, and — surprise, surprise — I also ended up gaining all the weight back and then some.

I miss our South Beach days, without a doubt. But the jig is up. As tempting as it may be, I now know that it's just not healthy to cut out an entire food group for vanity's sake. And even with both of our ups and downs on the scale that continue to this day, the bottom line is that my husband and I have come together this time to lower his LDL, lower my trigylcerides and just generally eat more complete, well-balanced meals as we should be. Sure, I sometimes have to sub garlic salt and onion powder for the real thing, and now I stock up on grapefruit and pears (two fruits my partner can actually eat), but our food fights — both internal and external — are over for good. We know it wasn't right to stay on a diet contrary to mounds and mounds of medical advice, and all it did was prove the point that fad diets do nothing but get your hopes up so high that gravity has to eventually dash them down again. You can practically watch them fall while you simultaneously watch the scale creep back up, pound by inevitable pound.

This is not to say that we resumed the fanatically carnivorous South American diet for the sake of every last cow in Argentina. I haven't reverted to my college days of Denny's, Taco Bell and Burger King. But South Beach taught me the meaning of yo-yo dieting. Even though I eat a wider variety of fresh, healthy foods today, my weight crept back up to what I was before — and maybe I'm meant to be where I am now. I avoid white flour and sugary snacks without completely blacklisting anything that doesn't scream SUGAR-FREE. I don't run out and buy a four-page list of groceries so that I can follow every new food plan to the letter. I enjoy whole-wheat toast and honey with my two-egg breakfast, and a few raspberries on the side bump up the fiber content of my meal — which is more than I can say for the Diet Cokes I used to chug instead of giving in and having a piece of chocolate from the communal candy jar at work. Lest the sugar demons enter my bloodstream. Sometimes it's okay to give in to your cravings — at least that way there are no foods that are off limits, nothing that's suddenly become innately "good" or "bad" taunting you every time you walk down the aisles of your local grocery store or farmer's market.

What you put into your body each day is meant to propel you forward — to fuel your afternoon jog or just get you through a long work day — and only you can determine what constitutes your perfect meal. Not your spouse, not your coworkers, not your family or your countrymen. If there's one thing I learned from the South Beach Diet, it's that modifying your food intake really shouldn't be considered a diet. If you want to lose weight, tone up or lower your blood pressure, you need to make positive, healthy, sustainable lifestyle changes. After all, in the end, it's all about calories in/calories out. I've just come to realize that I prefer some of my calories to grow on trees.

Dealing with setbacks

I'm really getting tired of hearing phrases like "Yeah, well, with today's economy" and "With the way things are these days..." — and yet I use them myself, too. So let's just get it out of the way. With the way things are these days...

We've almost grown to expect one setback after another. In our work life, our personal life, even spiritually (or maybe I'm alone in this?) — but I am a firm believer in positive thinking, and although my problems may be little blips on the screen compared to those of even my friends and family, they're still problems. Setbacks. Little annoying voices in the back of my head that say "Ha ha, just TRY to fall asleep tonight without a Benadryl. I DARE ya." And even when I look back at what I wrote just a few days ago, words like "struggles" and "issues" almost seem...well...overdramatic.

However.

Call them what you may, it once again comes down to choice: Worry yourself sick, tallying up all the forces against you, and potentially spiral into a dangerous downward three-month stint where it's all you can do to shower in the morning and not just crawl right back into bed, or, decide — at least as a start — to only worry about the things you can control. This is one of my little tricks. And it may sound logical, but I've tried explaining it to people who refuse to buy what I'm selling. (You — yeah, you — just give it a listen, okay?)

Chances are, if you think and worry and fiddle about long enough over something you can control, you'll probably realize at some point that it's something you can control. (The ultimate goal, of course, being that eventually this will be second nature and you'll file away all your big and little worries in one of two compartments. Yes, I'm bringing up filing again.) The next step, however obvious it may or may not seem, is that once you realize you have control over XYZ, you'll do something about it.

It's kind of like the book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. If you give a mouse a cookie, he'll probably ask for a glass of milk. (Buy this book, if you have or ever plan on having children, if you don't already own it. Stop now and read it if you're really that bored with me.) If you start to identify when you need to get your butt in gear and do something about your problems, not long after you'll probably also realize, Wait, why am I worrying about these test results? Worrying is not going to make them come back any sooner. It's not like God is going to send me a sign in the middle of the night telling me my thyroid levels are finally stable. This, my friends, would be something out of my control.

So let's say you have a diet setback. Let's say you even know it's coming — a dinner out, an office birthday party (yum! more cake!), Easter brunch. You may not be able to control how much oil is put in the pan as they fry your eggs, but you can control whether or not you order them — or whether you order Egg Beaters, scrambled with yummy sauteed veggies and part-skim mozzarella. You might even offer to host your own get-together this year, even if it's just an early pot-luck supper, and that way at least you know exactly what has been melted, dipped and fried in your dish. (Hopefully nothing. If you use the most fresh, delicious ingredients you can find, it's really a shame to throw them in a vat of bubbling grease.)

How about a career setback? Those sure aren't hard to come by either. Small business failed? Laid off? Hours, pay rate, salary, vacation time reduced? Not easy to control either, trust me, I know. We all do our best during the day, we all stay late some nights to get the job done, we even sometimes read the paper and pay attention to the news to find out if anything earth-shattering has happened in our area of expertise. So if you are confident that yours is a job well done, put this setback on the friendly, nonthreatening list of Things that are Out of Your Control. But afterwards, you've got to recover quickly. The ball is now in your March Madness court, and if you dribble around aimlessly for too long, your chances of scoring big will drop off dramatically. You don't always have to sit on the phone and fax line all day sending out resumes, experimenting with every possible keyword combination on Monster.com. With the way Facebook and Twitter have exploded, you may just have better luck reaching out to your friends and family in that "I'm-not-desperate-like-everyone-else-is-but-please-help-me-if-you-can" sort of way.

Setbacks in one's personal life can come in a variety of shapes and sizes. (Again, trust me, this I know all too well.) Whether your partner forgot to deposit his paycheck again and the bank account is overdrawn or your cherished pet is sadly starting to show the signs of old age, there's a saying we can all remember: "When challenge is present, the teacher is in the room." There's always something to learn, some trivial or deep and pressing truth to be garnered from our everyday mishaps and our most crushing slip-ups.

I know, I know, I'm teetering dangerously close to the edge of sheer optimism, which is so not like me. But I do try to practice what I preach. And although it's difficult, if you can look back at a few instances in your life and recognize the ways in which you overcame adversity — you came out on top, you reached your goal, you navigated your way around each and every obstacle in your way (no, really. If this is ringing true with you today even in the most minute sense, stop reading, right now, and write down at least three tough times in your life and how you handled them. Who helped you, how you felt, what you did to get over it) — that is knowledge that you can use the next time around. And that is, perhaps, the only thing that will propel you forward, along a positive path in your journey. Everyone can give advice, everyone can tell you what to do and how to do it. Heck, you may even be wanting to stuff a big piece of CAKE in my mouth to get me to shut up right about now. I'm almost done, I swear!

Maybe the point of this message is just Cheer up. Don't be so hard on yourself. Everything happens for a reason. (Okay, so maybe there are many messages.) The truth of the matter is, we say these things because we believe that they're true. And if you don't, well, look at your life more critically for the next few days. Do you know you're going to screw up that presentation tomorrow, so you won't be surprised when you totally bomb out in front of everyone, including your boss and the cute guy from IT? Does it seem like that's too much salt to possibly put in the guacamole recipe, and you can just tell that someone at the Food Network must have gotten a little happy with the caps lock? It's like that annoying remix of the Roxette song (oh yeah, I'm going there): Listen to your heart. Or at least listen to your head. There is no such thing as a bad person or a good person. We may do bad things or make mistakes sometimes, but one setback or bad review is not going to define you. As Diane von Furstenburg once said (busted, I totally watch The City and I LOVE IT!), the most important relationship you have is with yourself.

You are strong and resourceful.

You are smart.

You are kind, thoughtful and a generous, giving spirit.

And if you start saying it over and over to yourself, you just might start to believe it...

Just not feelin' it

Today is one of those days.

I have many, I know, and I'm sure you do, too, and maybe the weather has something to do with it...but today, I'm just not feelin' it. I don't feel like reading, I don't feel like working out, I don't feel like paying the bills, flipping through magazines, being productive.

Monday was much the same. But Monday, one of my online friends (unknowingly?) motivated me to start this blog. I'd been writing here and there — on Google pages and other sites, in 20,000 notebooks, on various different computers — for years, since I was a child, really, and I've always wanted to make a career out of it. But, as they say, what you major in in college is never what you actually end up doing in "real life." So, of course, as a Creative Writing major in sunny Miami, I planned out my future as follows: I assumed I would be relatively poor, possibly waiting tables and writing at night in my messy NYC apartment (probably smoking cigarettes and ingesting far too much caffeine). No roommates, no boyfriends, just me and my controlled chaos.

That picture could not be further from the truth.

I moved to the Southwest suburbs of Chicago a few years ago to be near my family. I never made it to New York, never even made it so far as Georgia or Jersey. Just a lot of hopeless pinging back and forth between Coral Gables and Hinsdale, Miami and Downers Grove. Dorms turned into condos that turned into houses with big back yards.

I've never waited a table in my life, and that's probably a good thing. While I love food and love to cook (duh), I don't think I could really ever have a career in food service. The long hours, the critics, the heinous reality TV personalities and equally disturbing plates of overcooked lamb...I'd stand around my kitchen all day baking cookies and boiling water for pasta if I could, but, c'est la vie. Most of us have to work for a living.

I've found I'm fairly intolerant of caffeine and cigarette smoke, only to be confirmed each time I have one too many cups of coffee and suddenly wonder, 'Am I pregnant? Am I going to throw up? Why do I feel so sick all of a sudden? Wait, drive slow. You may have to pull over. I feel like I'm going to vomit.' Yeah, that's pretty much what one too many Venti Non-fat Cappuccinos do to me. I'm into the teas right now, even though it's pretty much just a bag of tea and some hot milk. $5 please! (Loves yas Starbucks, we're, like, totally BFF, I swear!)

The point of my seemingly endless rambling is coming, I promise.

But to finish the truth of the story...I'm married now, with a cat and a dog for roommates, and I like to think of myself as more controlled and less chaotic. Let's see...I have multiple maroon three-ring binders to house all of the recipes I tear out from magazines, organized by section: Breads, Breakfast, Chicken, Chinese, Comfort Foods, Fish, Meats, Mexican, Pasta, Sides, Veggies, et cetera. I schedule my workouts; I have a list and a notebook and a folder and a file for everything. (Except for the things that are in the basket that's for stuff needing new folders and/or files. Ha!)

So maybe this is why some days I just don't feel the love to do what's lying around, waiting to be done. Is this not how I thought it would all turn out? Or, rather, did I really expect to feel accomplished and fulfilled at this age? I've always loved to write, and I've truly grown to love and appreciate food, diet and exercise...but somehow all I ended up with is this lousy little blog and a laptop.

What can we do, on days like these, when even our passions seem to fall flat, unattractive, requiring too much effort?

I think you just have to pick something.

Pick one thing off your list — mental, to-do, whatever — and just start there. Maybe tackle the most difficult (irritating, annoying, mundane, degrading, juvenile, you get my drift) task first — because surely, after the worst is over, the best is yet to come! For me, I'd have to say it's giving my dog a bath. That's been on my to-do list for...umm...well...I'm sure she's been bathed at some point, but...like...a year. And what's so bad about it? It's actually kind of cute. She gets all soapy and gloppy and looks at me with her sweet brown eyes — man, that's love.

Maybe after that I'll continue cleaning out my closet, which is, pretty much, a work in progress. Should I really part with the gray-blue skirt I bought in Paris? The fuschia purse my mom got for me in Hawaii, which I never used? The bathrobe we picked out for my honeymoon, but really it's a pain to wash and dry? I think those kinds of purges are healthy. They keep us current, fresh; they make us realize what we need and don't need. (Note to self: New black pants are a must for fall.)

So my shins, hips and buns hurt today from two hard days of pounding the pavement outside. Meh. This art project I'm working on is really starting to turn into a bear. Blech.. It's ugly outside. Sigh...

But I could just walk on the treadmill. And imagine how cool this thing is going to look when it's hanging up on my wall, my very own little inspiration springboard. And, believe it or not, at 2:30 in the afternoon on this scummy March day, the birds are singing in my back yard.

Took me a couple hours of working on this — editing, re-reading, pausing for sustenance — but I'm finally seeing the silver lining.

What's on your to-do list today?

Torn

Every day, we make one decision after another.

Some of them we do without much thought — hitting the snooze button, breaking for lunch, hopping the train home — but others, well...Others may as well be elements of torture. I spent at least 10 minutes yesterday debating whether or not to run outside, in the beautiful pre-Spring Chicago weather or, because I wouldn't be able to count my calories burned that way, hoof it on the treadmill as usual. I was this close to suffering for another hour and a half in my basement, just so I could watch the calorie counter tick up to 500, instead of breathing in the fresh air and taking in the sights. (Luckily, my husband immediately agreed to come along, so we walked outside and enjoyed ourselves quite thoroughly.)

For the past week or so, I was torn between two special social commitments that couldn't be rescheduled and just so happened to conflict with one another at exactly the same time. The decision weighed so heavily on my shoulders, I thought about it before I fell asleep at night, I thought about it when I woke up in the morning and I thought about it 95 times during the day too. What to do, who to let down easily, who to disappoint, what's the right thing.

It's not like I have a little devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other. In fact, that may not be such a bad image to carry around. "Mmm, remember those caramels that you never used up during the Christmas bake-a-thon?" "No, don't do it! You've already had your dessert, and you're NOT HUNGRY!" Hmm. Now that I've imagined how that would play out, I can see why little floating cartoons have never been of any great assistance to the world.

So how do we come out on the winning end of each decision? I'd rather use up my calories eating whipped cream and berries, frankly. I could do without chicken for the rest of my life I think. And if there are crackers in the cupboard, and I'm the least bit hungry, I'm going to eat some. Why, oh why? Why can't I be one of the great foodies, hopping from restaurant to restaurant and only nibbling on the baked eggs, smoked salmon and filet? Not even thinking about food in between each meal. Snacks? What is this, a Little League game? Oh, dinner? Yeah, I'll pick up something on the way home...stop by the local Whole Foods, maybe whip up a little Chilean sea bass with lemon and capers. That is not my life! I don't have the money, I don't have the willpower...so how can I strengthen my decision-making skills? Something has got to change.

I know it's hard for a lot of us, and that's why we have support groups and diet books and self-absorbed bloggers like me. And sometimes I feel like I've tried everything. The sugar-free candies, the sugarless gum. Hoodia, caffeine, Emergen-C, Red Bull. Cardio cardio cardio, weights weights weights. Hang up a picture of your "thinner" self as motivation. Log your food in a journal, every bite you take, for 30 days straight. Get a good food scale. Use lemon juice instead of salad dressing. I've done it all, haven't I?

You know...

Maybe I haven't.

The three packs of Trident I bought, oh, three months ago, are still floating around in my various purses and gym bags.

I've never tried just using lemon juice on my greens at lunch.

I choose not to look at pictures of myself, because I think it just makes me depressed that I don't look like that any more. But is that the case? I mean, do 10 pounds really make that much of a difference? Am I just embarrassed because that means that other people who see that picture will wonder and maybe ASK — oooh, scary! — what it's doing there?

And just because the caramels are in the cabinet, and you found them this morning after sitting there for three months, does not mean you have to eat them. Hide them again if you have to. Or, enjoy two — for dessert — tomorrow. By then you may not even want them.

So it's always a decision; it's always a choice. To snooze or not to snooze? To count that calorie or to just say, Ah well, it's just a little juice. Yeah, it's just a little juice, and that was just a little ice cream, but you didn't finish your chicken, and you made it around the park four times today...Sigh...Will anything, ever, make me accountable?

I know how irritating I find indecisiveness in other people. On the other hand, however (ha ha ha), snap decisions aren't always smart and healthy. Everything from shooting off that snippy email to your boss to adding an extra seven crackers to your afternoon snack sometimes deserves the same calm, cool-headed focus, the only thing that will keep you from veering off whatever course you're on.

I'm going to try to remember this tomorrow, when I'm stressed and anxious between meals. I'd rather not tear open another pack of saltines. Maybe if I work just a little harder, instead I can tear down all of these negative thoughts and images and self perceptions that I keep oh-so-masochistically drilling into my brain.

Yeah.

That sounds much tastier than a pasty old soda cracker.

Was it a dream or was it a nightmare?

The Gourmet on a Diet

Welcome welcome, dear readers (are you out there?), to a new venue for culinary creativity.

For those of you who are expecting a daily iteration on fois gras, stop reading...NOW. Why don't you Google Andrew Knowlton instead?

This blog, rather, is for me and people like me — people who love to eat, people who obsess about eating (in a good way, not like OMG I just ate one too many leaves of rocket, now I can't eat again until June) and people who want to enjoy eating delicious, high-quality, flavorful foods while still maintaining a relatively slim waistline and a nutritionally sound "diet."

Yes, I said diet. GET OVER IT. If you're one of those people who can eat whatever you want and never gain an ounce, maybe YOU should stop reading now too. Ha.

As you may have already noticed, you will surely have to deal with my attitude along the way. You may scoff at my distaste for lamb. You may even wonder why I call myself "The Gourmet on a Diet." Well, it's simple: I don't eat rice cakes. Heck, I don't even eat much rice. But that's beside the point. Somehow, somwhere, along the path of what I imagine will be a long journey, I intend to prove to myself that it's not only possible to eat great food while on a diet (and we'll get to what great food is, trust me) but that it's also a fun and affordable challenge-slash-hobby.

I've struggled with my weight ever since I found my mom's copy of "Thin Thighs in 30 Days" back in the early 90s — so, although an RD degree or a weekly spot on the Today Show is still out of reach for me, I do think I have a lot of helpful info, and even if it's not even the least bit fruitful or funny to a single other soul out there, this is like journaling for me. I type, and before I'm even finished "saying" the words, I'm already in the midst of another "A-ha" moment. (Insert joke about one-hit-wonder — but incredibly talented — 80s band here.)

Today's post is a bit backhanded in terms of its relation to food, but I don't mind. It may perhaps give you a brief and shining glimse of my relationship with food, which is certainly appropriate. And yes, in terms of the title, I will tell you right off the bat that when I dream about food, I do sometimes open my mouth in my sleep. It's a bit freaky, but I can always feel it happening (I know, embarrassing). It's just that the cake always looks so good...

Was it a dream or was it a nightmare?

Dream is a big word. Dre-e-e-e-eam, dream dream dream...I Dream of Jeannie, Dream a Little Dream of Me...just the word alone could spark any number of conversations. In fact, it kind of reminds me of our family dinner last night when, as I was happily conversing with my spouse and my mother, I realized, in all the various ways you could slice, dice or just throw some strawberries into a fruit salad, I was cutting them in perhaps the most roundabout, difficult-to-fit-in-your-mouth sort of way. Anyways. I digress. Feel free to digress here also, if you must.

Back now? Okay. Hope that was fun for you.

We dream at night, but we also daydream and have dreams of becoming pop stars or astronauts or veterinarians or Top Chefs...but what happens when dreams are put on the back burner, and nightmares take center stage? What can you do when the biggest "dream" on your to-do list involves tactfully negotiating rental cars, babysitting duties, dinners out, diet bombs and grocery budgets? (Depending on your point of view, that may actually sound kind of interesting — but let's face it, most mundane tasks are anything but dreamy.)

I can't remember the last time I had just your average run-of-the-mill dream. I remember who was in it (naturally, a dreamy TV star, just not McDreamy this time — all PG, I promise), but I couldn't tell you how many weeks or months ago it was or what exactly happened in the dream. Mostly in my memory, it involved just a lot of steamy standing around and long, drawn looks with wanting eyes and repressed desires. (My next blog will be romance novel shorts. KIDDING.)

The nightmares, however, or the bad dreams, whatever you want to call them (can there be both?), I remember so vividly it's like they happen every night, or while I'm awake even. Dark, shadowy male figures standing at the foot of the bed; getting so close to something I want so bad but it never happens (come on, the two are so not related, get your minds out of the gutter); the typical falling, kicking, screaming, can't move nightmares; I've had them all. I even remember my most frightening nightmares from childhood, and one in particular stands out as possibly being real. Much therapy would be needed to dig that one up, however, so I continually work at shoving it further into my subconscious.

I've looked it up on the internet when I've had a snake in my dream; I found out how superficial I was on vacation when I kept dreaming my teeth were falling out. (Google it, if you must.) I've had dreams that have ruined friendships; I've had nightmares that have strengthened relationships. You name it, I've dreamed it. But, mind you, this is all taking place while I'm asleep. My mind is hard at work, trying to tell me what I'm afraid of and what I should be doing to harness my fears, yet in the morning I wake up and just think to myself, Whoa, what was that about? Shrug, sigh, shower, work. That's pretty much how it goes, at least in short.

My daydreaming lately has been limited to how I'm going to look in my bikini next month and how the hell I'm going to get through the afternoon workout session today and tomorrow and the next day and the next day. I'm not dreaming about the cool ocean breeze and the hot Florida sun that's going to beam down on me while I'm in that bikini; I'm thinking about all the wood-burning-oven pizza, homemade canelloni and French pastries I'm going to be eating and how futile my egg-and-toast breakfasts are right now in the grand scheme of my lifelong obsession with food, fitness and nutrition. Why can't I dream up a miracle drug or a cure for these silly insecurities and just embrace my inner Paula Deen?

The thing is, I really don't want to. There's something I love about this constant challenge — eat the vanilla ice cream with berries and Cointreau tonight; burn 500 calories on the treadmill tomorrow. I can do it, right? I completely believe in the subconscious and telling our inner ears what we really should/need to hear. I just don't always believe myself when I hear my irritating, nasal voice saying it. "The only result will be positive"? Ha. Yeah. Right. That's not what the scale said this morning. Or, really, it is! I gained a pound, GROAN...Goddammit, see, I'm doing this to myself. "I'm the healthiest I've ever been, and I look great"? Give me a break. Why is it, then, that I can't run for more than five minutes straight? Oh, and this cellulite is gorgeous, isn't it. I just love it. We're, like, totally BFF.

See what I mean? I'm lucky if I just dream about steak instead of eating it. (Although, like I said, usually it's cake I dream of. Yellow cake, with chocolate frosting. A layer cake, of course.) I'm lucky if, even in my bad dreams, at least the bad guys are strange, fictional characters and not representations of real men and women in my life. Sometimes, I'm just lucky in the morning being able to remind myself throughout that day that IT WAS JUST A DREAM. No one rejected me last night. No one chose her over me. No one's sick, no one's chained to the side of the house, no one's staring in my bedroom window or standing at the foot of the bed. My arms, feet, hands, legs — they all move. I'm fine. I'm fine.

But that's as far as I can go with it all. I can't bring myself to address all the real problems. Why did I dream of rejection last night? Why can I never dream anything positive? Why do I know that I should think about pretty things like fairies and beaches and birds and flowers before I go to sleep to ensure a restful, pleasant night, and yet all I can do is think about the challenges I'm going to face tomorrow, and why won't she answer my email???

My guess is that lots of people have similar problems, or there would be no insomnia, there would be no stress, there may even be no obesity, diabetes, heart attacks and high cholesterol. But I'm not going to chalk myself up as just one more idiot without the willpower or wherewithal to understand my relationship with food, diet and exercise. Somehow, I've got to take a stand. And these words? Everything I'm writing here on the page? It may mean nothing in the long run. I may look back on this next year (or tomorrow?) and say Ha, see, worthless, absolutely worthless. Still in the same boat, still sailing around aimlessly.

Hopefully, though, that won't be the case. I'll eat the steak, and I'll look ****ing FINE in my bikini, and if any ***hole says otherwise he can SHOVE IT. (I'll tell you that story another day.) I'll make the phone call I'm desperately trying to avoid making, and whichever way it turns out, it will be fine. I may even speak to my neighbors about the little ditch my husband seems to be looking forward to making so damn much, to avoid our basement from flooding, and God help me from here on out.

Who knows how it will end. But at least I know, somewhere inside of me, there are dreams. Good dreams. Great dreams, in fact. Daydreams, lofty goals, high-risk leaps without the proverbial nets. Even fresh, chocolate-frosted cake dreams. (Those are the best.)

Right now, even when everything in the world may indicate otherwise, leaping may not be such a bad idea.