A Gator in 'Nole country, a beauty pageant queen in medical school, a yoga fitness instructor who binge eats sweets and fats on an hourly basis, I often feel like my life is one big contradiction. To straighten out the chaos, I decided to use an assignment from our Medicine and Behavior class as an excuse to become more neurotic than I already am. The assignment?
BEHAVIOR CHANGE PLAN - Choose a target behavior you'd like to change and explain why it was chosen. Monitor your behavior for at least 2 weeks and discuss observed patterns and potential hurdles. Set a specific personal goal and develop a change plan, then implement and monitor it for 6 weeks.
......Ok, cool! I can do this! Let's see, the examples they gave were things like, "I will use the elliptical machine at XXXX Health Club for 30 minutes, Tuesdays and Thursdays". After realizing that going to the gym is definitely NOT a problem for me, I delved further to discover what really irks me about, well, me. And let me tell you, it was exhausting! No, I mean it quite literally. My brain fatigued after wracking over the problem for about 5 minutes, which then led me to question: Why am I always so mentally exhausted!? I pondered the conundrum while eating a row of double stuf oreos and as I polished off the last one and the food comatose started to hit I realized with a blinding flash of clarity (....wait no, that was my dining table light glaring off the now empty aluminum wrapping of the oreo package) that my biggest time waster and energy zapper -facebook aside- is FOOD!
I love food. Specifically, I love cookies, chocolate, breads, pastas, vegetables, salads, fruits, ice cream, tofu, red meats, white meats, fish meat...ok well I guess there aren't really any specifics because I am the world's biggest hearted, caste no bar lover of food in all its guises. Anyone who knows me knows to fear my constantly unabated hunger. My food mania has undoubtedly progressed at a horrific rate over the years as I came to realize that I am blessed with a very forgiving metabolism. Due to the aforementioned coupled with my obsessiveness about working out my body has been able to sneak by on bad behavior without ever having to face any real consequences, save one: My brain has become sluggish! My mental processes have quite literally been bogged down by the sludgy residue left behind by the metabolism of a plethora of unecessary fats.
CONCLUSION: My behavior change plan will be to completely cut out processed foods and consume organic whole foods for the next 6 weeks. After doing tons of research, I've found out that there are tons of crap in our foods. Quite literally speaking. Think back to news reports of salmonella in our peanut butter, listeria in our spinach, roaches in our coffee grinds; processing foods has repeatedly demonstrated the potential for causing acute illnesses but I am convinced that even if you've never experienced projectile vomiting or explosive diarrhea from eating crappy food, that doesn't exempt you from suffering from the adverse effects of over-processing and over-refining. It will get us all eventually when we're in our old age and wrought with type 2 diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, obesity, Alzheimer's, pick your poison ladies and gents!
Now I'm not your staunch and stoic kind of girl. I'll be the first to admit that I am probably one of the most efficiently lazy people you'll ever meet and inconveniencing myself for any reason is not going to happen so I'm going to make these next 6 weeks as easy as possible. Instead of consuming the quick unhealthy stuff (i.e. fast food, anything packaged or preserved) I'm going to go for the quick healthy stuff (fresh fruits, vegetables, whole grains). This allows for 3 aspects that I like my food to proffer:
1). Variety - I still get my sweet, salty, bitter and umami taste buds satisfied = I feel satisfied.
2). Quantity - I'm a snacker, and I think I could get by snacking on nutrient rich foods because they have a higher water content than packaged foods which automatically fills you up quicker.
3). Ease - Medical school means there is no time to prepare elaborate meals. Grabbing some fruits and pre-cut veggies before I head out the door seems feasible. Baking fresh fish, roasting veggies and boiling some brown rice for dinner seems feasible. I'm happy so far.
I'm excited about my new life plan, hence the long post, but now it is time to do some more research and figure out exactly what I can buy on my first trip to the farmer's market when I return to Tallahassee. It is also time to enjoy my last, hearty helping of trans-fats before I implement my new plan. I'm thinking cookies...
No comments:
Post a Comment