Sunday, February 28, 2010

It's Hard to Love a Carrot

This week, Laurel was kind (?) enough to email us about tracking ingredients instead of calories. Basically, you'll eat better if the foods you consume have 5 ingredients or less.

Imagine my dismay upon learning that Healthy Choice frozen dinners are not healthy! Wait, doesn't mental health count? My brain is comforted by meals that can be prepared in 5 minutes. (Hmm, maybe if I could download that microwave "bing" to my alarm, I wouldn't need the snooze button).

I am not a Foodie, meaning I do not like to prepare meals, don't care about "gourmet," and won't order a dinner I can't pronounce. I get anxiety attacks in grocery stores. Seriously, my friend Ann witnessed my breakdown when trying to select ketchup from an overwhelming display of choices.

This is how food-stupid I am: my brother was doing BBQ, and I asked everyone how they wanted their chicken done. (My brother chided that "done" is the key word with chicken.) I once tried to make hamburgers on the stove and added so much pepper that it drove my entire family, choking and crying, out of the house and set off the smoke alarm. There's a video of when we purchased our house, and Ann opens the oven and says, "Look...extra cabinet space for Elise."

I'm all about food that can be eaten right out of the package. Open, heat, serve. Better yet (as in gouda cheese): open and serve with crackers.

Today, I actually opened a cookbook to see if I could prepare a meal with real--not processed--ingredients. My daughter was horrified by the dust that littered the table every time I turned a page. (Yes, friends and family, I haven't touched those cookbooks since you gave them to me as wedding presents almost 19 years ago). It was depressing. Everything that looked good was "bad"; and everything that disgusted me was "good."

I'm on a quest to find foods I can eat that don't involve the kitchen.

Therefore I eat a lot of carrots.

I'm sure there is some type of "Eat Healthy Tasty Foods Without Cooking" website out there. But I have a feeling it will involve carrots.

7 comments:

  1. Good for you Elise! Great blog...makes me laugh. Reminds me of my own boot camp that I do with my co-workers. It really helps to have that support system. There have been so many days that I would have found any excuse to bail but since my friends were going, I went too. Hope you all win the contest!

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  2. LOL Try cookinglight.com you can sign up for daily recipes to be mailed to you. Also, try allrecipes.com, most recipes have all the nutritional content right there with the recipe.

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  3. HOpe, I know you can do this. Your body is going to change so much just by getting all of that processed food and sodium out of your system. You don't have to do it everyday, just start doing it most days. Body for Life has a great cook book that is simple. Someone borrowed mine and I of course have not seen it since.

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  4. Thanks, Erin. You inspired me on my last visit to ATL. You're right, it really helps to be committed to others (it's so easy to cheat on yourself). The weight loss is coming slowly, but I can definitely tell a difference in my body strength with the Boot Camps training. While I still pant and grunt like a weakling, I'm able to do some exercises I'd *never* imagine completing a month ago.

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  5. Thanks, Prancing Princess...I appreciate the tips. It's the cooking thing that presents a major hurdle. To me, a kitchen is a room where you open doors and prefabricated foods fall off the shelves.

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  6. PS, Erin, thanks for becoming a follower. Now we have 17 on our journey to promote the WellQuest Challenge.

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  7. Celery. Try celery and carrots. At least you get variety :-)

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