blog by: kim
School Cafeteria
Me: “what did your mom make you for lunch?”
Little girl next to me: “peanut butter and jelly on wonder bread, fritos, a twinkie with soda. why are you staring at my food kimmy? what do you have in your paper bag?”
“uh…a sprout sandwich, an apple for dessert and some warm apple juice. raisons for snack. wanna trade?”
“no weird paper bag girl!”
And so it was my cafeteria life in grade school. A few times it was Triscuits with raw veggies. Whaa? No wonder why I can’t get enough peanut butter as an adult.
When I was really little, I’d dream about those crunchy greasy things that kids called potato chips and secretly wish my mother didn’t sprinkle wheat germ on my food. What was that anyway?
As a kid I wanted junk food and I was not pleased that I couldn’t just have a normal lunch like the rest of the kids. The friday pizza looked so good. If I was given a little money to buy white milk in the school cafeteria, I’d sneak and buy some sort of chocolate hostess cake instead and then lick my little fingers clean. Yummy.
It’s funny how our eating habits as kids makes a difference on how we eat as adults. Even though I didn’t grow up with both parents, years later I remember my father being good about eating healthy. I was utterly horrified by this. He and my step mom would juice things, fruit, veggies, you name it- it went down that little tube and came out in liquid form. I’d stand there and shake my head and scowl. "Pffft… how odd" I’d say.
What little I knew. But to this day, I still stick to my coffee as you can see...
And why oh why did dad work out almost daily? I understand it now, but the time it made no sense. Talk about discipline. I was more interested in boys.
Nowadays I have finally settled into a happy medium. I’m not overboard with the healthy stuff, you still have to live and enjoy life! But I also choose whole wheat over white, virtually no greasy fried foods, chips only on occasion and so on and so forth. I am not disciplined enough to eat all non fat /gluten free/sugar free foods that I cannot pronounce. One must live a little now and then, yes?
Which brings me to the issue of dieting. I have heard of some of the funniest fad diets. No matter what, even if you take off the weight- if you don’t figure out how to eat healthy and moderate the calories over the long term, it’ll just creep back on. Losing weight AND maintaining it, is about lifestyle. Healthy eating habits and routine exercise are the only way to go. I know. Don't look at me that way. I didn’t write the rules.
Check out these funny fad diets:
The Twinkie Diet- Eat junk food and lose weight? By sticking to 1,800 calories a day - around 600-800 fewer than needed to maintain weight – the guy lost 10 lbs in the first three weeks of his "diet". It shouldn't come as such as surprise. After all, you could lose weight eating two candy bars a day: it's the calories-in verses calories-out that matter.
Eat Backwards and Lose Weight- The Reverse Diet has you reversing the order of what you eat: a heavy dinner for breakfast, regular meal for lunch, then a light breakfast for dinner.
The Lemon and Lime Diet-
According to this diet's rules, you are allowed to only ingest two things (besides water): lemons and limes. The diet's creator believed that this diet would promote health. However, the smarter people out there realize that only eating lemons and limes will cause a serious diet imbalance. No, really?
The Master Cleanse
- It’s has become famous due to the variety of celebs that swear by it. This diet involves drinking water along with maple syrup, cayenne pepper, and lemons. While you'll certainly lose weight by just ingesting these four things, you're looking at a serious imbalance in your body. Just thinking about it makes me very grumpy.
The Toddler Diet - Just eat toddlers. Oh my, that is funny.
But focus back over here. Fad diets don’t offer a healthy, long-term weight control plan. They are so very restrictive. They aren’t a healthy form of dieting that can be incorporated into life for the long haul.
Many diets buy into “yo-yo dieting". Yo-yo dieting is the back and forth gain and loss of weight from excessive dieting. Real weight loss is slow when it is finally done from a healthy perspective.
People who go on fad diets are putting their body at risk for disease and illness. Most fad diets restrict you from eating foods that are packed with the vitamins and nutrients the human body needs to protect itself from fatigue and sickness.
So maybe, just maybe those people that raised me were actually onto something. Perhaps now I’m a little more thankful for my embarrassing, sprout- filled cafeteria days after all.
love, the weird paper bag girl
