If I only took one thing out of this bucket list, it would definitely be how I approach food. The funny thing is, I can't even tell you exactly how I approach food now. There have been so many different ideas I have contemplated, things I have tried, and changes I have made that are so vastly different from each other. I guess if I could summarize in one word the effect this bucket list has had on me, it would be this: it taught me to pay attention and care. Food is one part of your life that you can never ignore or not deal with- you can't live without it! You need it on a daily basis. Changing the way you eat is literally changing your whole life. So, in the end, if that is the only lasting effect my bucket list had on me, my bucket list was more than successful.
I've never had any incentive until recently to pay attention to what kind of food I'm eating. When I was growing up, I was lucky enough to not have any food allergies (unlike my mom's entire family) and didn't have to deal with weight problems. I say "lucky" because that's what people would tell me, but I realized, even then, that in some ways it was not really lucky. Because I had zero incentive to care about what I was eating-- I could eat whatever I wanted and have no immediate consequences. I knew that it would be a lot harder to change my eating habits when I was older and was forced to care-- even if I never physically gained weight, there are still plenty of health problems associated with an unhealthy diet that I could easily encounter in my life. But the "future" incentive wasn't strong enough to make me care enough to change my habits, so I never did.
The last few years it was especially difficult to care. Because the truth is, eating healthier is more time consuming and expensive. When you are a busy college student/college graduate living on a limited budget, it's so much easier to grab a cheeseburger or microwave easy-mac. Vegetables and meats are expensive and I had a limited knowledge of how to make different foods. So I just ate what was cheap and convenient.
But during the last year or so, I realized I had a problem. First of all, I began to gain weight-- not very much, but enough to make me realize I was no longer invincible. I also had a severe caffeine dependency. I constantly felt lethargic sitting in a cubicle all day and never exercising at all. And, overall, I just felt like a lazy sloth. When I started dating Brian and imagined what the future might bring-- family, etc.-- I didn't want to pass on my unhealthy habits to them. So I decided I needed to change a lot of things, which is why I put so many diet and exercise related things on my bucket list. And then I forced myself to make those changes.
The first change was learning to cook, which really lay the groundwork for everything else. Cooking in itself is not healthy and does not necessarily equate to a healthy lifestyle. But when you learn to cook, you are giving yourself the ability to have control over what you eat. When you eat fast food or pre-made food, you don't always know everything that is in it. You can't always eliminate or substitute ingredients. You are at the mercy of the chef. I realized that the more things I learned to make myself, the less of a temptation it was to go out and eat. Learning to cook was a huge landslide for me, because once I realized I actually COULD cook and could cook most things pretty well, it became addicting and eventually a part of my lifestyle. At this point, I barely ever go out and eat. Which is a huge accomplishment!
The next huge, huge change I made was giving up caffeine. This was huge because I was almost 100% sure I couldn't do it. I had been addicted to caffeine for almost 10 years, and was drinking about 6-10 cups a day-- if I drank any less than that I would get a caffeine headache. I literally had to try to give it up TWICE before I got through the initial withdrawals. Accomplishing this was the most empowering thing I have ever done. And it helped me realize that I was capable of doing so much more than this-- I figured if I could give up this, I could give up pretty much anything.
This naturally led to me trying to be healthy in all avenues of life. I started to work out (which was also something on my bucket list)-- first at the workout center at my apartment, and then at LA Fitness with Amy. During this time I downloaded My Fitness Pal on my iphone so I could see exactly how many calories I was burning. Which led me to start watching how many calories I was eating. And then I began monitoring what vitamins and nutrients I was consuming-- which led to me eating more fruits/vegetables and taking more vitamins. This all began about 3 or 4 months ago and I have been addicted since. I also lost 7 pounds!
The next "change" I made was after watching the documentary "Food Inc." If you've seen it already, you probably already know what I'm going to say. :) This was the documentary that made my sister become a vegetarian for a while. I don't know what exactly led me to watch it-- I literally wrote down a list of the most popular documentaries and we randomly decided to watch that one. But it dramatically changed how I view the food industry.
Here is a brief summary: the entire food industry is actually almost completely owned by just a few large companies that use several different brand names to sell their products. Because they have so much control over the industry, they have the power to make decisions that are not beneficial to the consumer, to the animals, or to the farmers. The industry is most concerned about making their food cost effective-- not healthy-- and the way they produce food in order to make it cheap is directly linked to e-coli, obesity, and diabetes. The drive to cut costs also led the companies to create terrible living conditions for the animals. Many chickens, for instance, are fed growth hormones to make them as fat as possible as quickly as possible. Some of them spend their whole lives unable to walk. Cattle farms are incredibly overcrowded, with cattle living neck to neck with each other until they are slaughtered. Farmers have very little control over their farms, and if they don't abide to every small requirement the companies lay out for them, their contracts are not renewed. Many of the farmers are required to buy specific equipment and are not paid enough to compensate for the debt this causes them to have. They also told stories of farmers who chose not to work for these companies and are now being sued because the companies' patented seed naturally spread into their field from nearby fields.
Brian and I had a long talk about this documentary afterwards, because it's really hard to hear information like that and not care enough to do anything about it. I've always been skeptical about organic food-- it doesn't necessarily seem like people who eat it live longer than the rest of us. And it's expensive. I also have never had much of a desire to be a vegetarian. If you know me, you know I love animals. But it just seems like we are designed to need a lot of the nutrients in meat-- vegetarians need to go a round-about way to get the same nutrients. Animals eat animals, people eat animals. It just seems like the way things are meant to be.
But what really bothered both me and Brian was the cruelty. Throughout history, most people raised animals in a healthy setting or allowed animals to live in their natural environments before they had a quick death. They usually didn't suffer on a daily basis. They lived and were later killed. Today, farm animals are suffering. And not only this, but PEOPLE are suffering. And, of course, it doesn't help that the food isn't very healthy, so many consumers are also suffering. It just seems altogether horrible.
So Brian and I are making baby steps to incorporate more organic food into our diets. It's hard because it's expensive. But it just seems like the healthiest, most ethical thing to do. So we're doing what we can.
Finally, I began to dabble with a couple of different diets. First, I was a vegetarian for a couple of weeks. While I never actually intended to be a vegetarian altogether, I kind of hoped that I might pick up some healthy habits from this diet. Being a vegetarian definitely doesn't mean that you are living a healthy lifestyle, but it can encourage you to. I think the reason for this is that people actually start paying attention to what kinds of food they are eating. And, as I said before, that's the first step. So I ate more vegetables and I tried a couple different "vegetarian" foods like tofu and boca burgers-- which were actually really delicious! And I definitely proved to myself I could do it (aside from accidentally eating a slice of pizza with pepperoni UNDER the crust towards the middle of my diet-- so deceptive!)
Right now I am trying a low-carb diet with Brian. He's been on it for about a month and lost about 20 pounds! The idea is that when you reduce the amount of carbs and sugars you are consuming (which is what our body uses for energy) it begins to use fat as energy instead. So you are supposed to consume very few carbs and a lot of healthy fats. Your body will use those fats and then some of your own stored fat. So far I hate it because pretty much EVERYTHING has carbs-- fruits, potatoes, starchy vegetables, breads, sweets. I can pretty much only eat dairy products, meat and a few kinds of vegetables. But if it really is healthy and effective, it's at least worth trying!
Honestly, I hope this blog encourages more people to try to make at least some of these changes in their own lives. Never in my life (seriously, not at any time) did I care at all about what I was eating. It seemed impossible to make changes like this to my daily life with no history of good eating habits-- especially because I LOVE food. But it's honestly not as hard as you think it will be. The hardest part is actually getting yourself to start making changes. So start! The results of being healthy are infinitely rewarding.
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