Shopping with Kyle

I know this blog has been focusing more on the mental health aspect lately, but I guess that is because I have needed to clear my mind of so many of the dark spots that have been hindering my progress over the last so many years. However, I want to focus on eating today. My relationship with food is one with serious complications. I am a live to eat kind of guy. I always have been, but there are so many misconceptions when it comes to fat people and food. People assume fat people hate healthy food. I do not. I love salad, I love fruits and vegetables. I am as happy sitting with a bowl of grapes as I am with a bowl of chips. I just eat the entire bowl of grapes, then eat the entire bag of chips.

I love cooking. I have never been very good at it, but I love it. I just often do not have the time, or all of the ingredients one needs to cook properly. It has always been more conducive to my lifestyle to open a box and put the contents of that box into the microwave, oven or boiling water. It is always better for my wallet. I can buy 4 personal pizzas for 4 dollars. That is four meals at a dollar a piece. I cannot do that with anything healthy. Fresh fish is expensive. Going to the store the day of cooking to buy everything I need is time consuming and time consuming and on days where my day ends at 7 or 8 pm, the last thing I want to do is go to the store. It made more sense to stop at Carl's Jr. Do not think I do not know these are excuses. They are fabulous excuses. Ask any teacher of mine from 7th to 9th grade, I am the king of excuses. I would spend so much time on excuses and fabricating evidence that it would have been easier to just do my work. This brings us to the point of this blog entry.

The contents of a normal Kyle shopping cart over the last 10 years:

- 2-5 Totinos personal pizzas
- 3 hot pockets
- 3-6 boxes of PastaRoni
- a bag or tortilla chips
- a bag or two of Doritos or Lays
- bacon, eggs milk
- 2 bricks of extra sharp cheddar cheese
- sodas, Rockstars
- loaf of white bread
- Pasta noodles and extremely unhealthy sauces
- potatoes
- Froot Loops or Frosted Flakes
- At least one box of Mike and Ikes
- Ice cream

The picture at the top of this blog post represents what I bought at a local market yesterday. it is $25.00 worth of fruits and vegetables (one of these days Pineapple will no longer intimidate me and I will add that to my collection). These are things you would never find in my shopping cart previously. Some of the other things you can find in my shopping cart now that you could not before include frozen chicken, nuts (instead of chips) and whole wheat bread. Most of the things on the above list are nowhere to be found these days. I am slowly figuring out how to think ahead to cook. I am figuring out how to cook more than I need so I can eat the rest of it for another meal, and more likely, take it with me to eat the next day. I am eating more salads, and making fruit salad to have as a snack or side dish. I have not bought boxed pizza in over a month which is unheard of for me. I no longer make giant plates of nachos. I definitely do not eat 2 or 3 bowls of Frosted Flakes in the morning.

This drastic change has come at a bit of a price. I am spending more money on groceries, but less on eating out, so I believe it comes to a balance. I might still be spending a bit more on food now than I was. Is it worth it? Sure, it is. I still maintain that people with large families and limited budget do not have the luxury of eating healthier, and if you want that debate, I am open to it. I am not totally comfortable with this change, if I am being honest. I still miss the crappy food. If someone could make a salad that tasted like nachos drenched in chili and sour cream, it would make my life. Whole wheat bread makes my sandwiches taste less fun and I miss eating giant bowls of pasta covered in sauce. I will probably always miss it.

I am still learning to like chicken. I am only cooking it one way at this point, so I am going to have to branch out eventually and find other things to do with it that are healthy. I need more food options in general. I am not the kind of guy that is terribly comfortable eating the same 4 or 5 things every week. That is going to be a problem. For some reason I am perfectly okay eating the same breakfast every day, but switching between salad, fish and chicken is going to get old fast. I need to learn more culinary tricks.

Oh one last thing, when I first started this journey, soda was a big topic. I had a soda at the movie theater the other day, which was too bad, but I am doing much better. I forgot to bring a drink with me and I am not going to pay money for water, so I bought a soda. In my regular life though, I have found something that makes me miss soda a bit less. It is called Sparkling Ice. It has no sugar, no calories and appears all healthy, but it has the fizz I loved in soda. They cost me a $1.00 each, but it takes away the monotony of drinking water all of the time.