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.

Salt and Pepa's here and we in effect

Salt, salt salt. Just saying the word makes me all kinds of happy. The saltier a food is, the better. Only once in my life did I ever put too much salt on something. To me, "Too salty" does not exist. I have always been the kind of guy who would put salt on something before even tasting it because I knew there was not enough. This presents a massive problem when trying to lose weight. If you recall the first entry into this blog I had mentioned how I was wanting to cook more so I could control the amount of salt that went into my food. This, along with the soda thing, has been the hardest part of the last few weeks.

However, I have managed. I have used other spices when needed and have avoided salting everything except movie theater popcorn. SOrry, that is probably not going anywhere anytime soon. I have made tremendous strides and part of that is never ordering french fries, anywhere. I am avoiding fast food, but diners and other eateries still offer fries as a side dish. By opting for a salad of some sort, I manage to avoid the salt problem easily. I only bring up the salt thing because something pretty remarkable happened on Wednesday of this last week.

Martina and I went to eat at Burgers and Brew, followed by a walk through the Farmer's Market and I used up my free frozen-yogurt coupon at Yoloberry. I ordered a salad as my side dish, and they brought me a Caesar salad, which is not what I wanted, but I ate it anyway. I took one bite and was absolutely shocked by how salty it was. This was a monumental moment for me. I have been avoiding putting salt on ANYTHING and here I am eating something and finding it to be too salty. Now, I ate it because when you do not have money, you eat what you can, but it was probably the least enjoyable salad of my life. I cannot even fathom living an existence where I find food to be too salty, yet, here I am. This is a big step for me. It also means it is working. Something inside of me is changing.

In other news:

I went for my first walk with my new shoes, and accessories. To come home from a great walk and not feel insane pain in my feet was amazing!

I bought groceries and did not buy any chips, candy, or processed food. I have a fridge full of vegetables and fruits and a cupboard with nuts and tuna in it. I also bought frozen chicken, even though I am not a big chicken guy and have no idea what to do with it.

My craving for soda persists. Everyone tells me it will go away, but as a guy who gave it up for nearly 2 years once, it does not go away. I continue to crave it something fierce and probably always will.

FOr those of you interested in my total weight loss, it is at 15lbs in the last 3 weeks or so. I do not expect a pace of 5lbs a week to continue, nor will I get bummed out when it slows down.

I am waking up with slightly less aches and pains. My days are just a bit easier, and I am not as out of breath all of the time. I could tell that from my audition and call back this week.

Getting up off the mat and back into the saddle on my horse

I am not sure how many more cliches I could have fit into the section they give me to write a title, but I think my drift was received by the roughly 100 page views this will accrue. Last week's missteps must be this week's victories, yes?

The first thing I did this week was give myself a break. It may not feel so health related, but it is. The semester is coming to an end and all 60 of my students have checked out. This causes me to work harder to get them even remotely interested in what I am doing. This leads to stress, which leads to slip ups in terms of my health. Therefore, on Sunday I relaxed a bit. I had to get my mental/emotional state right. I had to re-calibrate my system. In order to do that, I started a new book. It is not great so far, but it relaxed me and prepared me for the week ahead.

My bloody heel is still causing issues when I walk, but I attempted to fight through that today. Yesterday I knew I would be doing a dance audition, so I let that be my work out yesterday. It was awesome, which kind of leads me to the point of this post.

Theater is such an interesting thing for someone like me who is trying to live a healthier life. Musicals, when choreographed by the right person provides this great work out. When I do a Gino show, I know I am going to lose weight, and I always do. I auditioned for "Joseph" last night and that show never fails to provide a good workout. I know if I get in, that can help me mightily. Yet, theater is also the bane of my healthy existence. With rehearsals running late, it is tough not to eat after a rehearsal and that usually involves eating all kinds of crap. I am hoping that with this being a summer show, my hours will provide me with reasons to get a healthy SNACK after rehearsal. This is, of course, if I get in. If I do not, well, that is antoher blog all together. This is my dilemma as a writer, once I get going, I want to write about everything. Getting far off topic.

This week my main goal is to stay focused. The money situation is making groceries tough, so I am managing my portions right now. Instead of 4 or 5 pieces of pizza and 4 pieces of crazy bread, I had 2 slices of pizza and 2 pieces of crazy bread. It is not the healthiest meal, but the whole thing cost me 9 bucks and I got 3 meals out of it. Portion control has ALWAYS been an issue for me. I know that I am not seeing the results as fast as I would in a perfect world, but I trust that these little changes will one day add up to something bigger.

I have had 2 glasses of soda in 3 weeks. It feels like a huge thing for me, especially considering in the last three weeks I have seen a few movies, which is always deadly. More importantly, it has been 11 days since my last Rockstar. I am drinking more juice which is strange for me, as I have ever been much of a juice person, but I do enjoy it.

As a concluding note, the level of encouragement I am getting from everyone is overwhelming. Every little message, comment, text, high five, and all words of encouragement are greatly appreciated. I have spent my life listening to the people I love tell me I am worth it, and I have never believed them. It is tough to admit that you do not feel worth pretty much anything. Only recently have I felt that maybe I was wrong and those who love me have been right all along. Maybe, just maybe, I am worth it. And if you are reading this and struggling with anything at all, know this, you are worth it. If you do not believe me, look into the eyes of someone you love and you will see it.

Some setbacks, bad news/good news, and ribs

Hit my first set of setbacks starting Sunday. I was out for my walk, which was a killer walk, when I started to feel serious pain around the heel area of my right foot. When I came home, I found that I had bled through my sock completely. Something from my shoe is cutting into my heel when I walk at a nice brisk pace. This is problematic. To say that I am poor would be an insult to poor people. This whole student teaching thing has bled me dry for time and money, so I am not sure how to go about buying shoes that can feasibly accommodate a guy my size trying to put all of his weight on these shoes for 30 minutes worth of walking a day. I need to be able to afford some new shoes, but I really need the RIGHT shoes, which when you wear a size 13 EXTRA wide, it gets expensive. This problem has caused me to lose two days of walking, but today, I supplemented it by running barefoot through grass with some of my seniors who have a free period during 4th. It was quite a sight, me in a button up shirt, slacks and a tie, running barefoot on grass with 4 seniors.

My next setback is my most embarrassing. I drank two sodas yesterday. I am not horribly embarrassed by the act, it was the quickness with which I caved. Last night, I went out to Cattleman's for some seriously delicious ribs and Giants game with Martina, her roommate and two of their friends. Martina was celebrating finishing Chemistry for the semester, and I love ribs, Martina and The Giants. It made sense. I ordered water and the waitress asked if she was sure she could not bring me something more exciting like a Shirley Temple and without even hesitating, I said "yes." Oh man I have missed soda. I downed the first one like I needed it to live and then I had another. The fact that I stopped myself after only two made me feel slightly better, but after a solid week of no sodas, I caved so easily. I am trying very hard not to beat myself up over it, but if you know me, you know how well that goes for me.

I was proud of myself for not over eating last night. In fact, I got some food to go to eat for lunch today and I did not even eat all of it today, so I still have lunch tomorrow as well. I guess I have to take the good with the bad, right? The main idea is to not set a minor setback derail me, like it always has in the past. This journey will be filled with ups and downs and I have to accept the downs if I want to celebrate the ups.

Today before my 3rd period class started, I got some really terrible news. It is student related, so I am not going to divulge the information across the internet, but it was sufficiently day-ruining. I kept thinking on my drive home how much I was going to enjoy getting off the freeway and turning left to go to Taco Bell. I just wanted to order a bunch of crappy food (well, tasty, but crappy food) come home, watch television and try and not think about anything. In a shocking move, when I got off the freeway, I did not turn left. I came home instead. This may not seem like a big deal, but for me to greet really saddening news without fast food is pretty huge for me, especially the last few years.

A few of my students today noticed that it looked like I had lost some weight and said I felt more energetic this week, which is the best news I could have received because these kids see me 5 days a week for 90 minutes and I know that I have their undivided attention, so they would notice this stuff.