no more dollar menu

i don't eat well. i mean, really, it's gross. i eat like a frat boy who believes those asenine commercials for processed ravioli that purport to have a FULL SERVING OF VEGETABLES in the can. as though the chemicals slow dancing all over those memories of natural food really only want to talk in their hotel room at three in the morning.
i have a tightrope of a relationship with food. specifically with food that lays in bed with fat and sugar and salt.
growing up, i was able to hide this problem. because i was thin. for some reason, my metabolism was cool with me eating an entire bag of potato chips dipped in sour cream (yum) or inhaling about 3/4 of a gallon of ice cream, leaving the bottom couple of inches in the bucket so that it wouldn't be so noticeable that i ate the whole fucking thing. i would eat two chili dogs after school, covered in an entire can of chili and almost a half a block of cheddar cheese, all before dinner. my fresh vegetables consisted of iceberg lettuce and chopped tomato on my tacos.
i watch these shows on obesity and how to gain control of your life and how food is an addiction and i think oh my god i get it. i really get it.


about three months before i started dating bryan, i watched earthlings. i decided to stop eating meat after that. it just made sense for me. for the first couple of months, i lived cheese and pasta and pastries. then, all of a sudden, something in me changed. i still ate fish and i started craving things like grilled salmon on mixed greens with avocado and a shit ton of raw vegetables. snacks started to look like stuff that actually grows in nature. i started drinking yerba mate instead of lattes (and i was working full-time in a coffeehouse) and i became this woman i never knew i could be. i had energy, i started losing all that extra weight and my skin looked amazing.
then i got pregnant and meat was the only thing that made me not want to throw up.
okay, i still wanted to throw up but at least it helped a bit.
all bets were off.
for the past two years, i have eaten like my 15 year old self. i subsist on fast food much of the time. because, it's fast, it's cheap.
it's ridiculous.

bryan and i watched food, inc the other day.
we sat on the couch while the baby slept and realized that we are exactly the people we do not want to be.
there is something that happens when you look in the mirror and see all the negative parts of yourself dancing naked in the street, whistling and slapping all the young ladies on the ass. for a long time, i stopped looking.

i'm back to no meat. not because of the movie. i actually decided it the night before and bryan suggested we watch the movie. we went grocery shopping that night and started actually looking at the labels.
(sigh)
it's not going to be easy..this eating of whole and clean food.
and, contrary to what i like to tell myself, i like the easy way out. i'm a fan of sidling up to the bar and ordering a pint of complacency. but after two years of doing it, i'm realizing i am becoming everything i don't want to be. and my daughter watches me, eyes recording everything, learning habits.
now, bryan is not vegetarian. not by a long shot. but he's so mindful now. where the meat comes from, how it was raised.
it's a new phase for us, this life together with eyes wide open.
realizing that the food we choose to eat means oh so much more than we have chosen to believe.

also, please go read this post by the beautiful maggie may.
it opens up a whole other bag of earwax, pushed way back by cotton.