Hungry Mother

What am I hungry for?

This thought floated up into my consciousness while making an impromptu trip to Fred Meyer for some vegetables and ended up with a cart full of…not so many vegetables as cookies and crackers. This was on the back of a conversation with a good friend about nutrition and feeding children and the abundance of choices that dumb us down so we can’t really understand what our body is trying to say about nutrition. Going to the store is overwhelming to me as an individual, but buying for a family with a small child feels nearly impossible. And then, going to a mega store, trying to remember the handful of nutritious recipes that I know, figuring out what I need to buy to execute those recipes. I get very distracted by the boxes of Nilla Wafers and Ritz Crackers. Because that just seems so much easier.

For the first time in months, cheese entered my grocery basket. I’ve been round and round in the past few weeks about re-introducing cheese into my diet. I don’t feel good about it, but I have to admit, I’ve been indulging in cheese all along. There’s been tortellini on an every-other-night basis with Potamus, and plenty of slices of pizza as we tried desperately to survive the accounting busy season. My lunches have been hungry fits that have left me standing wide-eyed in the cafeteria buying chicken strips and french fries to try and cure some craving. It felt like the time I worked with pregnant teens who said that if they had used protection it would have made them admit that they were premeditating sex. I’ve indulged in cheese and dairy by pretending to not pre-meditate it and giving in to the moment of starvation.

So, I’m buying cheese and using in moderation, and finding other wonderful options to try, as well. I picked up Daiya “meltable” fake cheddar shreds and it went fine in my omelet yesterday. I picked up some non-dairy sour cream for a stroganoff later this week. It’s like a grand experiment, but like anything, it’s easier to think when my belly is full, and that sandwhich I packed for lunch seems like I am more mindful and treading lighter in areas than buying that greasy fast food from the dining hall. Maybe that’s not the case, but it feels better to me, that I’m listening to what my body is telling me, rather than reacting out of survival mode.

Potamus is teething and the zucchini was a great tool for him to soothe his gums and get some new tastes in his mouth. He’s rejecting so many things (canned mandarin oranges, peaches, asparagus (he used to love it)), and I’m getting discouraged. The daycare says he can’t keep eating as much yogurt since he’s moving up to the waddler classroom soon. I try not to feel like a shitty mom, because I know that he’s really getting a lot of good nutrients from that yogurt since our pediatrician recommended it. This whole nutrition things is hard and frustrating and makes me want to eat a cookie.

I eat to feel something.

I eat to not feel something.

But what am I really hungry for? And what are you hungry for?

“Diet and Exercise to reduce BMI”

I ate six Keebler elf cookies on the way to work this morning. It was THAT kind of morning, you know, when you find yourself absent-mindedly perusing the mail left on the table and come across some information from the doctor you saw last week for bronchitis. Remember that story? The hot, older, South African doctor who treated me kindly and prescribed an in-office breathing treatment for my acute bronchitis after taking a walk-in same-day appointment from a stranger who had never been seen in that clinic? Yeah, it was a letter of discharge notes from that visit, that rambled on about my acut sinusitis and bronchitis and the medicine he prescribed. And then, there it was, at the bottom of the list of treatment recommendations:

Diet and Exercise to reduce BMI= 30.1 (bolded added by me)

Nice.

A lovely little note from a doctor I’ve met once, with instructions written instead of verbally given (or even inquired about) with the general statement of “hey fatty, why don’t you eat less and get some activity to lose some weight.”

Awesome.

Way to ruin my perfectly good morning.

And it just got me to thinking about all things weight related. Now, I understand that I could stand to lose a few pounds, but what that insensitive line didn’t ask, or inquire about, was WHAT AM I DOING or WHAT HAVE I TRIED or ANYTHING about my current diet or weight situation. Because, he doesn’t fucking know me, so he wrote on a piece of paper that I need to change my eating habits and get some exercise.

I am annoyed and embarassed because it was handled so poorly. I actually wanted to cry, which is why I ate those cookies. But seriously, this issue has come up before and I want to talk about it.

Before Potamus was conceived, I had reached this ghastly weight of 230 lbs. Somewhere in my mind this had been the weight that I told myself “geez, if you ever reach 230 you need to put the pizza down and start figuring some shit out.” So I did. I lost nearly all of that weight in hopes of conceiving our child, which was done a few months later. I lost it slow and steady with a combination of eating low-fat options and walking, sporadically. As a woman who is over 6 feet tall, I figure that if I were 200 lbs I’d be okay with my weight, and if I were a solid 185 I’d be SMOKIN’ HOT.

The BMI says I should weigh 160, though, which is what I weighed as a adolescent volleyball/basketball player who worked out 3 hours a day for 9 months a year. I don’t think that will EVER happen again. Seriously.

But what this doctor’s passive aggressive note about diet-exercise didn’t take into account, the things that I am doing to lose weight and the struggle it has been to get the baby-weight off. I did Weight Watchers around the beginning of my maternity leave, and nothing happened. I have only lost 20-25 of the pounds that I gained during pregnancy.

DESPITE BREASTFEEDING.

It’s been 14 months people and the weight has not ‘dropped off’ like they promised. I guess I’m following in my mother-in-law’s footsteps, where the weight didn’t come off until after she weaned. I am committed to breastfeeding even if it doesn’t help me lose weight. And I have been eating healthy, eliminating dairy and watching portion control, and exercising (ala 5k training pre-bronchitis days). And I mostly avoid those cookies-in-the-car binges.

I don’t know what else to do. I am not about dieting, and I have been getting exercise. And someone who wants to judge me, like the doctor, without forming a relationship and asking what I have tried and trying to create a plan for change, is not helpful. At. All.

I know that I want to lose the weight, especially since we’re planning on trying for baby #2 in the near-ish future (another post for another day), I don’t want to balloon to an unmanageable weight.

Sigh.

 

Thoughts? Advice? Funny stories of junk-punching a-hole insensitive doctors? Anything?

Running with Bronchitis

I haven’t felt this shitty since I was in high school and first diagnosed with asthma (so THAT’s what was making my otherwise in-shape body puke after every warmup in volleyball). We had moved to Eastern Washington a few years before and so it was a surprise to find the beginning of 10th grade with asthmatic symptoms that continued through the rest of my short-lived high school sports days. I ended up hating to run, which I attribute to a combination of mean coaches who yelled (not my kind of motivation) and the inability to breathe. I was put on various inhalers and pills to manage my deteriorating lung capacity and limped through the rest of my teenage years with a wheeze and a shake.

Truthfully, I hated the medication. I never felt like it did anything to help and what I noticed was all of the shakiness and heart-racing that accompanies inhaling random chemicals into my lungs. When I started college I vowed to make a change, and went back to my interest in yoga and began working really diligently to use yogic breathing techniques to augment my asthmatic tendencies. After getting a job at the American Lung Association, as an asthma educator, I learned that despite a few years of not taking medication, my lung capacity was quite diminished. The doctors asked me why I didn’t take inhalers and I told them that I had gotten used to belly breathing and was quite pleased with the results, despite what my spirometry tests said.

It’s been over 10 years since I’ve had to consistently take inhalers, and only rarely in that time have I had to even use a “rescue” inhaler or even felt symptoms of my asthma. Granted, I never tried running. So I was pleased when I began this couch-5k journey and found that I could run, slowly, gaining strength and didn’t have any of my old asthma symptoms. Being out of breath was because of working hard, and my lungs didn’t seem tight or wheezy.

But then I got bronchitis, the day after my first 5k, and I haven’t been able to run since. I’m hopped up on inhalers and folding laundry makes me tired. I’m supposed to “run” a 5k this Sunday and am worried that the combination of bronchitis, not being able to train, and it being at 6 AM, that I’m going to have a negative experience that’s going to reinforce my old belief about running, which is, that I am not cut out for it.

I go back and forth. Truthfully I have enjoyed running these past few months. But I also acknowledge that I haven’t been running long enough to really miss it. Yesterday when I came home, let the dog out, raked some leaves and played with Potamus, I was pretty content and didn’t miss my Tuesday run. Maybe that’s because I’m feeling so crummy in the lung-department, though, so who knows.

Question runners: what prompts you to get back to running when you’ve taken, or been forced to take, a hiatus?

The Hamburglar: A Quest for Ethically, Locally Sourced Beef

Hamburger comes from cows. You may say, “no duh Monk-Monk!,” but what I mean is…hamburger comes from dairy cows. You know, the cows that give birth, have their calves taken away and then are milked to death retirement. Instead of sending them to a pastured golf-course with a pension and a “hey thanks for contributing so much of your life to our great dairy industry,” they are slaughtered. Useless old hags that can’t put it out anymore and so they’re disposed of as garbage in the machine that they’ve lived their whole life in.

Um.

Ugh.

I have such a visceral reaction to this new news because hamburger is our go-to meat. While we occasionally indulge in a steak (Daniel’s Broiler anyone? YUM!), as far as red meat goes, hamburger tops the list. I grew up eating spaghetti for probably 7 meals a day, so it’s a hard habit to break. But now I’m in this ethically torn place of squickiness…If I’m going to give up dairy because of its separation of dam/calf, then how, at the end of that dam’s life, consume her? Won’t THAT be contributing to the dairy industry in a sad, roundabout way?

Only one thing to do: research. Can I find an alternative to this, so if I am still on a quest toward ethical omnivority (is that even a word?), then maybe I need some more information.

My frantic google searches have managed to find aproximately ONE GAZILLION family owned farms  in Washington State that sell full, 1/2 or 1/4 of grass raised, loved on beef that are slaughtered on-site in as humane of a fashion as possible. SUHWEET (except most places are in Eastern Washington or tiny little far-away-hick-towns like Duvall…or Enumclaw), but I was on a mission. I will do this by golly. I will buy a local cow and know that I am contributing to its life and death, but also knowing that it has had the most humane life and death possible.

But…

Well…

Conversations with Boof led me to realize that the investment of buying 1/2 (or even 1/4) a cow, right now (at 1600-3200$) is probably not the most financially stable thing…since he started his new (temporary) job aproximately 27 hours ago. And there needed to a deposit now, but slaughter doesn’t actually happen until October, so it’s like we’d still end up with 6 months of random eating until we got Bessie/Bob the cow from local-hick-town-farm.

The pressure to make this decision right-now-because-if-we-don’t-we-won’t-get-a-cow-until-2014-and-that’s-too-long-to-keep-hurting-the-environment panic of a slightly neurotic woman. But, after all of my ramblings around the interwebz, I realized that…we don’t actually eat all that much beef and if I were to buy a cow, right now, I would actually be eating MORE meat than before.

Whoa.

That was sort of a trippy thought, that in my effort to consume less factory farm meat, I would actually end up consuming more meat in the long-run (humane or not). Hmm. I had to think about that for a minute, which led me to the decision that we would not be buying a cow, 1/2 cow or 1/4 cow this year.

In my late-night trippings through google and eatwild.com and other various websites, I found this local(ish) place that sells hamburger, year round, from the SAME cows that are raised on their farm for 1/2 or 1/4 cow purchase. These cows are grass fed, slaughtered on-site and it’s a family owned farm that’s been hanging around the area for a good century.

Whoa.

So Potamus and I are taking a field-trip tomorrow to pick up some of this hamburger. In this way I can help a local farm, save a retired dairy cow, and still eat some spaghetti with meat. On my quest for ethical eating, this choice feels right, for now…

Animalistic vs. Humane vs. Machinistic: A Conversation with my husband about ethical eating

While conversing over dinner about ethical eating options and all of the  disgusting fascinating things that I am learning about the food system and my own eating habits, I used the word “humane,” in relation to what I am hoping for somehow in the new choices I’m making. And he looked at me and said,

“hmm, that’s an interesting word choice. Humane. We wouldn’t use that in relation to other people, just animals.”

Knowing him long enough now, I realized he wasn’t looking for a fight, just merely observing the word choice I had used. And so, rather than get defensive (like I would have done a few years ago), I went down his rabbit trail, replying:

“Well, in the animal kingdom they go for the jugular. They aim to kill, but don’t seem to create elaborate systems of destruction in order to get their dinner. Humane is like getting back to the compassionate, empathetic heart of who we are as people, with frontal lobes. It’s not just reactionary like animals, but it’s like being an animal with a heart.”

As I was talking it just started spilling out, and I kept talking it then he said:

“It’s interesting that the further away we get from being, oh, say, Neanderthals, the less humane we seem to get.”

And I replied,

“Well, I think that’s because we’re heading away from the animalistic-with-empathy and heading toward the machine. I mean, if you think about it, we’re machinistic now. They even say it’s a factory farm, and everything is mechanized and it is taking the soul away from it. It’s about conveyor belts and technology and more-more-more-more-MORE. We’re becoming machines.”

I hadn’t really thought of it like that before, at least not aloud, but it made a lot of sense to me. But I don’t want to be a machine. I want to be human, treat things humanely.

But I’m not giving up technology. I just don’t want to get eaten by it.

Thoughts?

Minimizing Suffering: A Mama begins Conscious Eating & Parenting Journey

“A lot of people think about veganism like a religion, which is totally wrong. It’s not that you have to live by certain rules, it’s about minimizing suffering. It’s not about being perfect.” -Vegucated Documentary

That quote from the movie, Vegucated, really stuck out to me, and has been settiling into my heart for that past few days. It came at a point in the film, where one of the participants was struggling to determine whether she could keep this lifestyle up in the family culture that she lives in. What struck me was about the goal of moving toward a place of minimizing suffering rather than being perfect.

As someone who tends to jump on social-experiment bandwagons and tries to figure out EVERYTHING about how to live a lifestyle perfectly, it was refreshing to have those words hit inside of me and come to rest. The last week has been filled with conversation after conversation with Boof about my choices, our choices, and how they will impact the planet, our marriage, Potamus, our finances, etc. The point I realized that I had begun going “too far” (for right now), was looking at ordering a 1/2 a cow sourced locally, raised humanely and butchered on the farm. While that may be a direction to go in an ethical omnivore way, I realized that by buying that cow I would actually be obligating myself to eat more meat than I currently do now. It was sort of shocking to my system. While I’m not going be really happy or excited about buying or eating a steak from the grocery store, for the suffering that it caused, I also know that just adding random meat to my diet simply to avoid the occassional (I’m talking, 1-2 times a year, maybe) steak. Does that make sense?

So while I am still dairy-free, and wrestling with all sorts of interesting detox symptoms (FYI pregnancy gas has NOTHING on dairy det0x gas), I am feeling like more of an internal heart-shift has happened. Like, the walls and screens I have built over the past few years (in thanks to the nature of crisis work) to avoid or block-out or not be numbed or overwhelmed by the sheer amount of suffering in the world. My heart has begun to feel softer, more empathetic, more like I am able to make steps forward, but also just SEE the suffering. Even today, as I read through an article about a woman fostering orphaned elephants, I had the initial ‘jump-on-the-bandwagon’ feeling of wanting to DO something, but realized that I am doing things, and seeing things for the pain and suffering that they are, can sometimes be enough.

But looking forward into the future is daunting. I have this little person in my life, and I want him to see the world through his eyes and his heart. I want him to be kind and gentle and loving, but fierce and determined and strong, too. I think forward too far and I get overwhelmed, like how can I raise a conscious kid if I’m screwing up so much? How can I have my child not contribute to factory farming dairy if all he will eat is yogurt? How can I help my child see that animals are valuable when I yell at my dog for being an a-hole and shitting on the floor again?

How?

Tips? Tricks? Advice? How have your personal philosophies shaped your child-rearing? Have you ever had a change of heart and changed things mid-stream? How has it affected your family?

A season of new: photography skills & healthy eating

Yesterday I had the privilege of attending a photography workshop that Boof had purchased on Groupon for me for Christmas. While geared more toward those with fancy-pants DSLR or point & shoot with full manual functions, I still got a lot out of it. Since I love photography it got me inspired to play around with the settings that I DO have on my camera. One drawback was that most of the people in the class were parents and he didn’t talk much about shooting in low light (indoors) with moving subjects (kiddos), because all of his talk on low light was about using these cool reflector gadgets and extra light flashes, which is SO not practical for a mom of a 1 year old. I’m chasing him down, and have zero time to put a gadgety light box up. A class covering that would have been sweet!

In other news: I’m starving. Well, not like African children starving, but still, I feel like I am going to DIE. That feeling comes in waves, though, and apparently it’s pretty common during a dairy elimination diet. I guess dairy has some sort of naturally produced stuff that acts like morphine/opiods, which makes us happy and not like we want to cry/tear our hair out/hit people (which might be how I’ve been feeling the past 24 hours). I tried my couch-5k run today and only managed 1 mile (though physically I felt okay) and almost started sobbing, so I went back inside (because nobody wants to be sobbing, while running in their neighborhood).

I was pretty proud of myself for making an awesome breakfast this morning. I’ve realized I’m going to have to eat practically non-stop to curb the dairy-craving-demon, so I tanked up this morning with a certified humane egg omelette with kale and nasty vegan cheese. The smell of the “cheese” was terrible, but it tasted okay when it finally melted. And I drank a coconut milk/raspberry/kale smoothie that tasted like…dirt. Sigh. I’m going to have to get more tools in my toolbelt if I’m going to make this change sustainable!

But, the longer I go, the more resolve I have (even if I’m blubbering), because today I learned it takes 10lbs of milk to make 1lb of cheese. And, that cheese uses calf stomach (rennet) to make it all thick and coagulated. So they separate a cow from her calf, the calf is sent to slaughter (barely strong enough to walk) and they combine the milk from the cow with the dead calf’s stomach. While it may not go exactly like that, it’s the gist that counts, and I just can’t do it! Though I’m now saying that I am “limiting” dairy, instead of “dairy free” because I will set myself up for failure if I think that I will never, under any circumstances, eat dairy again. Ya know?

Talk to me! Anybody do an elimination diet of any type? What were your reasonings? How long did it take for you to feel…normal?

say CHEESE!

I love cheese.

Seriously.

I was that girl in a staff meeting in college eating a full loaf of french bread and a block of extra-sharp cheddar cheese from Tillamook. Oh, and a honeycrisp apple to round it out. And maybe coffee. I’m clearly part French, no?

At any rate, this whole cheese debacle has turned my world upside down in the span of 48 hours. I simply cannot let it go. I have been scouring the internet furiously trying to find a justification for WHY they separate mothers and calves at 1-2 hours old (or, maybe 24-48 if they’re lucky). I could find ZERO reason to benefit the animal (other than some clearly bollocks answer saying “oh, a calf drinking from the cow’s dirty teat can cause infections,”…and my question would be…um…why are you keeping the cow’s teat so dirty AND what about wild animals…they’re just fine nursing their young).

IF I could find a dairy that siphons off some of the milk, while still allowing the mother to nurse her calf during the day, much like what we imagine from the idyllic old days of family farming and using that milk to feed ONE family, I think I would be okay with that. But even the certified humane label that I’ve begun researching is somehow okay with mothers being separated from their young. I’m not okay with it. I am okay with death being a part of the natural life cycle, and if harvesting meat in the most humane way possible is our human way of doing what a lion or wolf would do, at this point I am okay with it. I’m leaving room for that to change, but I simply cannot let this go.

But, I love cheese.

And ice cream.

And yogurt.

But mostly cheese.

I’m starting with that, because it’s something I can see with my eyes. And when I see that slice of cheese and say no to it, I will be thinking of that baby cow…

So today I tried it out. I went to Panera and ordered my favorite tomato/mozzarella panini without the mozzarella. It was yummy and I didn’t miss the cheese. I stopped by Trader Joe’s and got some alternative dairy products.

I’m daunted by the whole topic. It feels like I’m face a vast ocean of sadness that I can’t make a dent in, but I hope to try.