Missives From Troy

When I am particularly distressed with the state of my overall health, I research like a fiend. And tonight, I spent a few hours (jesus, is it already midnight?) and compiled my research about vitamins and minerals one needs in their diet and what foods they correspond with.

See, my problem is that I don’t eat. It’s not that I don’t want to eat, or think I’m somehow “dieting,” it’s that in my childhood, my family had only one set meal a day: dinner. And dinner could fall anywhere between six and nine-thirty at night. Breakfast? Suggested. Lunch? Probably a good idea, let’s maybe have half a sandwich. And especially on weekends, when everyone in my family kind of scavenged and fended for themselves until dinner invariably rolled around.

All of this is to say that I am in the back half of my twenties and I still don’t know how to eat three meals a day. I was trained to think of a meal as some kind of event, instead of a necessity or mandate. Somebody has to declare it time for a meal, then a herculean effort is exerted to create an entree and two sides and a salad, culminating in two essentially wasted hours devoted just to the meal’s consumption. I didn’t realize until I was 21 that normal people tend to eat dinner in thirty to forty-five minutes. It blew my fucking mind.

So it’s this ritualistic thing, and in all the wrong ways. It lead to me hoarding food as a kid, stealing away half empty boxes of Wheat Thins and hiding them under my bed for the between-meal hunger pangs, or raiding the pantry for anything ready-to-consume or almost-so and eating it in overkill amounts as a “meal.” So now, I get hungry at odd hours of the day, I don’t have meal inspiration when I look at what I’ve got on hand, and I skip two or three meals in a row until my stomach finally rebels and forces me to put something in my craw. This mindset also prevents me from using the last of things sometimes, in some irrational terror of running out since replacing things was never a guarantee. But shit is perishable, so half the time I wait so long to consume the “special” thing that it just goes bad and I have to throw it out. Logic, thy name is not Helen when it comes to food stuffs.

Probably, this is all indicative of some variety of obscure eating disorder. I don’t know and frankly, I don’t much care. The point is that it’s been pretty plain for a long ass time that I don’t have the same metabolism as my siblings and need to make an actual effort to put together three meals a day and stop living like a moron when it comes to daily meals. My body must be in a constant fasting/hibernating state, and I am not a bear. So I must eat and eat smart. Even if I’m poor.

SO! I took all that research I had done, sat down and looked up what foods go with what vitamins and minerals, and compiled a permanent shopping list of foods (and alternatives) to always keep in stock. I took into consideration and weighted heavily the things that are friendly to my thyroid, liver, kidneys, and adrenals, and here is what I have:

1. spinach (substitute: collared greens, kale, Swiss chard, mustard greens, dandelion greens)
2. lentils: either whole or soup-ed (substitute: kidney beans, garbanzos, red beans)
3. yogurt (substitute: cottage cheese, cheese)
4. nuts: (in order of benefit) Brazil nuts, cashews, almonds, walnuts, pecans, peanuts
5. chicken (substitute: turkey, eggs, lean red meat)
6. raisins (substitute: prunes, dried fruit)
7. cucumbers (substitute: avocados, olives, seeds)
8. skim milk
9. whole grain bread (substitute: oatmeal)
10. carrots (substitute: sweet potatoes, yellow/orange vegetables)
11. citrus: oranges, tomatoes, clementines, lemon, grapefruit  (substitute: citrus juice)
12. salmon (substitute: tuna, ground flaxseed, crab, oysters)
13. long grain brown rice  (substitute: whole wheat pasta)
14. cantaloupe (substitute: pineapple, mango, strawberries, honeydew melon, watermelon)
15. tea (black, green, or herbal)

The goal here, which will eventually manifest as what I am calling the No-Shit-Sherlock Diet (because I fucking well can), is to assemble a personal list of three to five easy as hell recipes from these ingredients to keep on hand so that I have no excuse but to have a breakfast, lunch, and dinner everyday. They don’t have to be exciting combinations — I actually prefer plain-er foods — they just have to be easy to pull together with stuff I know I have on hand. I can get creative and expand later, this is about establishing a rhythm. A habit of eating, and eating stuff that actually gives my body something to work with, so that I have the nutrients I need and break the habit of forgoing just because I’m conditioned to be lazy. 

The No-Shit-Sherlock Diet, ladies and gentlemen. It will hopefully be so goddamn easy even I can do it. Stay tuned.

(or don’t. I’d understand if you don’t give a fuck. I’m just posting this public to keep myself honest.)