In my effort to make food fun again, one of the things I’ve been doing is thinking back to the foods I loved when I was a kid.  I guess I’ve been trying to figure out what made the foods I loved so lovable, at least to me.    I’d like to rekindle some of that spark I had for the foods I loved when I was a kid.  Back then it wasn’t about calories, or sodium or fat or carbs.  It was simply about the fact that the food tasted good and I enjoyed eating it.  I’d like to find a way to get back to those days.

One of the foods I loved when I was a kid was s’mores.  I loved toasting the marshmallow, even though I almost always would get impatient and burn it about halfway through.  I loved using the graham cracker to pull my burnt black marshmallow off the stick and I loved the melting squares of Hershey bar that generally got all over my fingers.  It was great taking that first bite, oozing with chocolate and marshmallow, knowing that I’d probably end up with a sticky face and sticky fingers, but already eager to burn my next marshmallow and start all over again.

There was just something about the taste and texture of this treat that felt right to me.  Although nowdays I’d probably want to use Dove Dark Chocolate and multi-grain graham crackers, back in the day I just perfectly satisfied with good old Hershey’s chocolate and whatever graham crackers were first on the shelf at the store.  What we used didn’t matter, what mattered was the taste and the fun we had making the treats.

I think, if I’m honest, it was the fun we had that made the food taste so good.  When I remember making s’mores I remember that I wasn’t worrying about the calorie content or if eating the treat would make me fat.  In my childhood memories, no one is chiding me for eating too many, or warning me about the fattening nature of the treat.  Instead, we’re all sitting around a campfire, roasting marshmallows, laughing when they burn, and sucking sticky fingers after munching down another s’more.

I guess in the end, it isn’t the food that makes the experience, it was the experience that made the food.  I want to try to remember what it felt like to eat something just for the sake of eating it, with no concern for any of the things that I now worry about every time I take a bite.  My guess is that recreating this feeling will allow me to put healthier foods on my list of favorites.

And, if not, there’s always s’mores.

I’m kind of in a snarky mood as I write this and that started me thinking about comfort food.  I’m guessing almost everyone has a comfort food, the food that has the taste of home, or which just satisfies some craving in a way that no other food does.  I’m also guessing that most comfort foods aren’t terribly nutritionally sound.   Comfort food, after all, isn’t about being healthy or being thin, it’s about being comforted.

I’ve found I have two types of comfort food.  One type is the meals that I ate when I was a kid.  Beef stew and biscuts.  A big pot of chicken noodle or beef barley soup.  Pot roast.  These are meals I remember my Mom making, and almost all of them have a specific memory attached.  Beef stew was a Winter meal, something filling to warm you when it was cold out.  Soup was our Sunday meal.  A big pot sat on the stove and bread warmed in the oven while everyone watched football.  Supper was whenever you wanted it and the pot of soup seemed bottomless, there was always enough for one more bowl.  Pot roast was a family gathering meal, with tender flavorful potatoes and carrots and lovely rich gravy.   Food was an occasion, and certain meals went with certain times.  To this day, there are some foods that only seem right when eaten in certain circumstances.

The other type of comfort food is the type that simply satisfies some craving for me.  Sometimes it is something sweet.  I also have a great affection for cheesy, greasy food.  Nachos are a particular favorite,  as is Idaho pizza.  There’s just something about the combination of flavors and textures that works for me.  I’m not sure what it is, but for me those foods are fun and uniquely satisfying.  They provide a sense of fulfillment that other foods just don’t give me.

When we start working to lose weight, one of the first things that often goes is all the foods that give us comfort.  While I fully applaud the efforts to eat healthy, and firmly agree that nutrition should be considered and eating wisely should be pursued, I also think there’s a place for the foods that fill that empty space that has nothing to do with hunger.  There should be room for the comfort foods, and they should be eaten without guilt or remorse, but in moderation.  Whether we like it or not, food is often about comfort, and that’s not entirely a bad thing.  If we can accept that, and not beat ourselves up about it, eating well becomes that much easier.

I took a little hiatus from this blog because I needed to examine some of my attitudes.  I also hit a bit of a weight loss plateau and that took a bit of a toll on my resolve.  I felt like I was working as hard as I ever had and I wasn’t getting the desired results.  Suddenly this whole weight loss thing was becoming deadly serious again.  I needed to take some time away to examine my attitudes and figure out how to get my head back in the right space.

One of the things I realized, while I was examining my attitudes, was one simple and pretty shocking, at least for me, fact:  food isn’t fun any more.

I’ve always had kind of a love affair with food.  I enjoy cooking and am pretty good at it.  I could anticipate a great dining out experience for days, contemplating what I’d have, anticipating how marvelous it would be.  I loved the tastes and textures of food and the how voluptuous and sensual a meal could be.  I loved the simple warmth of a bowl of beef stew and the cheesy goodness of an omelet.  I love the diner breakfast and the gourmet restaurant dinner and everything in between.  Food had a lot of roles in my life, and one of them was to be fun.

Gradually, however, as health and weight issues have occurred, food stopped being fun and became work.  First I had to worry if I was eating too much.  Then I had to count calories.  Then I had to worry about sodium and fiber and sugar.  Everything became about counting and measuring and obsessing and planning.  Eating wasn’t an enjoyable experience anymore, it had become more like an algebra equation or a chemistry experiment.  There were days when I almost wished I could have some sort of science fiction food pill that would fill me up without me having to eat anything at all.

In my past weight loss attempts, right about now is when I would say the hell with it and give up.  I don’t want to measure and weigh and obsess.  I don’t want my meals to be about everything but flavor and pleasure.  I do want to be healthy and I do want to be thin, but I also want to believe that I can be both those things while having nutritional  food I enjoy.  Those goals just can’t be mutually exclusive.

Since I control my attitude, and my progress toward my goals, I’ve decided it is up to me to make food fun again.  One of the ways I’m going to do that is with this blog.  I’m starting a series here called Fun Food Friday.  Every Friday I’ll discuss some aspect of how to make food fun.  Maybe it will be a recipe.  I might discuss setting up a food theme party.  Maybe I’ll talk about table decorations, or my favorite food from when I was a kid.  The idea is to take food out of the drudgery category and make it a joyous part of my life again.

I hope you’ll join me for Fun Food Friday.  After all part of the fun of food is sharing it with others.

Eating has always been my reward.  When I do something well or want to celebrate something I think “let’s go to dinner” or “I deserve a cupcake”.  Food has always been about more than just sustenance to me.  I eat when I’m sad and I eat when I’m angry and I eat when I’m happy and want to celebrate.  There were times in my life when food was the only support I was getting.  Maybe the people in my life weren’t there for  me, but that chocolate cupcake could give me a lift and make a moment special.

I’ve been able to retrain my thoughts about food in a lot of ways, but I’m finding the tie between food and emotion hardest to break.  If we’ve had a hard week at the office, I’ll bring bagels.  If something cool happens I think we should order pizza.  Food has always been a reliable high for me and, other than making me fat because I ate way too much of the wrong sorts of things, it has never let me down.  A chocolate cupcake or a slice of pizza or a bag of chips with dip has always been reliably fulfilling, even when nothing else was.   I suppose, when I think about it, that’s where the problem lies.

My life experience has taught me, rightly or wrongly, that it’s best not to rely to heavily on other people for support.  I realize part of the reason I think that way is that, for many years, I was looking in the wrong places and to the wrong people for the support and affirmation I needed.   As I started to like myself better, I started to make better choice about the people I let into my life, and the need for food as a support should have become less.  I guess it’s hard to give up old habits though, because I still seem to turn to food first.  I’m not sure whether it’s fear or stubbornness or habit, but I’ll have a cupcake before I’ll call a friend.  That certainly isn’t helping me reach my weight loss goals.

One of the things I know about myself is that I often try to complicate things that should be quite simple, and I think this may be one of those times.  Maybe breaking the cycle of emotional eating is as simple as thinking before I eat.  If I take an extra minute to think about why I’m having that ice cream, or suggesting a dinner, maybe I’ll realize that something else would work equally well.  After all, part of losing weight is being aware of what we put into our mouths.  Maybe I need to be aware of why I’m eating as well.

I have been a huge fan of Cooking Light magazine for a number of years. It is a great magazine, with terrific articles and a lot of wonderful recipes that can help you eat healthier while still enjoying your food. I have a binder of recipes I’ve torn from various issues of the magazine. I guess you could say I’m building a little cookbook of my own.

While I do love the magazine, I have one small quarrel with it. I sometimes wish that it catered more to people with special dietary needs. Take my new diet for instance. I have to watch my sodium intake quite carefully because excess sodium leads to fluid retention and fluid retention places a strain on my heart. It would be nice if Cooking Light offered more lower sodium or heart healthy recipes. I’m sure there are people on other more restrictive diets who might have similar complaints.

Mind you, this is a small quibble as I recognize that the magazine has to cater to the widest readership possible, and overall the recipes are very healthy. I manage to find something in almost every issue that sounds yummy and fits in with my dietary needs. I also give the magazine high marks for creative presentation and for teaching people how to eat and cook in a more healthy manner. Cooking Light not only gives recipes, it explains different foods and different ways of cooking. If you’re trying to revamp your diet or to learn more about nutrition, this magazine is a great tool to have.

In addition to the magazine, Cooking Light also offers a variety of cookbooks. One of them that I’ve enjoyed is Cooking Light Superfast Suppers: Speedy Solutions for Dinner Dilemmas. This is a great cookbook for people who are on the go, or who work long hours like me. You can find quick solutions for healthy meals, and you can also find ways to take one main ingredient and make several different meals. This book will help you save time and money.

Because I want to help everyone who reads this blog be healthy and save money, I’m giving away a gently used copy of Cooking Light Superfast Suppers: Speedy Solutions for Dinner Dilemmas. This copy has a few highlighted recipe titles in it, but is otherwise unused. If you would like to own this cookbook, just leave a comment on this post by next Monday, March 16. On that day, I’ll pick one of the comments at random and whomever made it will receive the cookbook by mail.

I love pot roast.  It’s probably one of my favorite meals ever.  I’m a purist about it, I don’t want tomatoes or mushrooms or anything else in my pot roast.  I just want carrots and onions and potatoes and lovely roast beef.  This is the meal I always requested when I was a kid and my Mom was making a celebratory dinner on my behalf.  It simply soothes the heart of this meat and potatoes girl.

My mother had a great recipe for pot roast and it’s the one I’ve always used.  It wasn’t hard to make and it tasted divine.  The only problem with the recipe is that it relied on a particular soup stock to give it flavor and the bouillon in question is very high in sodium.   You may be able to see where the problem begins.

Since my heart issues I’ve been on a low sodium diet.   Eating a lot of sodium leads to high blood pressure (bad) and may lead to fluid build up (very bad) which could ultimately lead to congestive heart failure (very, very, bad).  My heart is battered enough as it is and eating right and exercising and getting enough sleep are things that can help it have to work less hard.  Watching my diet and my sodium intake is a pretty easy thing to do, and it has big benefits, so I try to be really aware of how much salt I’m eating.

Most of the time that’s not a hardship.  Every once in the while, as in the case of my beloved pot roast, it is a sacrifice.  I’ve tried several low sodium pot roast recipes and none have come out right.  The meat is tough.  The gravy is flavorless.  The recipe just doesn’t taste like the meal I love.  I’ve tried recipes using red wine, and using soy sauce and various and sundry no sodium bouillons, and I’ve tried cooking the roast in the oven and in the crock pot and nothing seems to work.

I knew that adjusting my diet would require some sacrifices and, for the most part, I’ve been o.k. with that.  Losing my roast beef dinner would be a real blow though, and I’d like to find a recipe that works for me while still staying within the guidelines of my diet.

Anyone have any ideas?

Finding food I want to eat has become sort of an issue.  I’m starting to resent people who appear to be able to eat whatever they want without thinking about how much salt or fat or sugar it has.  I want to give in to the urge to stop on the way home and pick up some take out without wondering if it will entirely ruin my diet.  Plotting and planning what I will eat and when I will eat it is starting to get old.

I’m also finding that I tend to rely on a few tried and true recipes that I know are good for me and I know will be something I’ll like to eat.  The problem with trying new recipes is that they sound good on paper, but they don’t always taste as good as they sound.  So, every time I buy special ingredients for a recipe new recipe and it doesn’t turn out or I don’t enjoy it, I’ve wasted time and money I didn’t really have to waste.

I know that this new diet is better for me.  I feel better, I’m losing weight, I sleep better and my blood sugar is much more steady.  Clearly this eating plan has a lot of benefits.  It does, however, require a lot more planning and thought.

I should also probably consider the idea that I’m being a bit too rigid.  The world will not end if I have fast food.  One fast food meal or slice of pizza or wrap from the local sandwich place most likely won’t cause the world to end.  I guess, since I’m having some success, I want to be extra vigilant and ensure that I don’t backslide into my old ways.  I know how easy it is to justify eating something simply because it’s easy or because it satisfies a craving.  I don’t want to go back to that mode.  Mindful eating works so much better.  It just requires a lot more thought.

For now, I’m going to start researching and trying new recipes.  That may mean that I waste a bit of money and/or time, but it should also mean that I add some additional meals to my food plan.  I’m hoping that adding some additional recipes will help me on the days when all I really want to do is order a Meat Lovers Pizza from Pizza Hut.

We’ll see how that goes.

Last night I wore an old pajama top of my Mom’s to bed. I’d had kind of a rough day and I was really missing her and wearing the top made me feel closer to her somehow. A nice side benefit was the fact that I hadn’t been able to wear the top before because I couldn’t fit into it. Last night it was too big. Still, while the fit was nice, it didn’t really matter. It was the comfort of feeling close to Mom that I was after.

One of the things I’ve been trying to do since I’ve been working to lose weight is to train myself not to eat when I’m feeling sad or stressed or scared. I’ve always been an emotional eater and I’ve always used food as a method of stuffing my emotions. When I was mad, I ate. When I was sad, I ate. When I felt any kind of emotion at all, I ate. For years I used food as a security blanket and a comfort. Eating was how I dealt, or didn’t deal, with what was going on in my life.

These last few weeks have been pretty stressful for me. There was the uncertainty about closing on the house. Then there was the closing. Now there’s moving with all the tasks and uncertainties that can bring. Add to that some issues in other areas and I’ve pretty much been a nutjob these last few weeks. I wrote about some of that on my other blog, Settling for More.

So far, despite all the stress and emotional nuttiness, I’ve been doing fairly well with keeping my eating in check. I haven’t dived head first into a bowl of mashed potatoes and gravy. I haven’t eaten an entire bag of Dove Dark Chocolate Squares. I’ve been doing well with keeping my portions in check and I’m still losing weight. I won’t claim I’ve entirely conquered the problem, but I think I’ve made a good start.

I guess I finally realized that eating to reduce stress doesn’t generally reduce stress. In fact, it just gives me another thing, my weight, about which to be stressed. So, for now, I do my best to not let my eating get out of control, but I also cut myself a break if it does happen. Either way, it’s less stress for me and that’s good.

I’ve always been kind of a salt junky. I love salty foods. I’ve never been a huge one for sweets, but I love chips and crackers and dips and popcorn with lots of salt and butter. One of the biggest challenges I’ve faced in dealing with my new diet is the fact that salt is limited. I never did use the salt shaker all that much, so my problem isn’t that I have to stop adding salt to my food. The problem is that there’s already so much salt already there.

Take yesterday for instance. I’ve mentioned before that I’m also working to balance my blood sugar. That requires eating a bit less sugar as well. One of my new strategies for accomplishing that goal was to substitute foods that didn’t contain sugar for those that did. I had the brilliant idea that I would make some fat free pudding and use some fat free cool whip and have a nice low sugar treat that I could eat in place of ice cream. It seemed like a brilliant idea until I read the back of the pudding packet. A 1/4 cup of pudding has over 300 milligrams of sodium. That, clearly, won’t do.

It is a sad but true fact that most grocery stores don’t carry an extensive line of low sodium products. You may find some low sodium canned vegetables and perhaps, if you’re lucky, some low sodium soups or chips, but most products will be the full sodium versions. I don’t buy a great deal of prepared food for just this reason, but there are some things I do like to buy. I don’t have enough patience to make my own spaghetti sauce, and I don’t believe I’d even begin to know how to make my own English muffins. Luckily, I have found a few online stores that cater to those on a low sodium diet.

If you’re on such a diet, check out these stores. They do have some great products.

Living Low Sodium

Healthy Heart Market

HeartWise Foods

I’m starting to wonder about the nutritional content of library paste. In the last few days it has come to seem like everything else I might want to eat is bad for me. I’m getting a little discouraged.

When I first started dealing with afib one of the things they told me was to watch my fluid intake and to go on a low sodium diet. That seemed relatively simply. I didn’t eat out a lot and I didn’t eat a lot of processed food so I thought I was in good shape. Then I started reading how much sodium was in things I thought were good for me, and I realized I needed to make some changes. It wasn’t always easy, but I did revamp my diet.

A while later I started noticing I was getting shaky and tired a lot. My doctor had told me my blood sugar was a little high. I started cutting back on sugar and investigated the glycemic index. Once again I started revamping my diet and learning to eat in a new way. The good news is that paying more attention to the glycemic index and eating more carefully seems to be balancing out my blood sugar. The bad news is that, yet again, there are foods that are verboten, and those foods are the ones I like most.

Sometimes I wonder if knowing as much as we do about health and how food and drink and other things effect our bodies is such a good thing. I could, if I wanted to, spend half my day deciding what to eat and when to eat it. All I want is to be healthy, and I’m willing to do what is necessary to accomplish that. I guess I just wish it were a bit simpler sometimes.

So, for what it’s worth here’s my plan. I am going to watch my sodium. I am going to try to use the glycemic index to incorporate more low glycemic foods into my diet. I am going to work to fit more exercise into my schedule and I am going to add more weight training to my exercise routine. What I won’t do is become a Nazi about all this. I will do the best I can do and feel good about it. I won’t beat myself up if I have that piece of chocolate or handful of chips. As of right now, I’m eating better and more mindfully than I ever have in my life.

That, I hope, will count for something.