Gone Green

I’ve gone green. No, I don’t mean that I drive a hybrid car or protest the use of plastic straws, but as of January 9^th of this year, I’ve started eating like a grownup. And by that I mean that after more than five decades of eating as if I was a teenager scarfing down copious amounts of chips and candy, I decided to grow up and start eating healthy.

Everyone asks me, “Why? What happened? Was there a catalyst?” And the best I can figure is that, following a visit with my son during which time I ate non-stop, the day that he left I decided, ‘I’ve had enough.’

I threw out the junk food, and there was plenty, and I sat down and watched a documentary called “Fed Up,” which if I recall was mostly about blending fruits and vegetables and not eating solid food for six months. But interspersed in that documentary were just enough facts about the sugar industry – and theories about the addictive nature of sugar – that it struck a chord in my soul.

In a moment, a lifetime of believing that I had some strange metabolism unlike everyone else in the universe was erased. I somehow captured, through that movie, the startling revelation that I am like everyone else. I’m not an alien. I don’t have some unique condition that makes me special from humankind.

And deep down in me, my cells understood the truth: Garbage in, garbage out.

Our bodies will give what they get, and as mine had, my body produced a shell of fat and waste because that was what it was given for far too many years. When the input was too great, like a filling bathtub with a stopped drain, my body stored all of that filth inside of me hoping, I’m sure, for a reprieve that it did not get.

Until January ninth.

It has been seven months, and in half that time, I dropped 70 pounds. I eat all of the time. I am not exaggerating. And what I eat fills me.

I used to believe that my “special” body – unlike everyone else’s – precluded me from feeling fullness. I was deluding myself. I feel full every time I eat now, and I feel fuller faster, because what I eat actually feeds my cells.

Was it easy? No way. In fact, on day eight, I suggested to my boyfriend, Bill, that if he spilled sugar on any part of his body, I might eat him. I took a photo of the look that he gave me when he replied, “I’m going to start sleeping like this,” as he peered at me with one anxious eye.

And I still smile when I see the picture because one, it’s funny, and two, it reminds me that a journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.

People ask me what I eat now, and it’s simple: Whatever in the hell I want. But what I want has changed. I do not crave potato chips and M&Ms. I do not think about, like I used to, what I’m going to eat for lunch while I’m eating breakfast, and I don’t think about what I’m going to eat for dinner while I’m eating lunch.

I eat stuff like cilantro and parsley – things that I used to think were garnishes simply to add something green to a plate to make it look like my meals were something other than fried or processed foods.

I eat things I used to not be able to pronounce, like quinoa and acai.

I eat as much fruit as I like because I have never met a single morbidly obese person, of which I once was, who said, “I tipped the scales at 250 pounds because I ate too many bananas, or strawberries or grapes.”

I eat foods that are grown close to the sun in as pure a state (preferably raw) as possible – and that does not include most meats.

I love vegetables. In fact, it’s startling now to think that I went a lifetime without enjoying a cucumber simply because somewhere, somehow, I determined that I did not like cucumbers. I used to pick them off of my salads. I describe them now as little, unsweetened watermelons for your mouth. They are incredibly good. Don’t believe me? Try them. In fact, try everything that you think that you dislike. You might surprise yourself.

When I shop, I choose organic – not because I believe that organic is uniformly regulated but because if can be exposed to one part per million less of some chemical, then that may be the part per million that keeps me from developing some disease.

I create concoctions, like my Rosemary’s Baby Shake (with any combination of hemp protein powder, almond milk, strawberries, beets, spinach, pineapple, bananas, flax seed, berries, broccoli, grass (not lawn), quinoa, and maca) that makes people shake their heads (It probably doesn't help that I name my meals monikers like, "Rosemary's Baby Shake."). But if they’d try it, they might find out that it’s actually great tasting, and I’m not saying that because I’m hungry, because I’m not.

Good food makes you feel good, and feeling good makes you want to eat good food.

I wish that I’d known this thirty years ago. I wish that somebody had told me. And if somebody did, I wish that I had listened.

Now it’s your turn.