Book/Food Review

The book is "Skinny Bitch", by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin. It's been around a while, but I picked up the book on CD last week and listened to it while I was working at home on Thursday. It goes by quickly and has an entertaining voice, so if you're into audio books and you're looking to re-evaluate the way you eat, you might be into it.

Basically the book perscribes a vegan diet, so no meat, dairy, eggs. They also bag on caffeine in the form of sodas and coffee. And they basically say white refined sugar and many sugar replacements inlcuding aspartame are the devil. They go into detail about why each item is no friend to the Skinny Bitch. There's more to it than that, of course, but those are the key elements I identified with.

For the last few weeks, even before listening to the book, I've been thinking about what I eat and why. The book reminded me of several things I already knew, but was not wanting to do anything about. Sugar. Duh. Butter and cheese? Um, yeah, if I say we're all "just friends", you'll know I mean it in the way I used to tell my parents that my too-old-for-me boyfriend and I were "just friends". I think we all know how that turned out.

Where I'm at: I've been a vegetarian for about 15 years. I basically feel like I eat rather healthfully, but am always looking for ways to improve. I'm also a runner who wants to fuel her body properly for maximum performance. I'm beginning to accept the whole idea that my body is my engine and that if I put crappy, processed food in as fuel, I'm not going to perform as well as if I were eating more healthfully.

The no meat part is done. Giving up meat was not an issue when I did it because it just made sense to me and I never really ENJOYED meat like some folks do.

Caffeine and aspartame? I've played around with my addiction to Diet Coke for a while. I'll be on it then off, then back on. I recently had a couple weeks back on the chemicals after almost nine months off it. I totally loved the taste, but felt guilty about enjoying it, knowing that it's ultimately not good for me. I knew that in no time at all I'd be buying it by the case and drinking at least two cans a day. My main issue is the aspartame. Skinny Bitch does a great job laying out why it's probably not the best substance in the world to be digesting on the regular, which served as a reminder for me, all reasons why I have given it up in the past. So, I put the kibosh on my re-emerging habit before it could get out of control.

I love cheese and butter and think everything tastes better with copious amounts of both. I also am a giant fan of the sweets. I don't have just one sweet tooth, I have an entire set that's rather fond of all kinds of sugar.

I've been thinking too about adding more healthy things into my regular cooking routine, so I don't have to fall back on less than good for me choices. It's also helpful for me to not think "I'll never be able to eat that again," like removing something from the go to menu is a form of punishment. We get to make choices about everything we eat. I want to be able to celebrate my choices.

While I'm not considering giving up on dairy and sugar entirely, the book did make me rethink what I am eating and why. I guess you could say everything's up for review.