Thursday, September 8, 2011

Dieting like a chicken with its head cut off


As you may have read, I started Weight Watchers on Tuesday.  And so far, this is easy!  Of course, I'm over 867 points.  Is that bad?  I'm sort of new at this.

Anyway, let's get serious for a minute.  Dieting shouldn't just be about losing weight.  It should be about improving your overall health as well.

I hear buzzwords like ALL ORGANIC, NO NITRATES, GRASSFED.  And even if you haven't seen Food, Inc., common sense applies here, people.  Organic food probably makes my organs happy.  A nitrate sounds like something used to ignite a roman candle on the 4th of July. Not too appealing.  And grassfed? Believe me, I wish all my meat was grassfed.  In fact, I wish I had a cow in the backyard named Bessie Lou so I could go outside and pick some steak or hamburger anytime I wanted.

But unfortunately, that's not the world that I live in.  My world consists of grabbing Taco Mac with a client for lunch and a hot dog at my daughter's softball game for dinner.

When my Nana was growing up in the 1930s and 40s, she only ate foods that her family grew or raised on their farm. When she was my daughter's age (10), she would go into their chicken house before school to catch a chicken, chop its head off, pluck it, skin it, and cut it up for her mother to fry for dinner that night.  Huh.  And I'm too scared to let Bailey cut her own steak.

For Nana, all organic wasn't a catch phrase.  It was a way of life.

So are we too busy or too lazy to eat healthy?

Because it's not like it was easy for Nana, either.  Can you imagine starting off your school day like this?
                           Video Clip of Rocky Chasing Chicken (without the eye of the tiger)

When she had a young family in the 1950s and 60s, she raised chickens, grew her own fruits and vegetables, cooked all their meals from scratch, made all my Dad and aunt's clothes AND worked a full time job.

Sheesh. And I complain if it's been more than two weeks since my last mani/pedi.

I don't think I'm quite ready to decapitate chickens, but maybe counting points and focusing on good-for-me food is a small step in the right direction.