"There used to be food at the grocery store."

I'm paraphrasing the late Spalding Gray. I forget which of his monologues contains the bit about trying to get healthy and eat right and realizing how much junk is in everything. Today I texted Jenny from the grocery store, tediously reading label after label, "Is there anything more despairing than the first Shop after a weight loss doc. FFS!"

Goals

So last month at my annual physical I asked my doc if he could refer me to our local Center for Weight Loss. He did. Last week I went and, to my puzzlement, that doc was a surgeon. Surgery wasn't what I was after...more like I was seeking a boost in some other way. Um, a magic pill maybe? I'm dealing with so much, I suck at this, never could sustain exertion, and these days I can't handle too much at once. 

There is no magic pill, but there's science

I guess surgery is the magic pill for lots of folks who've struggled with maintaining diet and exercise, but..."I go in here (pointing to my tummy) and here, cut away most of your stomach and off it goes to Pathology..." said this surgeon. His enthusiasm was almost macabre, but I believe he wishes the best for fat people who have been struggling to become fit. I told Joe about it when I got home and he said, "Um...that's not for us." Don't you love how he says "us." He's my favorite person in the whole world. And he's right. Though it seems to "work" quickly, it's not for me. I need to lose all this weight without a scalpel and all the problems associated with most of my actual stomach being literally cut out and thrown in the cremation fire. Though the surgeon did have a good schpiel about obesity and its role in myriad health issues, I knew all that and that's how come I am looking for HELP. Even so, his schpiel got me to go make an appointment with a different doctor entirely that nobody had ever mentioned before and I sure wish I'd known about her. That appointment was yesterday, and, long story short, it went great (of course I cried) and I'm on a program now. I have goals, and the continued help of a new doctor who knows her science. I'm thinking I can do this all of a sudden.

"There used to be food at the grocery store."

Food can be poison or it can be nutrition. There's a quote knocking around the web that goes "Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much." Basically the whole middle aisle section of the grocery store? There's scant stocked there that I should be eating. MY food is at the perimeter: the produce, the proteins. Today's shopping took forever because of all the label-reading, but I made it back home with my haul, the first with extra-tight focus on lean, fit and healthy foods. What's awesome is that me and Joey already love the Mediterranean diet, it's just that I have been lazy about portion control, and serving far too much rice or potatoes or corn, using too much sauce-y stuff and lately I've been too heavily reliant upon "convenience" foods like packaged, frozen stuff from Trader Joe's. It starts with a convenience food here and there, then before you know it, there's too much going into your body that was made in a factory or lab. My own Rule 33 says not to eat that. I got lazy. Deep breath. Making some changes.

Tonight I made pan-seared salmon with a barley salad. I did the salmon with ginger, lemon and balsamic (skin on), and the cooked barley I tossed with lemon juice, grape tomatoes, seeded/diced cuke, and five diced walnuts, and a couple handfuls of baby spinach, served warm alongside the fish. We were both full and Joey prescribed the plate "So summery and so tasty!"  I made the whole box of barley so I can just scoop it the rest of the week into salads. Technically a serving for me is 1/3 cup. Got my measuring cups out and will be using them for portion control. IT'S ON, DUDES. ∎