Why I'm Blogging My Food

So, who am I and why am I starting yet another food blog?

I'm a 38-year-old woman, busy with a full-time job, husband, 5-year-old daughter, and an as-yet unpaid second job as a writer. (I write novels. I haven't sold one yet, but I have no intention of giving up.) Like so many others, I was effortlessly skinny until sometime around my 30th birthday. Since then, a lifestyle at once busier and more sedentary and an older body have caught up with me, and I could stand to lose 50 or 60 pounds. That's been the case for quite awhile. I've started diets and stayed with them anywhere from a week to a month more times than I can count. I tend to bog down on measuring my food and calorie counting (or point tracking in Weight Watchers), and I'm just not going to drop whole food groups. Especially carbs. You will pry my bread and pasta from my cold, dead hands.

But I need to do something. I'm not happy with my body, and my annual blood work is starting to show early warning signs that I've inherited the family tendency toward circulatory problems. My triglycerides and cholesterol are both a bit over the healthy range.

I'm not a good cook. I'm not terrible, but I'm not totally at home in the kitchen, either. And I've got too much else going on in my life to want to spend a lot of time cooking or, especially, cleaning up. But I do enjoy good food, and I'm in principle in favor of using fresh, simple ingredients and a minimum of highly processed ingredients. Over the past few years, I've become a fan of Mark Bittman's cookbooks, since his recipes are of high enough quality to satisfy my inner foodie but are generally simple enough to be within my abilities.

So last week when I read Bittman's latest book, Food Matters, it was something of an epiphany for me. (See review here on my reading/writing blog.) I decided to try his approach--less meat and dairy, minimizing processed foods, eating pretty much all the fruits, vegetables, and whole grains you want. Today is my first day on the program, and I decided to start a blog about it to help me stay on course.

The rules I'm following are:

- max of 1 non diet soda per day
- no caffeine after lunch
- no processed snacks except as rare treats (no more than once per week)
- work in whole grains as white rice and pasta run out (we have a lot of both from Costco)
- no meat before dinner except as leftovers
- strive for minimum 5 fruits and veggies per day

I know that doesn't sound like much, but for me it's a huge change. We'll see if I can stick with it.