Malcontent Cook: Tofu Doesn’t Suck

If you’re looking for recipes for healthy meals and living your fullest, most vibrant food-life…you’re in the very wrong place. But if you want to read about how I cooked (yuck) tofu (double yuck) and actually liked it (whaaaaaaat?), then meet me, your Malcontent Cook.

I never learned to cook. Well, that’s not true, exactly. I was never taught to cook growing up because, reasons. I was…ahem…gifted some cooking lessons as an engagement gift from my mother (part of the aforementioned reasons I never learned to cook) and it was a cruel but useful present. Cruel, because my lack of cooking skills has become a long-running joke, but useful because I did become less frightened about cooking a few meals (it’s a real thing – look it up).

Anyway, now I’m super fat because, again, reasons, and apparently changes need be made. I fear cooking and I fear healthy foods because having Crohns’ disease means healthier doesn’t always mean better for me. Definitely not easier.

This week is our first week of shopping and eating per the guidelines of my bariatric program. This week is also my third week of feeling crappy from whatever germs my loving son shared with me, so I was all ready to wallow in comfort food. But I didn’t want to give up so soon. So easily.

So I rushed home and cooked the below meal: teriyaki tofu with brown rice and steamed broccoli. Long story short: it didn’t suck. In fact, the husband and I both really enjoyed it. My son, who eats very few items, said it smelled like chicken.

So, once again, the hippie/vegetarian friends in my life were correct. Tofu doesn’t suck. Damn those nature-loving SOBs whom I love so much.

PS Thank the gawds for my lovely friend Briana Michaels for talking me through my panic attack while cooking this meal. She writes awesome, paranormal romance novels and you should definitely check her out, buy her books, and send her some love.

WTF is Seitan?!

My main reason for journeying down the bariatric path is to speak frankly with a nutritionist about my diet. As I’ve previously mentioned, choosing healthy foods is difficult for me because:

1. Raw veggies do not agree with my Crohns’ disease very well.
2. I hate/fear cooking so putting together ‘healthy’ meals prods at my anxiety.
3. ‘Unhealthy’ foods are yummy.
4. My taste buds are not very welcoming to foreign visitors (aka, flavor of many kinds).

I was nervous when I arrived at my appointment, though I’m not entirely sure why.  My pride in being a perfect student shined, I believe, in my preparedness and my fastidious approach to following directions. I had taken each requisite quiz about my eating habits (I am an emotional eater – who’s surprised?), signed up for all the necessary classes, seminars, and appointments as instructed, and I chronicled the steps towards my weight loss goals. I even wrote out my pain as requested. I was ready to be teacher’s pet….er, dietician’s pet.

She thanked me for coming, weighed me (awesome, I gained a pound), and continued to thank me for completing each of the above mentioned assignments. But I didn’t want appreciation, I wanted personal attention. However, we spoke very little about my answers to the questions I had been asked, and she didn’t even read my letter of pain (and if I’m not validated for my writing skills am I even alive?).

I was put slightly off, but it was suddenly time to discuss food options and I this is what I was here for. She gave me some handouts with some meal ideas, what a plate of food should look like, and good options for lean protein. I quickly mentioned that I had Cronhs’ and was nervous about the amount of raw veggies of which I was supposed to be eating more. She asked me about cooked vegetables and I didn’t really have a good answer. They are supposed to hurt me less, but I’m not sure if they do. Her suggestion: trial and error.

Okay. Look. I get that maybe this is a difficult problem to figure out, but that’s why she’s the expert, right? The idea of just trying to eat and seeing what hurts me more and what hurts me less is what has framed my current eating habits. Doing this again just to qualify for a surgery did not sit well with me. The fear of certain foods is very real. But that didn’t matter because we were right back to focusing on how I was supposed to be reducing myself to 1,200-1,500 calories a day and really focusing on getting more protein and calcium.

Honestly, it was disheartening. All she could really offer was that “yeah, it may be a bit tricky figuring it all out.” Ya think, lady?! That’s why I wanted help.

So now I’m supposed to start incorporating things I can’t stand into my diet – clams, oysters, salmon, tofu, beans – along with other things I’ve never even heard of.  Seriously, what the fuck is seitan? Or tempeh? My spell-checker doesn’t even recognize these words but I’m suddenly supposed to be able to shop for, make, and/or eat this stuff? And without diet coke to wash it all down?

Honestly, I’m far from thrilled.  I was truly hoping for more guidance and support specific to my health and needs. This affects my whole family; it even affects my work place (those poor, poor people). I already knew this was going to be an uphill climb, but with my asthma and in this heat (oy vey!), I was hoping for a little more hand holding along the way.

Diet Coke Will Not Save the World, and Other Reasons I am Contemplating Bariatric Surgery

Diet Coke will not make the world a better place.

This I often have to remind myself when I try to barter with myself against considering bariatric surgery.

But the world does suck and drinking Diet Coke makes me happy. I’ve suffered some tough blows in life, I am overwhelmed with the daily struggle, and I deserve some happiness, right?

Okay… I need help.

My mom was fat I watched her battle with it and hate herself for it until she died. She measured her whole life according to how much she weighed and I despised how her yo-yo dieting and jumping from weight-loss fad to fad impacted so much of our daily lives. What we ate, where we shopped, how she framed her self-worth, how she felt physically and mentally, and subsequently, how she treated the rest us because she could never stop the cycle.

My father was fat and I watched him care nothing about it at all until he died. He measured his whole life according to what he accumulated and I despised how he was never satisfied with what he had. Food, time, drugs, money, someone’s attention – he never had enough. And worse, it was never his fault. He would take and take all while complaining he didn’t have enough and doing nothing about it. Just wait for change.

I have always been fat and in all my efforts to avoid copying my parents’ unhealthy attitudes towards food and weight, I developed my own. I tried a few weight- loss programs, but I refused to keep trying new trends that I knew I would ultimately quit. I convinced myself that maintenance was better than constantly losing and gaining. But I didn’t do nothing. I went out, I kept up, I worked hard. I put on bathing suits and went swimming, and played racquetball with my friends, I sat in teeny-tiny theater seats even when I could barely breathe. I told myself that I was balancing being fat and living life well. I loved me for me and all that.

But life changes, and even if we don’t believe it, so do we. My relationship with food has been terrible since I was diagnosed with Crohns’ Disease in 1999. I’ve been on countless medications, with the effects of some still lingering, and cannot find a diet plan that meets my needs. I’ve fallen victim to my own excuse that “the healthy foods are the ones that hurt me the most”. And while that may be true, I realize that all the bad foods I eat aren’t helping me, either.

I also realize that I have been using food as an emotional crutch and I need to make a clean break from that perspective. However, when I’m honest with myself, I know that I cannot do that alone. I am truly lost and I can either choose to stay lost and alone and watch my health deteriorate, or I can call out for help and actually accept it.

Change is scary but stagnation is death. Fearing change is natural, but accepting a status quo that leads to the grave is stupid. I need a new status quo. If I can get the help I need planning meals, shopping for appropriate foods, and exercising in ways that don’t hurt, then I can take the second chance that surgery would provide me to make better decisions. The right decisions.

I am fat and I’ve always been fat. And I need to do better than my parents. For myself, for my husband and children, and for the many people I am blessed to have care for me in my life. Bariatric surgery represents a commitment to these life changes.