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.

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.

Food Camp: Our Adventures in Feeding Therapy – Day 3

Somehow, day 3 of Corbin’s feeding clinic experience became more about my issues about being fat vs. being thin vs. being healthy.

Often we heard that Corbin “doesn’t look malnourished” or “too thin” when we discussed with others his limited food choices and our decision to enter him into KKI’s feeding program. And by often I mean basically every single time. And it’s true, he’s not too thin. In fact, I was informed today that Corbin is in the 80th percentile when his height and weight (~38 lbs.) are factored together.  Not bad, right? Doctors even congratulate us on keeping his caloric intake high enough, as if a diet of oreo cookies, goldfish crackers, pizza, and bagels with cream cheese wouldn’t pack on the pounds. But is he healthy?

Because while Corbin is touted as perfectly healthy by his pediatrician, that same doc continuously hounds me about my 7 year old daughter’s extra poundage (95th percentile since 6 months old).  I’m told repeatedly to keep her off sweets and sodas, and to try to encourage her to be more active, which is infuriating since she doesn’t drink soda, eats her share of junk food but also eats well-balanced meals – including a variety of fruits and veggies –  and she is incredibly active.  My daughter loves participating in sports and does so year round – karate, MMA, lacrosse, and tennis – plus gym is her favorite special class at school.  But she’s heavy, so is she unhealthy?

I obviously cannot answer these questions – I’m fat, so what do I know?

All these issues bubbled to the top of my brain-cauldron when I met with Corbin’s dietician/nutritionist for the first time today.  She congratulated me on his percentile and I found myself seated upon a soapbox instead of a neutrally colored bench of almost too-narrow chairs.  It also didn’t help that I had recently noticed in a bathroom mirror that one of my favorite, new shirts allows my under-arm fat to ooze out like two rows of warm, raw, cookie dough left sitting too long on the counter.

I didn’t realize how awkward I would feel as a fat parent in an environment so focused on food and eating.  I felt so unqualified to discuss proper nutrition and eating habits when I couldn’t sit comfortably within the arms of these stupid, neutrally colored bench/chair things.

The dietician assured me that she understood exactly where I was coming from, and that health is more than what one weighs.  We briefly discussed my Crohns’ disease and arthritis and she promised us some realistic meal ideas that a family like ours can easily prepare when time and energy are short.  I felt better, and embarrassed.  I apologized profusely.

And of course I am hungry, since I haven’t found much time in our daily schedule for more than light snacking for myself.  I do suddenly find myself with a craving for cookies…

Day 3 is behind us; only 37 more of them ahead.