madermouse's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cheese mongering and 8 weeks I love being back in Portland. I never realized how much I felt like I fit in here �V or rather DIDN'T fit in in Wyoming. But I do. I am part of this place. There is so much to love here �V the people, the liberal attitude, the georgeous food and produce, the music venues, the open markets, the flowers, the smells. I love the city. I missed it. Well, before I go overboard, I will say it was an adjustment. I mean, I had really gotten used to the quiet. I never realized how quiet Wyoming is. But when I pulled into Portland (me, my two cats in the front of a moving van towing my car all by myself... yikes!) I was inundated with the buzz of energy. It's like everything around me was humming. People were everywhere. Cars everywhere. People driving crazy. Crazy people! :)People spanging (i.e.: spare-changing). People and energy and all sorts of crazy�K.I just wanted to hide and not come out for awhile. I felt my senses were assaulted. But it wasn't two days later when a fantastic Lebanese meal and a visit from a friend coaxed me out of my shell and I remembered all the stuff I love about Portland. Then I started to buzz right along with everything. I got in the groove of driving here again �V fast but careful. No time here to gaze out at big puffy clouds or a herd of antelope or an old red barn falling down from too many winters. Nope, here you gotta pay attention to the road and for god's sake don't linger at a green light!! And oh ya, you gotta have a parking "fairy" or you'll never find a place to park downtown. Then I started buzzing the food scene. It was awesome. It was like I'd been dropped off by a helicopter into the land of plenty after starving for a year. My first trip to Farmer's Market was nothing short of elating...all that gorgeous organic produce, intensely giant bouquets of flowers for $10 bucks!! I just walked by myself and gawked and nibbled and shopped and basically felt high and happy the entire time. I loved every minute of it. Then, a week after I moved here and got settled into the new apartment -which is cute & cozy btw, in the heart of the Belmont/Hawthorne District - I started "8-Weeks to Optimum Health" by Andrew Weil. I'd read this book before, a long time ago. But I wasn't ready for it. I wasn't ready to throw everything out in my pantry that had hydrogenated oils or preservatives in it. That would've been like all of my pantry!! I just could never bring myself to do it. But for whatever reason, I happened across this book and it just spoke to me. No, it YELLED to me actually! It was ironic that I was moving here and had no pantry to throw out. I left whatever food I had left back in Wyoming. So I would be starting fresh. A perfect time. Plus, food in Wyoming was so expensive that when I got back here, I realized I could pay the same prices for Organic food here that I was paying for regular, sad food in Wyoming. It was a revelation of sorts. So I thought- what the hell - I have nothing to lose. And then I read the book again and started the very next day with week one. And if you are a person who hates diets, and if you are in the frame of mind I'm in (knowing I have to lose weight but completely and totally hell-bent against any sort of traditional diet) then this plan might be right for you too. Anwyay, I love the way the material in this book is presented. Its almost like Andrew is your older, wiser brother who's not so much as telling you what NOT to do, but is simply leading you down a path if you so choose to come. I don't know how else to explain it. But it��s easy. It's not all shocking to the system and you're not spending your every waking moment thinking of all the things you can't have or counting every damn calorie or totaling up your failures in your head at the end of the day. You aren't encouraged to consume fat-free or diet bastardizations of regular foods. Certainly, there are restrictions like imagine going to the grocery store and being unable to buy anything that has hydrogenated oils or preservatives in it. Think about it. Read some labels. You'd be fucking amazed at how many products have that stuff in it. Oh - and high fructose corn syrup, another thing to steer clear of. That's like 80-90% of the store. And what you're left with is meat, fish, veggies and fruit and a handful of natural foods from the natural food section. I started purifying my water, taking vitamins, meditating, and doing a small amount of stretching. Included in this book there are also mental/spiritual lessons and breathing techniques �V something a lot of diets just shine over. And amazingly, I've lost weight. I don't know how much because my scale broke in the move - which is a good thing. I'm not buying another one. But I know its at least 10-15 pounds because clothes that I had trouble fitting into before I moved are now fitting perfectly. So that means of the 20-22 pounds I gained while I was in Wyoming I'm already losing some of that. But more importantly, I feel like am working on my health with this book. I feel like I'm not on a diet, and this is the most important aspect of this program. This was my missing link...Because you all know that I'm not mentally ready for another diet no matter how fat I've gotten. (at last count it was 340lbs) So, I'm here and living and breathing and loving being back in the city and happy to be moving in what feels like the right direction. Ohand I just got hired at a specialty wine and cheese shop that's opening up in Sellwood. We are only going to be selling upscale artisan cheeses that nobody else in town is selling as well as selling wines from little micro-wineries. I��m going to be a cheese monger folks!! I figure it would help me on my quest to cook food for a living, that is, to know about fine cheeses and wines. A mouse loves her cheese. So�K hope all is well in cyberspace. I took a minute to browse around all the new diet sites - wow there are a lot of newbies. And it's good to see some of the same people still plugging away too. But the one thing I did notice, is that I was glad I didnt have a daily site devoted to my diet anymore. I don't want to give that much power to the food I'm eating, to being on a "diet". I just want to live and slowly change and think differently and more importantly to be healthy. 11:22 p.m. - July 15, 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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