Eight-Week Challenge: Preparation 1

Make Better Food Choices

My first 2017 eight-week challenge goal is

• eat more nutritious food with fewer empty calories.

I was doing so well last year. I had adopted Dr. Joel Fuhrman’s recommendations in his book, Eat to Live, and was benefiting from not only the promised weight loss (with the more important reduction in the size of clothes I could wear) but also controlled my blood sugar level for six months without taking any medication. I also stopped taking a statin for cholesterol because I reduced the animal protein in my diet.

But then something got in the way. (Ok, I know, this is the beginning of the excuses.)

First, my husband wasn’t keen to join me on my nutritarian diet (Dr. Fuhrman’s term), so I was cooking two meals each evening, or more likely stir frying veggies for myself and then adding strips of meat to the same veggies for him. That option falls far short of the meat and three veg he prefers. For him, the veggies need to be cooked separately.

Then, no matter how much he praised the soups I cooked in large quantities to stock up the freezer, he started asking for something else instead.

So we tried going out for evening meals more often so I could stick with salads (dressing on the side, please) and he could have whatever he wanted. But something else on the menu seemed to catch my eye.

Eventually, the evening snack routine returned. I started out grabbing carrots and celery sticks. Then I added the hummus as a dip. After that, I started asking myself what’s it going to hurt if I just have some pita chips with that hummus.

One slipped step backward led to another, and now I’m right back to the weight I was before I started on Dr. Fuhrman’s journey. The good news: the clothes still fit, so something went right.

I’ll measure my progress the way I did last year, by calculating my Body Mass Index. I’ll be happy to keep my BMI at 25 or less.