A Bowl of Mushrooms, or weird cravings.

Content warning: Post contains discussion of slight food related/eating disorder type issues.

My relationship with food is… It’s Complicated.

Food is my Drug, Let’s be honest. Half of what I eat is all about the euphoric high I get from having taste explosion experiences with anything tasty that I eat. I am autistic and in my case that’s why I have tastebuds in severe overdrive and a sensory neural system that is always turned up to 11. When something as common as Food evokes that sort of response, it’s a setup for serious hangups, issues, associations, complexes and neuroses about and around Food. It’s not something one can avoid, so I have to find ways to deal with Food and Eating more healthfully.

To try to get round that, and to eat a bit better, I’ve managed to work out a system where if something is moderately healthy, and I suddenly crave it, I eat it. If something is refined-sugary or exceedingly caloric, and I still crave it, I eat a little of it. That way I don’t ever feel deprived and binge. (in theory. Pizza is still a bit of a problem. ehehehehe)

A lot of people eat this way, they call it “Mindful Eating” or something. I try not to feel guilty about what I eat, but just to eat some of whatever my body thinks it needs, and not too much of any one thing, and to stop eating once I am almost full.
The theory is that body often knows what it needs if you get good at listening. Most sugar cravings are actually me being thirsty, for example.

One time I bought armloads of squash and cooked it all in a single week.

Another time it was bananas. I must have been short for potassium, because I was strolling along with my grocery list and cart when my nose caught a whiff of bananas and wrenched me around in the supermarket aisle and dragged me to the curved fruits section of the Produce Corner, screaming inside my head, “THAT! WE NEED THAT! BUY US THOSE SO WE CAN EAT THEM.”

Whenever I am working my poor sickly muscles back through phys therapy and into health, I get a serious craving for certain types of meat. Dark meat Chicken, beef, shrimp, anything with oils. I think my body needs that to rebuild. So I eat it.


Which leads to Mushrooms.

What the heel is in mushrooms? Is it potassium? Some vitamin? Why can’t I get enough mushrooms? Portabello, if that makes any difference.

In Which I Report In on the Health thing.

March 8:
Three more pounds of fat lost since Feb 29. Doing better at eating proper food, but I'm about to go on a trip so we'll see how that works out- The worst thing about eating only real food is that it's very hard to find while traveling. Body Age, 35.

March 14: Body age 34. Found rather decent food while traveling. Have gained, since last check, 2 or three pounds... of Muscle. This explains the protein cravings.
Eating multigrain toast, fruit and veggie smoothies, roast chicken and carrots and broccoli with organic dip. Yes, "organic" is important even with dip, because normal veggie dip has preservatives, MSG, extra sodiums, corn syrup and goodness knows what else in it. My veggie dip has herbs, onions, and buttermilk. Le gasp, food that includes only food as ingredients- what a novel idea.

In Which I Am Making Little Steps

I was sick sick sick all winter long, so sick I could not often get out of my little home, so now I am a noodle. It's off to Physical Therapy, as of about the beginning of February.
When I started I could not lift anything heavier than maybe five pounds, and that for longer than a few seconds. I could manage one errand per day and come home to fall over on my couch utterly exhausted. I could not go up a set of stairs without pausing for breath. I could not hold my nephew, 11 month old baby Raf, while standing.
35 lb Longbow draw length- only to my elbow. Yes, I've taken up archery. Or I will as I get better.

Now it's March.
Now, I've gained about eight or ten inches to that draw length!
I have gained two pounds of water (Hydration) weight, lost 3% body fat, and gained a few pounds, which would be returning muscle. My tummy has an ever so slightly slack feel to it from lost fat.
I can move chairs. I can do crunches. I can go up a flight of stairs at a steady walking pace. I can hold my nephew for a few minutes. I can carry in groceries from my car, down the stairs and up the flight to my apartment. I can go to Hobby Lobby and walk around for nearly an hour!

Some future goals: Walking the Puppeh, more draw length on the bow, ability to carry full laundry basket down to the first floor laundry dungeon and back up four flights to my apt.
Long long term goals: Heavy armored fighting in SCA combat, being a combat archer, being able to go hiking on the local trails with the Puppeh

I have totally changed what I eat, too. See previous blog about Native inspired health. My philosophy is that you need to work out what your ancestors ate, and eat a healthy moderated version of that. My skin may be light, but my metabolism is Native American, and I do great on seeds, nuts, greens, fruits and veggies, multigrain breads, and lean meats like fowl, fish, and eggs. No starch, no white flour, very little if any refined sugar, very little red meat. No/Less preservatives, no funky artificial stuff, no "low fat" or "Sugar Free" or "Artificially sweetened".

It is really hard to change so drastically, especially since I hate most vegetables. They have such a nasty planty taste. It's especially hard to find anything decent to eat when out and about. I need to plan my menus more carefully, shop more carefully, and cook in advance, then eat things before they can go bad. My lousy sense of time does not help there.

In Which I Ask For Seconds of Zucchini

I am not a veggie person. I taste things on a level most people do not. I have a highly keyed sense of taste and smell. Not bragging, because it's no picnic, but them's the facts. Supposedly there are certain bitter chemicals in many vegetables that some people can taste and others can't- this is what determines if you like that vegetable or not. I can taste a lot of said bitter flavors in pretty much every vegetable. There are some, like green beans, that will make me physically sick just imagining the taste of.
And tonight I ate "second helpings" of Zucchini.

I mentioned earlier in this blog, about two entries ago, that I am changing how I eat. The zucchini thing is a response to a severe pizza craving. Now, I love pizza. I am a critic of pizza like some people love fine wines. I can tell you which delivery pizza has which qualities to it, which ones are crap and which are heavenly, and which frozen pizzas are best, and which places in town serve the best oven baked pizza. I love pizza so much. So now I am not letting myself have white flour and the thing I miss most is my beloved New York Pie.

I hollowed out some zucchini, spread them thinly with coconut oil, sprinkled on garlic and Italian spices, then roasted them. For the last few minutes of roasting I filled them with pizza toppings. Then my friends and I ate them.
It ain't pizza, but it ain't bad.
Next I'm going to try this cauliflower and egg "crust" someone else on the internet has made. I'm using the site Pinterest to get good recipes and keep all my good ideas for food together, and I'm going to try a few new recipes each week. The Zucchini pizza boats were very fast to fix, and very easy to do, so they will probably get repeated later, often.

In Which I Define A Native Inspired Diet

I am Native American- I am going to eat like it, because that keeps me the healthiest.

Fat does not make you fat, starches and refined sugars and fructose/glucose/dextrose etc. make you fat. Especially if you're sedentary.

I have a lot of recipes marked on Pinterest that are "Paleo". Paleo diet posits that cavemen ate lots of meat, that lots of grains aren't good for you, and that fruits, veggies, nuts and meat are the best diet.

I don't think this is entirely healthy. I am Native American, and I know what my ancestors ate in order to be healthy. They had a LOT of seed grains, no refined sugars, tons of fruits and greens and vegetables, and lots and lots of lean meats. I intend to eat like this.

So for recipes, I'm going to get Paleo and Vegan recipes and use them in my diet.
I get a cheat day per week to eat things like Panda Express, and I will be basing my diet in vegetables and fruits, with multigrains and seed grains, and then lean meats. "Paleo" doesn't allow dairy, and my own constitution doesn't technically either, but I love cheese, and butter is half decent for you, actually, in MODERATION.

MODERATION is key to everything in diet, as well as eating no more processed crap, eating things that are genuinely FOOD.

In Which Sour Cream and Senses are Discussed

So today I had sour cream over beans with corn chips for brunch. Sour cream is so tasty. And so fattening. Dairy is so not very good for me. My GOSH it was delicious.

I love food. I love tasting it, I love smelling it, sometimes I even love cooking and baking it. Tasty food especially. Flavorful. Savory. The tastes found in mediterranean cooking tend to be my preferred flavors, but I enjoy anything bold and savory or sugary. I go nuts for ranch dip, black olives, french fries, almost ANYthing made of potatoes, breads white and wheat, Pizza, many kinds of fish, bacon, Meat in general, onions, apples, green grapes, nectarines, sugar in almost any form, and of course anything chocolate.
Unfortunately most flavorful things are also high in sugar, high in fat, or both. I have to make conscious effort to discipline myself into not just eating these particular things. But they're sooooo Goooooooooood....
Given the chance, the purely physical side of my Self will binge or savor-spree on anything that is enjoyable to the senses. With food this can get me into trouble.

I am hypersensitive. To what you ask? To EVERYTHING. Supposedly this is linked to my Asperger's Syndrome. I can dull things down by familiarity or conscious training or effort, but for the most part I have all five senses running on high power. Sometimes I hear noises humans are not supposed to be able to hear, like bird-deterrent sound devices outside of buildings. Crazy huh?
Now extend that kind of sensitivity into the other senses, too: Sight, Touch, Scent and Taste. I can taste the dyes in some foods. I prefer to wear polarized lenses on bright days and my vision is 20/20 or better. I depend on my sense of hearing, touch and smell so much that without them I get very skittish because people or things take me by surprise- I unthinkingly tend to judge the state and positions of people in a room by the sound of the ambient noise off of them and the walls, their breathing and motions, and sometimes their smells.

How cool to have, like, superpowers? Can I do neat tricks like always hear everything people say an' stuff? Nope. It has its Pros, but there are balancing Cons that people like Daredevil don't have unless it serves plot, because they're comic book heroes. Frequently I can't hear a word someone three feet away is saying because I am also hearing everyone else for forty feet around and any carrying sounds from as far as a hundred feet on top of that. I don't go to rock concerts or even most dances because the noise level is physically painful. I don't enjoy very spicy food because it burns us, Precious. Wearing clothing made of too much artificial fiber drives me nuts. I don't like most perfumes. And as I mentioned above, if I get a cold and my hearing and smell sense are gone, I am drastically less aware of my surroundings and it makes me jumpy.

The Pros to being hypersensitive? For one thing, I'm never without entertainment. I've become a habitual eavesdropper mostly because I can't help it, and Americans talk really loud in public. It's also fun for me to play with the kaleidescope I got for Christmas, or similar sensory amusing children's toys. Acoustic music is a fulfilling and multifaceted experience. And food? Oh wow. The right food is positively sensory HEAVEN.