I'd Rather be Skinny

About a month and a half ago, while we were still in Alaska, I was watching Oprah on the television. Yes, I DO like Oprah. There was an author on her show talking about a new book that he just wrote about healthy eating. I was super intrigued because I agreed with everything he was saying. Halfway through the show, my sweet husband noticed how excited I was about it and took me to Barnes and Noble to get a couple of his books, “Food Rules” and “The Omnivores Dilemma.” Really really good books, and I recommend them to anyone interested in health. I LOVED “Food Rules” and am about to the last chapter in “The Omnivores Dilemma.” Once I read the first book, I vowed I would try and follow the rules he gives. The general idea of his books is to eat foods that are as minimally processed as possible. He talks about how the food industry is really tricky about how they advertize and how they make money. They can make sooooo many ingredients out of a kernel of corn it’s insane! It’s what surprised me the most. The food industry can buy corn for super cheap so they’ve been busy figuring out how they can make more and more ingredients out of it so they can make money off of consumers. Michael Pollan, the author of these books, believes it is making Americans sick. So I started researching it and decided once we got back from Alaska I would try and make as much of our food from scratch as I could. Amongst the obvious homemade bread, I wanted to make my own foods like ketchup, and mayo. Yeah, I was pretty ambitious and was determined it would be better for our health. I grew up eating margarine instead of butter because it didn’t contain as much fat, but after reading Pollan’s book I found out butter is actually better for you because its not processed. I know that’s hard for some people to believe, but I believed it. So.. after a couple weeks of trying it out, and eating real butter instead of margarine, this is what I told my husband:

“I know that this new way of eating is supposed to be healthier for me, but I don’t think it’s making me any thinner. Healthy doesn’t always mean skinny. I’d rather be skinny.”

I was just frustrated because I had been involved in a really good exercise regime and I wasn’t getting the results I thought I would get with the “clean eating.” For some reason, we’ve been going through a lot (a lot, a lot!) of butter within the last week or two and that just doesn’t seem to be helping. I went out and bought margarine today. Oh happy day! I agree with a good majority of what Pollan talks about in his books, rules that I will stick to, (like: “The whiter bread, the sooner you’ll be dead” and “Don’t eat breakfast cerals that change the color of milk.”) and I agree whole heartedly that processed foods are horrible for a person, but I’m not about to change some of my ways if it will make me go up a pant size. I don’t think most females would. So back to “regular” healthy eating.. we’ll see if I see the results I want this time around :)

Catch Up Time

Things have been a bit hectic around our little household lately. I apologize ahead of time that this may be a bit of a venting post for me today. Gabe started school this week at BYU and from what I can tell, he is excited to be back. He’s been figuring out when to take certain classes so that he can be on schedule for getting his degree. For those of you that don’t know, he is planning on becoming an oral surgeon (yes, I know, lucky me :) ) and so we are going to be in it for the long haul. We decided that while he is going through dental school, I’ll work to put him through and pay our bills. So right now I feel like I’m going through a tiny mid-mid-life crisis. I’m trying to figure out what I want to do with myself. After I graduated from high school I decided to go to school to become a dietician and I had dreams of opening my own practice and being my own boss. I soon realized how expensive school was and I didn’t want to take out anymore school loans so I decided to put school on hold until I earned a bit more money to pay for more schooling. Well, life happened. I eventually got a full time job and started making some decent money. Didn’t save any, because I liked spending it so much, but I made money nonetheless. Other things happened in my life and school wasn’t that big of a priority for me anymore. But now that we’re back home and Gabe is back in school, it’s time for me to earn us some money so that we don’t have to take from our savings we earned this summer. The last couple weeks I have been trying really hard to find a good job. By good job I mean: full time, morning through afternoon, pays at least $9.00 an hour, busy, and any benefits surely wouldn’t hurt. I don’t think most people understand how rare that is in this fine Provo town. I have already scoured this city at least 4 times before, so I know where everything is, and I know what most places will offer me before I even ask. I applied for a super extremely good job last week and they had over 80 applicants so I didn’t even get an interview. I even took a typing/grammar/basic knowledge/spelling test that I thought I did pretty darn well at. So in the meantime, I wake up early and get ready for the day, sit at the computer and go through 8+ job websites every day to see if anything new pops up. No luck. I stay busy so my husband doesn’t feel like he’s the only one doing anything. I do so many dishes, try and organize anything, clean, cook. But sometimes I just want to work. I want a job where I can go in 9-5, sit at a desk, have a list of to-do items, and stay busy all day working hard. Then I can come home and feel accomplished. But I feel anything less than accomplished right now. I feel like I have to be working my butt off to be acknowledged. I’m consistently on my knees praying something will come up. . .Please keep us in your prayers. Hopefully we’ll have some luck soon. So in the meantime, while sittin at home pondering about what to do I have been thinking a lot about going back to school and wondering what online classes would entail. I love school and learning new things. It would be great if I could go to work and during the slow times I could study. So that is a possible option right now, I just don’t know enough about online class options yet. Among going back to school and finding a good job, we’ve put an offer in for a townhome. Actually, we put the offer in during the summer, but we’ve been more proactive about it since we’ve gotten home. It’s a short sale and so it takes FOREVER to hear back from the bank. Our realtor has been trying for months and months to hear back from them. We went to see the place last week and there were a few problems with the place that we weren’t aware of. We found out they are no biggie, easy problems to fix and we knocked down the price a little, so we’re hopeful that we will hear back from the bank soon. We found out that if we buy a place, our monthly payment will be the same as if we were renting, so it’s a no brainer that we want to put it towards something that we can call “ours.” Pretty exciting stuff, huh? So that’s the basics of what is going on with us right now. Maybe soon I’ll be blogging from OUR house..