Things I've Learned from Nutritarianism

These last seven and a half weeks have been...interesting.

With this major diet change, I've lost an additional 20 pounds, I've hit my 50th pound lost since the beginning of this journey almost a year ago, and found inside myself a level of energy that I legitimately don't think I've ever felt before. Barring Life Shenanigans (of which there have been more than I bargained for, that's for sure), my mental health has been better than ever. I did not handle Life Shenanigans the best most of the time, but I shudder to think about how I would handle it if my mental health were not as good as it is. I literally probably would have holed myself up for several weeks and buried my head in the sand, and I didn't entirely do that.

Can you believe that it's been almost a year since I started down this path? I can't. I look back to a year ago at this time and I'm FLABBERGASTED at the changes that have come about in my life just from making the shift to focus more on my own health and wellness.

One thing is for sure - I will never go back to the way I ate. This is partially because I have medical evidence now that says that I shouldn't, but also, I feel so effing good that I wouldn't want to. I've said in the past that my relationship with food has totally changed, but those times weren't true, I've realized. This time is. I've learned more in the time I've been following the nutritarian diet than I have about myself physically, ever, and I look forward to incorporating these lessons into my everyday diet as I start to reincorporate things. That being said, here are some of those lessons:

1. There is such a thing as too much garlic, at least for me. Some of you will gasp at this, and I did too with this realization. But, if I eat too much garlic (and sometimes even a little bit is too much), my nose runs like a faucet. That's an interesting reaction that I'm not super interested in looking at, but I have to.

2. I might never go back to eating meat full time. I think it's no coincidence that I lost so much weight AND I cut out meat. Might I try to reincorporate it? Of course. But I think I'm going to do so fairly infrequently and instead lean on the stuff I eat now.

3. Even in a pandemic, people won't eat chickpea pasta. I watched someone shove another person out of the way for a box of regular lasagna noodles the other day and it was the most ridiculous thing I've seen since I worked retail. Too bad for them, more for me.

4. I CAN be vegan. Do I want to be? I'm not so sure. But if I have to be, I can.

5. I will have to either drastically reduce or cut out my cheese intake entirely. This one's a bummer, but I've tried a few nondairy options and they're...edible. We'll just leave it at that.

6. Coconut is like...my favorite. Absolute favorite.

7. When you cook red lentil pasta, it smells like weed. It also tastes like it smells. I find this endlessly hilarious and laugh about it every time I eat it. (Side note: is it possible that there might be weed in it? It'd explain the constant laughter about it.)

8. I get sick of food REALLY quickly, but if I rotate staple meals, I won't get sick of them as quickly. Chickpeas and salsa is a big one, as is chickpea pasta with sauteed vegetables. There are also these sweet potato stuffed mushrooms that are the stuff that dreams are made of.

9. Just....coconut.

10. I react badly to Dunkin' Donuts coffee. This was a very interesting realization.

11. Almond milk too. Less interesting because I half expected it.

12. HEMP MILK. 'Nuff said.

13. While there is a thing as too much garlic, there is no such thing whatsoever as too much salsa. I could literally eat it out of the jar. (I may or may not have done that as a meal once or twice or five or six times.)

14. Water sauteeing is a thing that I didn't know about. Also, I have a...we'll call it less than ideal reaction to olive oil. I'm testing it out today to make sure this is what I've been reacting to, so we'll see what happens.

15. My reactions to gluten are much, much worse than they were even two months ago. While most see this as a bad thing (and I certainly did at first), it means also means that my body is doing what it's supposed to. I have celiac - I'm supposed to have a reaction to gluten. That I didn't for so long because my immune system was in such overdrive is nothing short of alarming. (It's also worth noting that even though getting glutened was accidental, I was definitely eating something that I shouldn't have been eating. I kiiiind of had it coming.)

16. COCONUT. CAN'T OVERSTATE THIS ONE.

In other news, Rob and I bought a house! We close in mid-April, and I'm really excited about it. We also sold our condo, and all of this happened within a month of each other. The pressure was on to find a place once we sold our condo, so some feverish home searching and many, many meltdowns when we offered and it got rejected definitely happened. We made offers on 9 houses and they all got rejected before we were finally able to get one accepted. It cuts just shy of 30 miles from my commute every day, and it's in the sweet spot of being close to work but also far enough away for me to not worry about clients seeking out my services in the area that I'm living in.

Now if we can just get through this pandemic and make it so that I don't have to miss work (and thereby can keep getting paid), that'd be greeeeat.

In the meantime, I go back to the doctor on Wednesday to check in. I'm supposed to get blood taken and I'm not quite sure I want to do that at the moment because going into a hospital or a lab unless I really, really have to is not entirely appealing to me at the moment. We shall see what happens.