I'm Full of Artificial Sweetener

Ten points for whoever can name that song. (which really shouldn't be hard, especially if you know me)

So.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about this whole hormonal imbalance idea. I already know my hormones are a bit wacky, and I've been doing a lot of reading about fixing your hormones on your own by living clean --especially eating clean. So I've decided I should clean up my diet. Now it's not like I am a regular at McDonald's, but I know I eat some things that are so not good for me that it's not even funny. I want to get rid of the icky stuff to see if I can a) fix my crazy hormones and maybe even my moods (omg, winter in Chicago did NOT help) and b) drop some lbs that I have not been happy about carrying around for the past year.

And I know I should want to eat clean, simple, whole foods for the fact that it's good for me (and the environment!) alone. Buuuut, I'm a girl. And a girl that is used to being thin and fit, so the weight thing is going to be an issue that I will try to tackle as well. Because, you see, I have been trying to get back in shape. I really have. I've even gone down a size... but it took me MONTHS. I know my desk job isn't helping, but I spend a fair amount of time at the gym and spinach and I are practically BFFs these days. I should be losing at a slow, healthy pace, no? Well, no, I'm not. I'm hardly losing at all. I eat mindfully and make sure it's mostly healthy foods. I count the cals and up my protein. I'm a Bally regular and I walk everywhere that I can. I am awesome about it for weeks on end, eschewing drinking and increasing my cardio, doing all the right things. And I can feel little differences, I really can. But then I go to weigh myself or try on the pair of pants that was just a tiny bit too snug, and NOTHING. I think my face looks thinner and my pants are looser, but no, the scale has other ideas and laughs in my face. And then, in my self-pitying state, I will go buy something chocolate as soon as I leave the gym. A tad counterproductive -- I do realize this. And I know this is not a good habit! I don't know where it came from because it didn't happen until recently. But anyway. Another topic, another time.

Point is, my metabolism should NOT be this shot. I'm only 23 (24 in 2 weeks, eep!) so it might not be like when I was 16, but it should not be as slow as it is! I'm sure a little disordered eating in my past has not helped it, but whoa, it's like it's not running at all. Anyway, I've been reading a lot of Jillian Michaels' tidbits on hormonal imbalance (love her, want her arms and her tranny cut abs) and also Dr. Hyman's UltraMetabolism/UltraSimple Diet plans, and they all say our bodies are messed up from the fake crap we put into them.

Soooo... first on the agenda is cutting out the -- you guessed it -- artificial sweetener. In college, I was Queen Splenda and an expert on all things sugarfree. Even though most of those SF products gave me stomach pain and sent me to the bathroom (TMI, yeah sorry), I didn't care because I was skinny. Now, I think I'm finally paying for it. (Either that or Starbucks found out I was stealing Splenda and has decided to conspire against me, slipping full fat cream into my coffee instead of soy. Corporate coffee karma or something like that.) So, while I still may have other not-so-hot-for-me foods in my diet, I'm going to start with this one step and nix the chemically altered sugar subs. It's been almost a week and I'm still going strong...which is hard for me because I was chewing gum like it was my JOB when I was at my actual job. Just sipping on H2O at my desk all day is weird. It feels like something is missing, but I know this is a good thing! Next up, I'm going to cut out sugar for a bit (not fruit though, no way. this ALWAYS backfires on me) and then alcohol. But not this weekend, because come Saturday I plan on having the Corona that is calling my name from the fridge. After this hellish week, it's been practically yelling at me, in fact.

I'll leave you with a few of the scary foods I was eating before:

Splenda, one of the usual suspects. I was putting this on everything save dinner. Unless dinner was oatmeal, then all bets were off.

Not saying these are all bad, and that folks haven't succeeded on the SB Diet, but...to lower the carbs, they had to do a lot of playing around in a lab. I personally do not want to ingest someone's science experiment.

When I was a whiskey-swilling skinny bitch in college, Diet Coke and I used to have a lot of threesomes with Jack (Daniel). I was a wild woman, I tell ya.

Ah yes, my favorite of all the scary shit I've eaten. 50 grams of protein in one shake folks. I'm not sure what I was even going for here. But wait... it gets better....

This is what it looks like mixed up!! I'm pretty sure this color does not occur in nature, and if it does, you shouldn't eat it. This picture doesn't even do it justice either. And believe it or not, this tastes worse than it looks. I pretty much don't have a gag reflex -- nothing makes me ill -- and this almost made me vom right in the work cafeteria. It was 'strawberry' but tasted like salty PeptoBismol. Mmmm.

OK, so, just looking at that last picture reminded me of why I need to clean up my act. Where do you think you can stand to or where would you like to clean up your eating habits?