This is the most difficult part of each and every day, dealing with food. And that is so so sad, because I love food! I love to prepare it, to eat it, to photograph it, to make plans associated with it, and yet it’s the most difficult part of my day. I wish that weren’t true.

I’ve been reading so many different sites about food and diets (by which I means ways of eating, not diet plans). The more I read, the more confused I am. One says you must eat breakfast! One says don’t eat breakfast unless you just have to! And these are paleo/archevore sites too, not some Ladies Home Journal kind of things. The more refined issues of types of fat just seem beyond me, although I know I’m smart enough to understand it. If I weren’t so overwhelmed by just fucking figuring out what to eat, I could settle in and read these things and make sense of them.

While I’m working on the background/emotional stuff about it with Elizabeth, I have some thoughts and questions for you, Marnie my darling trainer who I adore and appreciate:

• You are 26, ride your bike miles and miles each day, and do lengthier and more difficult workouts. I am a menopausal 52 year old who does some walking, and significantly less-involved workouts. This is just a thought  as context for thinking about differences in what you and I should be doing with eating?

• I want to lose weight. I want to lose 6 or 7 pounds. I just do. I wish I didn’t, but I do. Not 20, 30, 40, not even just 10 pounds. I want to lose 6 or 7 pounds.

• My ultimate goal is the most difficult of all: the moderation goal. My ultimate goal is to eat when I need to, to eat food that helps me in all the ways it should, to eat what’s fresh that season, to eat more vegetables (hard, with Marc), to not freak out about enjoying myself (because I can do that without compulsively eating myself into a frenzy). It seems so simple, but of course it’s NOT.

• So when I think of that, and I try to imagine a day, I get going with a version of it and then I just start spinning mentally, not knowing what it “should” look like. Here’s my default thought about an imaginary great day, based on my 52 years of eating and absorbing the constantly-changing theories of what constitutes healthy eating:

• Breakfast: yogurt and whatever fruit is fresh, or Irish oatmeal, or an omelet with mushrooms and onions. One cup of coffee, though I’d like to shift to green tea.
• Lunch: a small salad, or tuna with celery and onions.
• Dinner: fish or chicken, a veg or two, a salad maybe. Now and then with a glass of white wine.
• Evening: Marc eats sweets and popcorn all night long after dinner, and it’s hard to just sit there and not eat something too; usually I’ll have an apple or a pear, or a bowl of popcorn without the butter he pours over his.

So that seems like a great food day to me. And I have absolutely no idea just how “bad” a diet it is. Ultimately, of course, I want this not to be so mindful and requiring of thought and effort — but for now, I think I have to come up with this kind of framework for myself.

On top of the not knowing what to eat, see, I’m also dealing with freaking out about just having to eat this much. Everything about eating three meals a day turns on the sirens and flashing lights. So that’s the background noise that makes it more difficult to understand and parse out the different things I’m reading. How can anyone make sense of conflicting and confusing information in the middle of all that noise?

strength training post to come later today……