So. I'm done. I still can't believe that I made it.
I've been struggling a bit since finishing. Day 90 dovetailed nicely with me running out of groceries and my fridge being filled with a bunch of containers each filled with a little bit of something that I had been eating in the past weeks; a little rice, a few shriveled pieces of broccoli, a couple spicy and now stinky shrimp, etc. So besides milk, mega awesome whole wheat sesame bagels, tomatoes (it's still tomato town over here) and carrots, I haven't had much pcp friendly food around. That's my own damn fault, I just need to go grocery shopping, but without the imperitive of the diet I don't feel the panicked need to do groceries. I will clean out the fridge and do groceries today, though.
So I haven't been magically transformed into someone who always has the pantry stocked and always has a meal ready and waiting. I'm still the same person struggling with keeping myself and my partner fed. But I see that with just a tiny bit of planning, I can keep food in the house, always have something to eat, and can avoid getting groceries and then coming home with a bunch of stuff and feeling like there's still nothing to eat.
I'm still wrestling with my tastes too. I haven't magically stopped liking all the things that I loved to eat before. Some of them do taste gross, but some of them still sway me with their cunning and calculated masses of butter and salt. That's ok. I'm human. Our bodies evolved to stock up on fat to ensure survival. I can't undo centuries of evolution in 90 days. What is easier to deal with is our cultural eating habit of a meal being either made of up a giant piece of meat or processed carbs and fat. That one I can look at and see how messed up it is, and feel how messed up it is when I partake of it. One of the two most important things that I learned from this whole endeavor is how much better I feel when I'm not fueling myself almost entirely on processed carbs and fat. I was a vegetarian for a long time, but didn't really eat that many vegetables, and when I started eating meat again, it wasn't that much meat. So most of my meals were things like grilled cheese, pb and j, mac and cheese, pasta with some sort of sauce and a bunch of cheese, pierogi, etc etc etc. Processed carbs and fat. No wonder I was chubby and sleepy all the time. I've been eating a lot of what were previously normal meals lately and I can feel the difference. I've been tired and sluggish and it's been hard to get out of bed. And hungry! I've been so hungry. The fiber is an amazing wonder.
The way things taste is really interesting. Especially sweet things. Fruit tastes sweeter to me than it used to, but I can taste the sour in there too at the same time. Sometimes an apple is just the most outstanding taste explosion. Other things can taste too sweet, usually vegetables, tomatoes and squash in particular. I made a butternut squash curry soup the other day and it was just way too sweet, I couldn't eat it. But then desserts don't taste that much sweeter to me, but they do make my teeth hurt. Weird.
The other most important thing I've learned from pcp is the power of breakfast. The pcp breakfast is a beautiful thing. I've kept up with that and it's probably the only reason I don't feel like total crap. I've stopped with the egg and am instead drinking more milk, but all the same it's great. My office had an "appreciation breakfast" for us the other day and all that was there were pastries, muffins, and bagels. How can you fuel yourself for the day with nothing but processed carbs, sugar, and caffeine. No wonder people drink like 5000 cups of coffee a day just to keep going.
Before doing pcp, I was aware in an abstract way that food is the body's fuel and that what you eat affects how you feel, but since I'd always been eating the same things I couldn't really see how better food makes you feel better. Now I've felt it and lived it and it's so clear how much what you eat affects how you feel.
Ok. I still need to write about working out and maybe drinking needs its own post. But right now I have groceries to buy and a fridge to clean out.
