Food

I have always have a love/hate relationship with food. I absolutely love food, I just hate how I feel after eating it.

I was chubby child. I grew out of this and actually developed a waist line around the age of 15. I then went through a phase where I was able to eat everything and danced it off later. Upon entering the fashion industry I was back to feeling like the “fat kid”, and learned to live of off a bagel a day. I quickly dropped from a healthy 130 pounds to a bobble head look of 115 pounds. I have a huge head but that’s a whole different story.

The reason why I am writing this is because someone asked me recently to help her out with her eating habits which got me to think. I have zero will power, when there is food, I will eat it. When I crave my favorite thing in the whole world; French fries, I will go get them. I do not have the mentality for Paleo or any other form of “diet”. As cliche as it may sound; it is all about moderation and the amount of calories you consume in a 24 hour span. I used to use the Lose It app but became slightly obsessed with it. It did make me realize that I was taking in way too few calories in combination with the amount of daily exercise. A common misconception; you do need to eat in order to lose weight, especially when you exercise daily.

The one perk of a divorce is weight loss caused by stress, and bowels that can’t hide your true feelings the way a smile does. Therefore I don’t really need to diet. I do eat a lot less than I used to. Dining solo results in a lot of salads and meatless stir fried veggies dishes. Besides that I consume tons of dairy in the form of milk and greek yogurt. I will need to find a farm where I can buy milk without the additional 15 grams of sugar a cup! My daily cheat is flavored coffee creamer in my morning java. I am not a fan of exercising but once weather permits I will go back to walking around 3 miles about 4 times a week.

Food is fun though! It is a huge part of our social life. It enhances your experiences when you travel oversees, it makes a bad dinner date a lot more bearable and the pizza parties with your kids a lot more enjoyable.

That being said, back to your aging skin, or should I say my aging skin? The bad news is that I recently learned that sugar can prematurely age your skin. It can weaken your collagen and elastine levels starting as early as your mid-thirties (!). Reason enough for me to lower my sugar intake. Foods that are great for your skin are obviously the boring kind; fatty fish, broccoli, almonds….all great paired with some French fries. Vitamin C is a winner too for your skin. I have seen it pop up more and more in beauty products although it seems to be most productive taken orally. Adult women need 75 milligrams a day, a single orange has about 100 milligrams. Bell peppers, broccoli and kale also pack a ton of vitamin C, we will put them on the boring list. More vitamin C sources are kiwi’s and pineapples. But I also love my Liposomal Vitamin C

It all boils down to this: a wise man reminded me that you will never have a different body shape then the one you had when you were 18. Read; if you didn’t have a flat stomach then you will not get one now without help from a plastic surgeon. For me that means my dancer legs are trainable, my round bootie may reappear with the right amount of donkey kicks but my boobs won’t get back to perky without that surgery; that’s a fact. Although there are exercises for that as well….Age II